Meet a Lawyer Turned Healthcare Business Leader

One photo can change a life, and sometimes it rewires an entire career. 

This week, we sat down with an anonymous C-Suite executive who started out making holiday gifts with his mom. At 23, he was thrown into management at the Four Seasons. Then he walked away to join the Peace Corps. And that's just the beginning. From there, the path gets even wilder: Guatemala, emergency response, becoming an EMT, and eventually making the call to go to law school and build a long in-house career in healthcare and life sciences. 

We talk honestly about what it means to lead beyond the legal department when you are also responsible for HR, compliance, privacy, cybersecurity, environmental health and safety, and culture. You will hear why he says the “lawyer part” can be the easiest piece and why the hard part is earning trust, coaching people, and clearing the roadblocks so the team can deliver.

Subscribe for more anonymous workplace stories, share this with a friend who loves career pivots and leadership lessons, and leave a review so more listeners can find us. What is the boldest professional choice you have ever made?

Want to be interviewed? You can remain anonymous. Voice distortion now available. Email or Text us!

Transcript

Welcome And How The Show Works

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. I'm Elsa Barby. And I'm Don Andrews. We have been friends since sixth grade. Somewhere between a car wash job, a few questionable boy choices, and 40 years of friendship, we became the kind of people who always want to know what was really going on, including at work.

SPEAKER_01 0:21

Don spent 25 years as an employment lawyer digging into workplace drama from the inside out. I built a long career in the beauty industry as a brand educator with a few TV cameos sprinkled in for fun.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

We came up in very different industries, but we have the same passion, meeting new people and asking how they got their jobs, what they love, what they can't stand, and what happens behind closed doors.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Every episode we talk to a new guest about their lived experience in the world of work. And because our guests stay anonymous, they can spill the truth without the fallout.

SPEAKER_02 0:54

We get into the choices they made, the tiny cruelties, the surprise kindnesses, and some of the moments that never make it into human resources reports.

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Equal Parts Informative and Tiddly. This show serves up all the tea while honoring the incredible, complicated, often messy work people are doing across the industries and across the map. Welcome to Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors. Let's get into it.

First Jobs That Shape Values

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Hey everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. If you're a first-time listener, I highly recommend you start with our intro with a cute little interview between Don and I. But this kick is off. Let's just start off from the very beginning. What was your first paying job?

SPEAKER_00 1:39

A paying job. I guess I would the first job I ever did that I got paid for, I formed a company with my mom. And we actually sold gifts for different holidays. My family's very much into holidays, and so we would make different items. I was very young, but my mom impressed that we would creative, and so we did that. That was the first paying job, to be honest. And the reason I used that is funny, I was thinking about it because I think that that job actually shaped how I look at other jobs in the future. Now I went on, and if you want to think about where I was on somebody's payroll and all of that, the first job that I officially had, I was teaching slaming, really. So I was paid to go and do something I love to do.

SPEAKER_02 2:27

Well, tell us where you're at now, and then if you don't mind, walk us through from creating holiday gifts with mom to where you are now. And I love what you said about realizing you had you learned lessons in that very first job that mattered later on. Tell us about that too.

SPEAKER_00 2:44

Where I am now, I am technically the general counsel for a company. I'm also responsible for several functions. I'm a business executive. I say I'm technically the general counsel because I, although I am a lawyer, and my primary job as a lawyer, I don't really identify as a lawyer. I identified as the general business executive. I am a leader in an organization and I help drive culture and I help drive and lead strategic initiatives and objectives. Currently, I'm responsible for several different other functions besides the legal function. And including currently, I'm the interim head of HR for a company. I am also responsible for environmental health and safety, cybersecurity, privacy, information governance, and compliance. So that's kind of where I am today. How how I got there?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

How'd you get there?

SPEAKER_00 3:38

That is a long sort of story, but it the reason it starts with that gifts program is because that job actually helped me appreciate that you were trying the idea behind that was look, we did something at home by creating crafts and putting them together that we enjoyed as a family, right? And so we would do these things because holidays, whether it was Christmas or Halloween or Easter or whatever, we would use the opportunity to spend time together building crafts. And then other people admired them when they came over and we were like, why don't we sell them? And then once we made them, then we went out and shopped them around at different little boutique shops who bought them. And I saw the monetary value associated with doing that. But if you think about it, I did not do that at a time where I where money was of value to me. It wasn't about the money, it was about the opportunity, the experience, the joy that I brought to other people. And that these things, in doing it together with my family, in looking back, actually reflecting upon the question, what was valuable to me, and the reason I did it was because the people I was doing it with, and then the value or the joy that I brought to other people. And I think it it shows in how I value what I do today.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Excellent. So you have a very interesting employment history. So I really want to have you just walk us through the chronology from your making and selling crafts, then you had your first sort of W-2 job teaching sailing in college. And then what came next?

Four Seasons Management Lessons The Hard Way

SPEAKER_00 5:22

So, what came next was I needed to get a job after college. And so this sailing job was I realized that was not going to be my future. I was kind of mixing a hobby with employment, and I didn't really like that. I started to sale for not pleasure. And so I stopped doing that and I just went out to get a job. And I got a job at the Four Seasons Hotel. I went to go get that job. I did not have any skills other than a degree. And so I thought, well, I guess the only thing I can go do is to get a bartending job. So that was my objective. And so I went to go do that job. And so I went down to the basement of the Four Seasons Hotel in Newport Beach, California. And I went down, I looked at the job board, and I was about to fill out the application. And they had a job on there that said fitness club manager. And I thought, I'm fit, I could do that. Literally, that was my thinking. And I had played rugby in college, and I thought I could do that. So there was just this bravado that led me to apply for that job over the bartending job. And I remember going through five interviews all the way up to the general manager of the hotel. It was a five-diamond hotel at the time. And somehow I interviewed well, and they gave me the job. And I was doing that job, it was a very hard job. I had to call my mother in the first week and to ask her what a budget was and how I was supposed to do it. And I had to manage 25 people. 25 people reported me. I was 23 years old. And I made every management mistake you could make, including trying to date people that I would have were supervising because I didn't know what I was doing. And I got a 360 review, another thing that I will never forget, by those 25 people. And they raked me over the coals and told me all the reasons why I was terrible. And I never wanted to feel that way again. And so I have spent my entire career trying not to feel that way.

A Somalia Image Sparks Peace Corps

SPEAKER_00 7:18

And in the context of doing that job, I saw an ad in the newspaper. The country, the United States, was in Somalia at the time, and I saw a baby running across the street. Excuse me, not a baby running across the street, I saw a soldier running across the street in Somalia carrying a baby. And I thought to myself, that person is doing something for someone else. And I am working at the Five Diamond or Seasons. And I decided that I needed to do something to help other people. And so I that afternoon I joined the Peace Corps and I filled out an application for the Peace Corps. And I went to the Peace Corps four months later. I left my job. My boss, I remember telling me that he thought I was an idiot. I had a management position. I was the youngest department head in Five Diamond Hotel in the country. And they said, Why are you doing this? You're leaving a career and you're gonna go do this. And I just felt the need to go and help other people. And so I joined the Peace Corps. I was in Guatemala five months later, and I spent the next year and a half in Guatemala in the Peace Corps. And in the context of going to the Peace Corps, I had to go 3,000 miles away to meet my wife. And I met her. I came back, I got married, and but when I came back, I realized that I had this incredible freedom of being in the Peace Corps, right? I was in the mountains, I'm living on a volcano, riding a horse, wearing a cowboy hat, and I wasn't ready to get into a real job, to be honest. And I so I went down to the local fire department and I volunteered. I had no idea how to do that. I had no medical training per se. And I joined the fire department and basically as a volunteer. And I really loved that. I was helping people, I was feeding adrenaline. I was a there's an ego thing to that. I was young and insane. And when I did that, I realized there's more car accidents than fires. So I joined an ambulance company to become an EMT and I became an EMT and I worked on an ambulance company. Of course you did. Because yeah, because I spoke Spanish at that time and I was a firefighter and I worked on an ambulance. I then determined that I would join the sheriff's search for rescue department. And so I became a translator and an EMT for that. And so I did those three things until I realized that I was getting a little long in the tooth. And then at this point I was 28 years old and I needed a career because I now had a wife and a baby.

Firefighter EMT And The Career Pivot

SPEAKER_00 9:40

And so my wife one day told me you'd be a good lawyer. And I said, Really? You want to pay for it? And she said, I'll pay for it if you want to go do that. And I said, Okay. So I made a commitment to her that I would go and go to law school and I would get a good job and I would provide for the family. And she said, Okay. And the first school I got into was the University of San Diego. And I moved to San Diego and I went to law school down there. And my goal was to go into the U.S. attorney's office and be a trial lawyer. But I was given the opportunity to work at the U.S. attorney's office and then for a federal magistrate. And then because of those two things, I was given the opportunity to go to a big law firm. And I did that. I never thought I would ever do that. And I really enjoyed it. And I looked at that job as helping people and solving complex problems, which is what I had done as a firefighter and in the Peace Corps. So I looked at it as an extension. Granted, there was an intellectual difference to it, but I really looked at it that way. And then after two or three law firms, I ended up getting the opportunity to go in-house. And the proposal that was made to me at that time was look, you work in a law firm, but you can broaden the influence that you have from a handful of lawyers and your clients, a handful of clients, to a thousand, two thousand people. You can broaden the influence that you have to make an impact and help more people. And that was what sold me on it because I took a pay cut and I went in-house, and that was about that was 2010. And for the last 16 years or so, I've been in-house and basically expanding the opportunity or being given the opportunity and the privilege of leading teams of people in-house in the various functions that I mentioned earlier. Just I've had the opportunity to lead a lot of different corporate functions. The nose under the tent was the lawyer part of it, and I enjoy that. But it's the easiest part. The hardest part is leading teams and driving culture and getting stuff done. And so that's what I do now, and that's the path.

Law School To In House Leadership

SPEAKER_02 11:52

Can you share with us what industries you've worked in as a lawyer and executive?

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Sure. The primarily in healthcare and life sciences. So I went in-house in a medical device company. I enjoyed healthcare. I think that the ultimate goal of any life sciences or healthcare company is to support patients. And so again, it resonated with me that there is a broader objective and purpose and all of that. That's very important to me. I never need to have a mission and a purpose. And so that was and it always has been the companies that I work for. There was a brief period of time after I left that company, that med device company. I went during COVID. I decided after nine years or so to go and support. I felt compelled to go and help during COVID, like a lot of people, and do my part. And so I was given an opportunity to get the general counsel for a combination drug development. I was actually more full full-finished, but it was more on the pharma med-device side for a company that was supporting the U.S. government in the drug delivery of COVID vaccines that had yet to be developed. And so I worked for that company as a general counsel. I ran a couple of other functions there, but again in healthcare. But I dabbled then on PE, excuse me, the pharmacy and private equity side. And then I left there after the COVID pandemic wound down. That company wound down. And I did about a year and a half or so of consulting in various industries, financial services, more med tech on the tech side, so a robotics company. And then I was given an opportunity to go back into the pharma manufacturing side of the house. So that's where I currently reside. As a lawyer, I worked in lots of different industries across different sectors. But I would say my career has generally been in healthcare.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Quick backtrack question, really quick. The common thread in your whole career, from starting with your mom, has always been helping people. Was there any particular thing? And you don't have to answer this if you don't want, but is there any particular thing that stands out in your childhood that kind of compelled you to have that as your objective throughout life?

SPEAKER_00 14:12

I do think there is something. My mother was, I don't know, was a hippie for the map of a better term. And instilled in me, she was very involved in the League of Women Voters, was very involved in various, I would say, for lack of a better term, women's movements. You know, not all wasn't so much racial equality, but gender equality was a was an important aspect, women's rights, women in leadership. My mom was a it is a very strong female and worked as an executive as well. And so I I grew up seeing that and hearing that. And so I do believe that was I think what led to a lot of what I currently believe, but I think it comes from my mind.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Excellent.

What Motivates A Business Executive

SPEAKER_02 15:20

So tell us what the best part of your job is today.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

The best part is making a difference. I think when I say that, it's making a difference in the company direction, it's making a difference to achieve the shareholder or stakeholder success or the people that hire me. It's making a difference with the people that I work with, stakeholders and my team, and then working and making a difference in the people that I have the privilege to lead. I feel very I feel an obligation to do and to help give back to the people that I haven't been elected, obviously. I was hired to do certain things, but I treat that as a privilege, and so I try to give that back. That is by far what motivates me. So that is my fulfilling that role is what motivates me and is what I love.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

What would you say is the hardest part of your job?

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Meeting that obligation, right? Trying to find the time, right? And then there are so many challenges. The more responsibility that I get, I mentioned that I have recently been asked to take over the HR function. And I have several other functions that I currently lead, and I support other key functions as part of the business. And finding the time to meet with people one-on-one, spend the time on development, helping people achieve their objectives. I think of my job, honestly, I think of my, I've gone over, I've used analogies over time. I used to think I was an ice cream scooper. And I think when I was at in a law firm, that was my job. I was at 30, 30. And as I'm at 31 flavors, what flavor do you need today? This is my you got to tell me, I'll give it to you. I'll give you one sprinkles, cool. I'll give you sprinkles. As a lawyer outside Laura, that's what my job was. That's one that's the analogy I used. Sometimes they used that I was an orthodontist because it was painful and cost a lot, and nobody wanted to see me again. But that was a different analogy. Now I view my analogy as really more of I I it's I am the guy that in curling, since the Olympics just closed, right? I'm the guy with the broom. I'm like sweeping so that the person that's doing the work with the people that I work with or the other people I support, if they're pushing, I think it's a stone, right? So they push the stone. I got the broom. I don't know what's called the broom or not, but I'm the one that's sweeping and helping it shape and curl a little bit. And I'm helping really encourage and get that. But the person that's throwing the stone is not me anymore, right? So that's and I living up to that and doing a good job to really achieve that objective to help them achieve their objectives is the hardest part of my job and the most rewarding at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Excellent. I love it.

The Myth That All Lawyers Match

SPEAKER_02 18:16

What is one myth about your industry or your job that makes you kind of crazy?

SPEAKER_00 18:26

That one is that would be relatively easy, but I'll call it my job is the lawyer, right? People tend to think that all lawyers are created equal, right? Not all lawyers the same. There's that's the reason why there's a lot of lawyer jokes, right? Is that people have a bad experience or whatever, and they label lawyers. That that can help you in the sense that people have a perception that lawyers have answers or can solve problems or have the rules of the game. But it can also be a hindrance because people then they haven't had a good experience or they perceive one thing, they think they put you in a box. Having a legal degree or a law degree, and or being a lawyer, and certainly in a company, you can help people get the yes. You can solve problems, you can mitigate risk. And if not all lawyers are created the same, people think you're gonna go higher to this lawyer and they're gonna solve this problem for you. You gotta find the right lawyer with the right skill set, with the right temperament, the right objectives to achieve whatever objective you want to try to achieve or goal. And and I find it frustrating that I am oftentimes labeled simply because I wear that hat or have that title. And I think that can limit the amount of value that you can provide to an organization or an individual or whatever if you relabel that. So that would be my biggest frustration about that profession.

SPEAKER_01 19:43

Great. I'm curious on a more personal note because your mother, I know I'm going back to the mother thing because I just think it's great that you've had the supporting positions. As your mother instilled empathy and you've carried the torch throughout your life, how are you showing up for your family in that same respect?

SPEAKER_00 20:05

My same my family, yeah, very blessed. I have two children that are I've been married 30 possibly 31 years this year. I have a beautiful daughter that I'm gonna see this afternoon who's 21 years old, and I have a son who is 28 years old. And as I have uh watched them grow up and seen what they have accomplished and changed as a parent, that empathy I had that all along. Now they didn't necessarily see it because they were going through a certain phase in their life, but I had it the whole time. And so what's interesting is they now start to see it and they start to understand it because they're older and they're through those phases where they didn't. And so I used that that sense of empathy to try to, and everyone as a parent can appreciate this, right? It's like there are times when you really want to just say, because I told you, right? Or whatever, or you're just wrong. And certainly I said those things, that's all true, like everybody else. But I tried not to lose that sense of empathy, which is what was my, shall we say, my rock or my guiding thread through that entire parenting cycle. I still have it, I still do it, and that I think that thread has helped maintain a relationship with my children and my wife, to be honest, because that isn't easy either to help be empathetic of the what she's going through as a mother and raising her children and watching them leave and going through her career and all those other things. So that thread in my own life, I think, is what has helped strengthen my own family relationship. I have a great relationship with all three of them. And it's I think it's stronger today than it probably has ever been.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

That's amazing. I love that. I love it. I love

Fixing Healthcare With Better Tech

SPEAKER_02 21:57

it. If you could wave a magic wand and change. Change one thing about your industry, what would it be?

SPEAKER_00 22:06

In the industry sense, I would then use healthcare, right? And I think the industry has changed significantly and is continuing to change. I think that a more rapid COVID-accelerated telehealth, right? And the ability to go and manage healthcare, the engagement between a physician or healthcare provider and a patient. And so that was an accelerant. And if I could wave a wand, I would continue to accelerate the advantage of technology to enhance and improve patient care and outcomes. I think that is long overdue. For good reason, healthcare and the provision of healthcare is slow to change because it can, if it moves too fast, it can create downsides. But the advancement of technology, whether it's robotics or wearable technologies or whatever, I think if you could increase that, I think you would truly improve healthcare faster. In other words, for the patient, because there's too many times where you can't get in to see a doctor. You can't get treated fast enough. We all have heard of somebody that's, yeah, they died of cancer because they just they found out because they were working too hard that they didn't go in and get a colonoscopy, for example. And lo and behold, now they have colon cancer. And if they found out a year before, we could have treated it. Is there some way to have a wearable or to have some other implantable or some other thing, or to leverage your cell phone or your iPhone or your iPad or your watch or whatever? There are so many things to change that outcome. And I've seen that with both my parents who have had strokes, my stepfather's had a stroke. And so I think there are a lot of things that people have at their disposal today that have not been deployed for various reasons that could improve healthcare. So that is what I would do. Long answer, but that's what I would do.

SPEAKER_02 24:08

Oh, I love that. So is the idea with wearables that it would signal that something's happening so that you would more urgently go in, or how does it work?

SPEAKER_00 24:19

Yeah. So if you just think about it, you have, I'll give you an example in the context of a stroke, right? Again, I'm simplifying. But a lot of times what happens is as you get older, you start to have these arrhythmic events. So, right, your normal rhythm of your heart, you have these arrhythmic or random activities. Okay. And these random activities, they happen infrequently and they get worse over time in many people. That's what happened with my mother. And so she she was having these arrhythmic events, but she didn't know. She had no idea. And so those arrhythmic events, that stopping of your heart for a brief period of time or this arrhythmic thing causes your the valves of your heart not to pump properly, which means blood gets stuck in there for an extended period of time and then it clots, and the clot then gets pumped out and then can get stuck. And so what happens is a lot of times you'll find out when you go in and you have some testing done that you've had what's called the TIA or a transit ischemic event, right? So you've had this TIA that is a mini little stroke. But you might have had two or three of those. You never knew. It is only when you have the big stroke that you actually had this. And then lo and behold, you go on and you're like, you better check out your heart and find out we're gonna put an implantable on you. Well, implantables now, they last for two weeks, they send data in. But if you didn't have it during that two weeks, no one knows. So they go back and say you're fine, right? Everything's good until you have another one, right? And then they become more and more frequent. Lo and behold, if you simply have an Apple Watch as an example, or a Garmin watch or whatever, a smartwatch, that technology, if you enable it on your phone in your health app, will tell you if you had it and it will track it. So then you can go into your doctor when you have your regular checkup and say, Hey, will you just take a look at this data? And they can, or you could theoretically send it anytime to your doctor and they can look at it and see you've been having these and they've gotten more frequent, and they've gotten for a longer duration, we can put a charge to medication that will smooth that out to potentially avoid having a more significant stroke. Now, if you think about it, an Apple Watch for someone my mother is 82 years old, right? She's uncomfortable with how to figure out that technology. She's having trouble answering the phone when I call half the time. So getting the Bluetooth to work, figuring out how to enable that technology for her to help her, she's the one in need. My father had the exact same problem with regard to blood pressure that's a little bit too high. And so being able to make the technology more approachable to people, and then to allow it to provide leading indicators of issues that are more significant, and then being able to get that to a doctor to evaluate it to then potentially address it. I think that is a it is not an unknown need, nor is it an unmet need. It's just one that I think we could accelerate more quickly and probably save a lot of lives and solve a lot of problems for a lot of people. There are a lot of people that the technology that we take for granted really have trouble with it. And not only do they have trouble with it, it they view it as a problem, right? Because they view it as their grandchildren texting or on an iPad at the dinner table, which they think is inappropriate. And so they actually see it as a negative. And so we have to figure out how to change that. And I think there are when they do listen to doctors. So if a doctor were to say, here, you must think about it. If you could prescribe an Apple Watch to someone and say, you need to do this, and here's how it works, and but then they would probably do it.

SPEAKER_01 28:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:07

Because they will follow a doctor's direction because a doctor knows the answers.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Not their own.

SPEAKER_00 28:12

Again, thinking about those kinds of that's just the deployment of a technology that currently exists that is very doable. But then you start to get into the structure, and again, it's way more complex. But can a doctor prescribe an Apple Watch for a patient? It's not reimbursable. If it was reimbursable, they probably could. And what's the incentive to do it? And all those things.

SPEAKER_01 28:32

This is actually Dee's favorite part. What is the wildest, weirdest, or most unforgettable thing that you've actually witnessed at work?

A Corporate Call Turns Into A Fight

SPEAKER_01 28:40

Again, this is anonymous anywhere you've ever worked. Any position you've ever had.

SPEAKER_00 28:46

Even all the stuff I've done, there's a lot of there's a lot of ways to answer that question. I will I will answer you, I will spare you the Peace Corps ones, which are by far the best stories, but I will share with you in the context of my job as an executive, right? In the context of being a lawyer, there were a lot of kind of crazy things that I experienced. I think it's interesting. Last year I had a I had a unique situation where I was I became aware of an issue that happened in Europe. Okay. And I needed to get involved because it implicated potentially some legal issues and some regulatory issues. And so I got involved. And in working through that and learning about it, I realized that I probably needed to directly engage. Not something I normally do as the general counsel or chief compliance officer or whatever. But in this particular case, I felt like the way it was being managed by the people that were handling it, that this needed to be elevated. It had gotten to a certain point where it had gotten heated between the owners of one company and the members of our team. Okay. And so I and I interjected myself and I tried to bring some voice of reason. The individuals of the other company were some folks that owned the company. So we were, it was a dispute between, not dispute, but an issue that involved the two companies. And I remember getting on this call and and the I had engaged outside council to join because it was in Europe. And so there were outside council on the call, there was my team on the call, I was on the call, our local team was on the call, and then a similar group for the other company. And so somehow they had burned enough bridges before I got involved. This was very personal. And so somehow something struck, and the owner of the other company literally started yelling at the person on our team that had been managing our team, and not just yelling at them, but calling them out like high school. It was truly the it was the it was as though I was in high school. And it took me a second. I don't, I'm not usually caught off guard, but I was caught off guard by how emotional and inappropriate and personal this was, right? It was just you don't usually see in a corporate environment people really taking the gloves off. It was basically as emotional and personal as you can get about attacking each other. And I remember thinking to myself, what is happening? Is this really happening? And it took a split second, but I had to take a step back. I was like, What? But I was the most senior person on the call, and so I had to make a do what do I do? It was so crazy. It was like a cat fight, right? And it wasn't two women, by the way. This was a man and a woman, and I was like, What is not happening? And so I was like, I just said the first things that came into my mouth. I was not prepared, so I just I kind of was winging it, and I was like, What are you two doing? What are we in high school here? You're gonna stop talking and you're gonna stop talking. It was like I was talking to my children having a fight, it was that crazy, yeah. And I remember I tried to diffuse it, they actually went back to each other again. It was like I was putting out like stopping a fight, but I was doing it on Teams and it and I did, I got it, turned off, and then I was like, listen, stop, nope, talk, stop talking. And I shut it down and I tried to get it back on track and try to get it and resolve the call, but it was so bad that I got off the phone and the outside council called me, and they were like, I've never seen anything like that. That was insane. What happened? Uh that was so inappropriate, and we were all in shock about how crazy this has been. So I can't really go into detail given the nature of where we are, but to protect the innocent, as it were. But I will tell you, it was a crazy experience that I, as I say, I there I've been a little done a lot of stuff. I'm not sure I've ever seen that before.

SPEAKER_02 32:57

Was it like, let's take this outside? The next time I see you, I'm gonna punch you in the face.

SPEAKER_00 33:01

Yeah, it was three o'clock. It was like so and they uh don't know how to do their job, and this is what they said, and and that you're lying. You're you are a liar. It was like that kind of and in a business context, you just don't you don't see it. It was like something out of the movies, you just don't see it, it does not happen. And 16 years in-house and 10 years before that as a lawyer, I never seen it break down that kind of decorum breaks down and never seen it.

The Peace Corps Root Canal Story

SPEAKER_02 33:34

Wow, and you can't share any stories from the Peace Corps or fitness or sailing lessons.

SPEAKER_00 33:42

Oh, I can share those stories if you want. Yeah, most of them take too long to share, but I would the I will share this. I'll make it as fast as I can, which is this I worked in the Peace Corps with a gentleman, an incredible human being, extremely poor. And he was so poor, he worked, he actually made coffee for Starbucks. So this goes back quite a while. So Starbucks was earlier in the day, but he made coffee, the Antigua blend, for Starbucks, right? And he sold a hundred-pound bags of coffee, okay, for context, a hundred pounds of the quintal in in Guatemala, and he would sell 400 pounds and ten dollars a bag. Okay, so this guy made about $40, $50, $60 a year, okay, for this coffee. He lived in a house that was made out of dried corn stalks with mud on it. Very poor individual. Now, I somehow forgot that I had a couple of bucks in my pocket, but he came to me one day and he's Don Jaime. My name in Spanish in Guatemala was Jaime. Don Jaime, is and he would tell me he's got this toothache. And so I looked in his mouth, he had this really bad breath, and I realized that he had a bad cavity in the back of his mouth. And so rather than giving him two dollars, he would get his tooth pulled. For some reason, I suggested that he come to my house. Oh no. So he rode his horse to my house late in the afternoon, and he he said, What can you do? And I said, I can drill out your tooth and I'll give you a root canal. And so he sat in the hammock on my front porch and I boiled water and I put a Dremel tool in the water and I sterilized it. And then I took a tongue depressor and a headlamp and I gave him a Tylenol codeine and I drilled out his tooth and I did a root canal on the man, and then I packed it with some epoxy, and it was dental epoxy, to be clear. Of course. And I sent him on his way. Now, meanwhile, now it's dark, and he lives on the top of a mountain in his house, which was not really a house, it was corn stalks packed with mud. And I realized, oh my gosh, he's drugged out, he's got a tooth packed with epoxy, he's got to ride a horse in the dark up to the top of a mountain. There's no roads, by the way. You have to go up a creek and then you gotta cut across and blah. And I thought, oh my God, he's gonna fall off the horse and die. And then they're gonna know the last place he was at was me, and they're gonna come after me. So I thought I better go with him. So I jumped on my horse and I rode in the dark with him, falling behind. Now, there are no streetlights in Guatemala in San Carlos Alcetate, which is where I live on a volcano. And so it was pitch black, so I had no idea where I was going. I just followed his horse. And then I realized the third stupid thing I did after the drilling out the tooth and riding up the hill with him. I had to get home. And so I then just spurred my horse and let it go. It was like Jesus take the wheel. And this horse rode all the way back in the dark back to my house. And yeah, I've done dentistry and put it on my resume. Yes, I have done dentistry. I've given a root canal to a gentleman in the hammock.

Ambition Ego And Softer Moves

SPEAKER_01 37:01

Just what's one lesson that you've actually learned the hard way?

SPEAKER_00 37:05

What I've learned the hard way is that the approach that I've taken that has made me successful, however, you define that, when I say successful professionally, but I have achieved a certain level of success. And I have achieved that level of success by getting stuff done. Okay. And by not, I I believe that I can if something, if it needs to be done, I will go over around through or under to get it done. And I just will not let anything stop me. And it's funny because I that's what's that's what has been made me successful as a lawyer, as and as a business executive, everything else. And yet that is also the thing that's the monkey on my back. It's the thing that is also the thing that some people do not like about me, right? The approach of now, I have not left bodies in my wake, but there's a lot of people that think that I did that intentionally, or that I was trying to climb a ladder, or I was trying to, or that I was too harsh or too direct, or too, or that I was arrogant, or that I have a huge ego. By the way, I am arrogant and I do have a big ego. I basically I don't make any bones about that. But I always did that for the right reasons. And I always believed that was that that was the right way to do it. And the lesson I've learned is that had I figured out some other moves sooner, I probably could have been more effective and probably enjoyed it more. That it wouldn't have been so hard. Now, the results are the same, but I I think as I look back at my career, I probably could have been more gentle in how I did it.

SPEAKER_01 38:56

Was there any thoughts about wishing that you would have gone a different route in the route that you're on?

SPEAKER_00 39:03

Great question. Only in passing. I never look back, I only look forward. But yes, I when I left out of the story that that my goal was to be an FBI agent when I went in the Peace Corps. In fact, I came back because the hiring freeze for the FBI came off. And I got a call in Guatemala that the hiring freeze was off and I was in the queue. And I did not do that. When I went to law school, I was approached again by the FBI to go into the FBI. And so I intended to do that. I told you I was gonna go and be a prosecutor, I was gonna go in the U.S. attorney's office. That was my first job. And I wanted to do that, and I wanted to be a trial lawyer and wear the white hat, right? And I did not do that. But I have always looked at those opportunities gone by as one door closing and another door opening. And so I, in fact, just had the conversation with my son recently, who just is graduating from medical school in a matter of weeks, and his career path also changed. One door closed, he thought he was gonna go do this, and another door opened. And so I shared that story with him that I had left those things behind. And I've never really looked back. I don't, I think I would have been good at and if I think I would have been a good FI agenda. I think I would have been a good US attorney or a USA. But I love where I am now. So it's

Not Quitting Trust And Final Goodbye

SPEAKER_00 40:33

okay.

SPEAKER_01 40:33

Yeah. So what keeps you going when the going gets tough?

SPEAKER_00 40:42

I I'm not done, right? I don't quit. So I mentioned that I I played rugby and I played rugby for the first time in college at UCLA. And then I started playing again when I was 39, and I played until I was 49. And what that taught me was that you can't let your team down. You cannot, you can't quit. It doesn't matter how hard it is. Doesn't matter if you're hurting, it doesn't matter if you're tired. And that was something that I just it just it's just become part of who I am. I don't quit. And so I don't, I used to think that I fed off of how hard it was. I'm not sure that's true at my age now. I'm like, wow, it'd really be nice if this wasn't so hard. But I don't shy away from it. And I don't need to be motivated. I just know I'm not gonna quit. So I just don't think about it. When you're going through hell, you gotta go fast.

SPEAKER_01 41:35

Because you seem to show up for others, who shows up for you?

SPEAKER_00 41:42

They do. They do, they show up for me. It's a really interesting, it's a really interesting dynamic. The more that I ask of people, the more they ask of themselves, and the more they the more they achieve, the more that they do. And that it's like a circle, right? It's and it there's a level of trust and engagement and commitment. I feed off of their energy, they feed off my energy. It is that rugby team going down the pitch. It's it's a seamless, beautiful thing when it works.

SPEAKER_01 42:21

And with that, we want to thank you for sharing your story with us and that you've officially joined the ranks of the brave and the bold. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 42:31

Thank you. It was a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

That's it for this week's confession.

SPEAKER_01 42:36

We've laughed, cringed, and maybe questioned our own career choices. Big thanks to our anonymous guests for keeping it real and reminding us that behind every job title is a story worth telling. If you've got a workplace confession of your own over all ears, hit us up at our email address. And don't forget to subscribe, rate, and share. Your support helps us keep the secrets flowing.

SPEAKER_02 42:58

Until next time, keep your badge clipped, your coffee strong, and your stories wild. This is Workplace Confessions Behind Closed Doors.