Larry O'Toole & Rich Reda from Profit Advisory Group

Larry and Rich catch up at The Executive Sales Forum

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:51

Welcome to Flight Path. Today I have my friend Rich here. My name is Larry O'Toole and I'm for I'm the CEO from LJO Advisors and I'm also on the board at uh Bluebird Leaders and I'm here with Rich. Rich, can you tell us a little bit of your background and what you do?

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Sure. I'm Rich Rita. I'm the chief growth officer at Profit Advisory Group. We are a uh full service IT and telecommunications uh cost reduction firm. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 1:15

Now, how long have you been there for?

SPEAKER_01 1:17

I've been with Profit Advisory Group for 14 years, and we've been in business uh for 21 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:22

Excellent. And then how many uh how many customers do you have right now?

SPEAKER_01 1:25

Hundreds of different healthcare systems. Uh like I said, throughout the years we've been in business, we've saved our clients over a billion dollars, and last year we saved them a little over 50 million dollars. So we've got a pretty large um client base in in the healthcare space.

SPEAKER_02 1:40

Excellent. I'm gonna um I'm gonna ask you a few questions as uh icebreaker. So let's see. Let's let's see what you got, right? So um, what's your summer personality? Are you beach? Are you lake? Are you mountains? What do you like to do?

SPEAKER_01 1:54

Beach? Beach and golf course.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

And and where's your favorite beach?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Uh I like to go to Rhode Island. We have some nice beaches up in Rhode Island. We have a small little place up in Rhode Island that we like to go to. It's off the beaten path, so it's uh lot less quiet. I grew up on Long Island and the Long Island beaches are a little bit too crowded right now.

SPEAKER_02 2:08

So my daughter went to URI and she used to be at Nantasket Beach. Is that I'm in Charlestown? I'm in Narragansett's up there.

SPEAKER_01 2:15

I'm I'm a little south. I'm in Charlestown, Green Hill, so just a little south with your eye. Yeah, it's beautiful down there.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

That's absolutely absolutely and um what song it uh what song would be a soundtrack to your leadership journey right now?

SPEAKER_01 2:28

What song? That's a tough question. My leadership. Uh never give up, never give in. That would be my my a song I would like. Excellent. Who sings that? I couldn't tell you, but I like the song. I was in the middle, she drives me crazy, but I guess that's a different topic.

SPEAKER_02 2:47

All right, so I got one for you. This is a tough one. So uh what was your first job and when did you start? My first career, I was a um Oh, your first job?

SPEAKER_01 2:55

My first job was a sales trader, uh or a actually a co-caller uh at a firm in 1986 uh down on Wall Street.

SPEAKER_02 3:02

Excellent. And what did you learn from that job?

SPEAKER_01 3:05

Uh persistence. Uh professional persistence. Professional persistence. It's a number selling was a back then in that day, selling was a numbers game. So I was on Wall Street before I did this, I was on Wall Street for 22 years.

SPEAKER_02 3:18

So wow. Uh I know persistence. You certainly do at that point. So um you've been involved with uh Bluebird leaders for a while now. So can you tell us why, you know, what you what you love about the organization and and what made you kind of gravitate toward Bluebird leaders in the first place?

SPEAKER_01 3:34

People. I I only do I as I've gotten older, I only work with and associate with people I like and trust. Uh life's too short. And uh the people I've met in the in this organization, you know, and with Rebecca and her team, uh that's why I work that's why I participate. It's the people I trust excellent.

SPEAKER_02 3:52

Yeah. Now you said you're a chief growth officer, right? So um as a chief growth officer with a lot of experience, and you know, today we're doing a sales forum, um, what would you what would you impart on somebody who's a brand new salesperson in this industry, which is very difficult. What would be you know something that you'd give to advice? What do you do with your own folks when you have somebody new?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

I I I it it's patience. Healthcare and it's a it's the long game. It's really and and we generally and we preach that at our firm. We have most of our employees stay with us for a long time, and we say that's figure out the use that that time frame with us and get build relationships because it takes time. The sales cycle over the last 14 years since I has just gotten longer. So it's just be patient, be persistent, um, and solve a problem that they have. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:44

And and what is the uh I guess if you had to pick like your favorite part of the job, would that what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 4:51

I like interacting with people. I just I I as I've gotten older, I only associate with people I like, and this is this gives me the the ability to associate with a lot of different people, and most of the people that I've associated with in this space are good people. So I I think that's been the best, that's a really good site for me, is uh working with really good people.

SPEAKER_02 5:10

And and if I was to, you know, I'm not gonna say you you hate this part of it, but if there's always something that is the best part of your job, and there's always something that you don't like about your job, I mean, what would that be?

SPEAKER_01 5:21

Um I think the hardest thing is the hardest thing is getting people to to uh open the door a little bit. Like we're here to help. It's not we're not here to uh do anything but help your organization find savings so you can run a better healthcare organization. So it's it's getting people to understand that. Like we're here to be on your team, we're here to be your friend, not not someone that's here to make anyone look better or sell anything. It's we we want to be your partner and your friend. So if you open up the door a little bit, we we think we can fill that void.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

Excellent. Now, um, when you're outside of work, let's move on to your personal side there. So, what would you what what do you do to unwind on a regular date? It's Friday night, you're done work all week, you're ready to move on. What are you gonna do?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

Hang out with my grandson.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Oh, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 6:07

He lives uh about a quarter of a mile away, and for his first year of life as healthcare costs, as we all know, are a lot. Um, funny little stories, my daughter needed me to what take uh a day off every every week to watch him every Friday. Oh wow. But I actually made her call. My brother's the founder of the company, so she had to call her uncle to make sure that her that her father could take a day off to watch his grandson. But my favorite thing is to spend time with uh family and especially my grandson.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

Excellent. And um if what's one non-negotiable in your self-care routine? So every day you have to do it no matter what, no, no compromise whatsoever.

SPEAKER_01 6:47

Enjoy some aspect of the day. I have to find something that I like. And I try to st I try to find one part of the day that was a good day. I love that. And focus on that.

SPEAKER_02 7:00

That's fantastic. All right. I'm gonna hit you with a few um rapid fire ones here because they're kind of funny, right? So this is summer rapid fire questions. Okay, right.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

I'll do my best. All right, coffee or tea? Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon. Love it. I'm the same way. Bam. Alright, sunrise, sunset. Sunset. Why? Uh I don't like getting up early. And it's just it looks nicer when the when the sun is setting than when it's rising for me. All right. Last thing you've binge watched. Binge watched? Um, we are watching, oh god, what are we watching? Um The Pit. Oh, The Pit. Yeah, we're why we're not, we're probably watching three or four episodes. We're late to the I know it's been out for a while, but we're we're binge watching uh The Pit.

SPEAKER_02 7:41

It's on my list. I haven't done it. It's really good, really good. Okay, really good. Do you who do you watch it with?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

My wife. Oh, good.

SPEAKER_02 7:46

I guess that's good tips. I'm trying to find something that I can actually watch with my wife.

SPEAKER_01 7:50

Yeah, no, we we go back with some of those and uh we we usually meet in the middle somewhere. Oh, that's awesome. I love that. So we're doing the pit. All right, window or seat or aisle seat on the plane. Oh wow, aisle seat. Yeah, this body does not go in the window.

SPEAKER_02 8:03

I seriously don't think we've found anyone yet, at least in the interview process, that actually picked a window yet. But we'll find somebody with the window. Usually it's gonna be somebody who likes sleeping, right? All right, one word that describes your leadership style. If you had a good one word. What do I try for leadership?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Uh teamwork. I love it. Okay. Favorite vacation you ever taken? My favorite vacation ever taken? Um my family trips doesn't matter where we go. We've had trips out west skiing, we've had trips uh to um the islands, you know, summer, but I would say family vacations and uh not to and I say one other thing would be my eldest son took me to Italy to say thank you. We did Italy and Ireland for 10 days, and it was just thanks for all you've done. Leave your wallet at the door.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

All right, I'm gonna definitely send this to my son uh just so he could know. We'll make sure that he hears all of that, and uh, and then I have to have him introduced to your son to give him a little bit of guidance there. So um I would say one last thing is um what if you had to leave uh one statement to somebody who has not joined Bluebird Leaders or even understand, you know, haven't been you know introduced to it at all, what would you tell them um to get them excited to join?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

The people. I only uh as I've gotten older, I'll say it, I'm almost 62. It's all about the people. I don't do business with people I don't like that I don't trust. And the people I work with at Bluebirds, I I like them all and I trust them all. So um if you can't trust them, don't work with them. Excellent.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

Well, thank you for uh for your time today. Appreciate it. Good to get to know you a little bit more. Awesome.