From Law to Media Entrepreneur: How Scott Becker Shaped Healthcare Thought Leadership

Stewart Gandolf

Hey everybody, welcome. Today I am welcoming an esteemed colleague, friend, that I’ve known for quite a while. And Scott Becker, those of you that read all the various Becker’s publications have been to a conference or know through Maguire Woods.

Scott, you’re awesome. It’s fun to have you on. Welcome.

Scott Becker

We are so thrilled to be with you today. know, I don’t want it over disclosed because it’s so embarrassing. We try and project a certain professional image, but as you know, I had a flat tire today. So we’re recording from the repair shop. So hopefully the audio and visual. And everything else goes well enough. And I’ll try. anybody too crazy. That’s here as well.

But Stewart, thank you so much for having me.

I greatly appreciate it. really appreciate your camaraderie over the years and your instincts and your thoughts and just great to visit with you. Thank you so much.

Stewart Gandolf

It’s great. And I love, we talked offline why before we started this, I love that you’re in a record or in a tire repair store.

It’s like, I’ve done this same sort of thing. We’re busy guys, life intercedes. We didn’t expect the flat tire.

So that makes it more fun. Scott, I got to take a bite before I get into this. Similarly, one day we were my kids when they were younger, we were on our way up to one of those Comic Con things was like, I forget what it’s called, but it was like Comic Con. So they were all dressed up in their costumes in their gear.

And same thing, we got a flat tire. went to American Tire. took a picture of them in their costumes next to the tires.

And there’s tens of thousands of views from that post from the American Tire. It’s such a, you know, odd thing to have these kids dressed up in these characters next to a rack of tires.

Scott Becker

It’s just life. It’s life. It is what it is.

Stewart Gandolf

No, totally. I think it’s fun when it’s just not quite so sanitized. We’re all humans. We all have stuff we have to do with flat tires.

Do you want to do that? So, today, you know, what I was, I’ve, you know, I’ve known you for quite a while and we’ve sort of followed the stuff you’ve been doing.

And as I mentioned to you offline, you know, I remember years ago, when you were first getting started with some of the things that you’re doing.

Somebody called me and said, hey, Scott Becker, we’re working with Becker as an aggregate, which of the entities it was.

But I thought it’d be fun today to talk about, you know, I guess, first of all, for the very two people on the podcast, you don’t know you about, you know, your law practice and where you started.

And I’d like to eventually get into the sort of marketing and origin story because I think it’s fascinating. And I don’t think most people know about it.

And I don’t know about it, obviously, anywhere near as well as you do. So, let’s start off with, you know what you are focused on in McGuire Woods and your background, and then we can kind of get into the marketing stuff.

Scott Becker

Sure, sure. No, so I have had two core careers over the last 30 plus years. I’ve straddled them both. I’m a partner at McGuire Woods, is a large law firm, one of the largest 30 in the world or so. Terrific colleagues, terrific place for a very long time at McGuire Woods, 15 years. I ran the health care department, which is a great department with great colleagues, you know, by background, serving hospitals and health systems, surgeries, there are surgeries of health entrepreneurs over the last 10 years or so. A lot of investors in health care, private equity funds and so forth and so on. that’s sort of McGuire Woods in the law side.

Side by side with McGuire Woods in the law side, 30 plus years ago, I started a health care media company. And it’s not like very different today than what it was then that media company is called Becker’s Healthcare and really four or five verticals. The first area we were in to start with 30 plus years ago was in surgery centers and surgery center chains, then about 20 plus years ago, we expanded into hospitals and health systems and orthopedic and spine.

Now we’re in several different areas, but the two biggest areas are hospitals and health systems, and health IT and things related to health IT and technology and digital health.

We’ve also got some of the older lines that are in part of the company, surgery centers, surgery center chains, orthopedics and spine and a whole lot of other areas as well today but both of them go back now 30 plus years ago.

And the origin story was I was a young, young lawyer in my late 20s and trying to build a practice and started doing what people would think of today as thought leadership, just trying to present myself as someone who knew about at that time originally the surgery center industry was just a surgery center industry but ended up doubling down on the surgery center industry and about 5-10 years into starting a newsletter in a conference, some other things in the surgery center industry and calling it Becker’s ASE at the time or Becker’s surgery center conference, you know, it became clear that what we were doing in that space, more than just leadership to build a law practice, was a really interesting way to engage with and develop and be part of a community in healthcare.

And at that point, probably goes back 22-24 years ago, we started at Becker’s healthcare. At that Point Becker Surgery Center to hire people full time into the business, the writing, the events and started to build a real company and a real team beyond sort of thought leadership, or trying to become, you know, a rainmaker as a lawyer, or become deeper in law, really, really parallel, started to truly build a media company within the healthcare space and that’s been just great, great fun has given me a chance to meet with tremendous numbers of people and really stay connected to the healthcare environment, you know. And on top of that we’ve built a great team there. There are a hundred full-time people that work at Becker’s healthcare.

The CEO partner, Jessica Cole, really runs the entire enterprise. Today I serve on the Board and Service Chief Content Officer. She’s the CEO and President, and she joined me literally 20 something years ago, when she was of, you know, a senior in college, literally and just became a tremendous leader. And it I was running a legal practice.

She was largely running this business and really just has done an amazing job of growing it and developing it and growing a team in a whole lot more, Stuart. Let me turn it back to you, so I don’t just keep on talking and talking. Let me turn it back to you.

Stewart Gandolf

I love it. No, it’s so funny, because the I didn’t realize that you’ve been doing it for 30 years. So, I 1st became aware of you when you formalized about 20 years ago. So, I started our agency in 2006. And so, it sounds like right about then is when you were formalizing it, because I remember somebody on your team reached out to us about content because we were creating. You know, we’ve created content, too.

And so, I think it’s amazing that it goes back even further. And I, you know, I don’t think we’ve ever talked about the origin story in any detail, but that was my assumption that it was initially to build the law practice. And what a great idea that 30 years ago that was hugely groundbreaking. Let’s talk so, did you? Was that your own model? You just sort of plan that out, or were you inspired by anybody? How did you come up with the idea?

Scott Becker

Yeah, no, that’s it’s a great, great question.

There were a few things that inspired me. I mean, I would say there are 3 different things, or at least, and I’ll try and just walk through them pretty quickly. First, there was a partner in the law firm, a guy named Bob Pristave, who had built a niche practice at that point in the dialysis industry.

And I bought into the concept of trying to build a niche legal practice. And for me, it was in. We’re trying a few different areas. But the area that picked up steam was the surgery center area. And this was literally 30 plus years ago, but both independent surgery centers as well change the surgery centers back in the day, it was physicians investing in surgery centers all kinds of stuff surgery center centric. So, building a niche practice. And that came out of a lot of following the leadership of Bob Pristave.

In terms of the writing, the speaking, the trying to develop a brand in it. I would say that a lot of that came naturally versus from anybody else, sort of as specific guidance, but it became, you know, something I enjoy doing like. I enjoy the writing. I enjoy the speaking.

The two favorite things I enjoy today more than anything else, are the sort of short newsletter I produce in the mornings as well as the podcasting. I do, and the writing. So, I enjoyed it, and I had. I had always been very. I’d been one of these kids who, as a kid, was always starting businesses. So, when I was in the practice of law, the practice of law. You had to be a great lawyer, but you also had to be a business builder, and so I thought of it as multifaceted, not just one or the other, so I would say it was sort of Bob’s guidance to be niche centric in the law practice, and then I would say it was my own sort of mix of instincts in terms of really trying to build a practice. And I would say. The third thing that goes back to is, when I 1st started my legal career it was at a mega, mega firm and the firm I’m at now McGuire Woods, where I’ve been at for 30 years now, is grown into, you know, a billion dollar firm, a very large firm. But at the time when I was first getting going in law.

I was at a it was. This was in 1989 or so. This is a long time ago not to date myself too much. But back in the day law firms were very, very dog -at-dog places, and those lawyers that had clients were in good shape. Those that did not have their own clients were treated like dogs were treated like literally could be. Friday night. You could be a 50 year old lawyer, and somebody tells you you got to be here all week and do a weekend doing this, and of course you got paid very well, and so you did whatever you had to do. But it was no way to live as what was called a service partner. It was just a it was a brutal environment back then for service partners, so I’d say, beyond sort of the natural marketing instincts beyond watching, Bob built a knicks practice. I was very intent on being what’s what’s thought of is somebody that brings in clients and controls their client base, just because I never wanted to treat anybody poorly. But I didn’t want to be treated like that. It’s like I want to have control of my life, you know, similar probably to the instincts that caused you to at some point build your own firm, you at least have freedom. You have control over your life. You have some autonomy which was the only way to do that in a big law firm back in the day, particularly was to have your own client base. And so, I was very intentional about trying to build a client base, and this being solely in healthcare and an interest in healthcare, became my vehicle for doing so.

Stewart Gandolf

I can’t believe that is so funny. And I knew when I asked you to do this, we’d have so much in common and stuff we never got around to talking about. So, what you just mentioned there, I’m going to back up and talk about my background just for a second is so funny. There was a guy when I worked at J. Walter Thompson, which is a big agency, and you know, and it’s it’s like, was the big show when I was 28 years old, to work at this place wasn’t fun at all, was really political, and there was a guy on the client side named Paul. I won’t use his last name, who was just treated like dirt by his own client team, and internally in the agency, and I thought, I never want to be in a position where I have a job, where people can push me around when I’m 50 and treat me like I’m an idiot. It was exactly the same thing like, I can’t bring myself to do that, and that’s when I became much more of an entrepreneur. And then the second part of this. So that guy I still talk about my wife has heard this story like, I don’t want to be that guy like, or I just have somebody treating me like dirt when I’m in my fifties. I can’t bring myself to do that. And then the second part of it was, I stumbled into the sort of thought leadership thing accidentally and on purpose. And so when I first, I was well, I left J. Walter, I did some other stuff and I was recruited to work for this little company that was working with doctors in the day. And that’s back when the ASCS that you’re working on were becoming big deal. So this is like in the nineties. And so the and so I was a speaker. I’d never spoken publicly in my life, and I took this job where I had to speak in front of, you know at first workshop groups in the big audience and I liked it, and I was good at it. And the funny thing is, Scott, it played to my strength, and people trusted me and hired us, and I was just being me, and I was educating. And when I started this company I didn’t even recognize that I had a reputation. I never thought about building my own business. I was doing it for this other company, but I had a reputation, and so I leaned into the thought leadership. You know we did a column for dental economics. I sold audio CDs and medical economics. You know, we started. We’ve been doing our own seminars periodically. The blog. We started our blog on the very first day. So anyway, it’s just the commonalities are amazing. I love it

Scott Becker

No, it’s fascinating, for people don’t know, because we’re probably from around the same generation. J. Walter Thompson Ogilvy, on advertising Ogilvy Leo Burnett. These were huge, huge names in the agency world. Back in the day. Now so many of them have consolidated and merged into the other firms and so forth. But it’s exactly. They’re very similar professional environments. And it was a different world in terms of how people were treated and so forth and so on.

And, like you have the example of Paul. There’s an example of a Terry and a Robin and some other people that were these great lawyers. But we’re really at the, at the whim of the partners that had business and just didn’t want to be in that situation. And so that was a lot of the motivation and drive. You talk about the speaking and the writing, and so forth, and things that you and I both enjoy, and part of what happened is, when I was trying to build a reputation and build a brand, I would try and get on the agenda to speak at other conferences, and of course, they were all tied up, and so no one would allow me to speak, or very little. I’d have to beg for speaking engagements, and that’s when we started our own conferences and so forth as well, because we just couldn’t get access to being in front of the audience, being in front of people being in front of potential clients and growing a practice. So, we ended up starting ultimately our own conference in the Surgery Center business and then, later on, conferences in the hospital and health system, business, and so forth, and so on.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s amazing. It’s so funny because we did our own seminars. I figured out I’ve spoken at a couple of 100 seminars we did over the years, and like we did those for a while, they’re like every other weekend we were doing seminars. And it’s it’s fun. Let me ask you this like the benefit. Have you noticed this? When people see you speak, or they’ve been following you for a long time? Do they feel like they already know you, because I bet you feel that you know following you. It’s like they listen to you. They know you. And do you ever meet people like that, because that’s always a lot of fun. I bet

Scott Becker

Yeah, no, I would say so. I mean, there’s different things that happen over the years, you know, and we try not to take them too seriously, or take them one way or the other. But like I was in a restaurant one time, and I’ve got a bit of a distinctive speaking voice, because it just just how I speak. It’s a guy sitting a couple of seats away from me, and he’s in from out of town, and he recognizes me because him and I have been on the phone for podcasts and stuff like that, you have those kinds of things. The other thing that happens is, when for a period of time I looked a decent amount, younger than my age, and I’m getting to the point where it’s no longer the case so sadly. But, but we would have I would have people that every once in a while to ask me. You know, did your father, or did your grandpa, who started Becker’s healthcare, and that was always fun for me. There’s small ego moments that you can’t help yourself, but enjoy, but it is what it is, and you try not to take too much out of them. But some of those things are, of course, they’re very touching when you get comments like that when people you know recognize you, or know you, or whatever. And it’s a great, it’s a great pleasure, you know. Not in a million years did I think that we’d be in a spot where more people know me than I thought they would. And it’s it’s all good, you know. It’s like we do. We’re like, you know, like all of us, all of us are tremendously flawed people, and we have some things that we do well, some things we do poorly, and it’s life.

Stewart Gandolf

So it’s so funny again on that comment. So I often joke with people on the marketing stuff like, Look, I’m horrible at basketball. I’m horrible a lot of this one thing. I’m good at a lot of things, and it’s like, and people seem to appreciate that I have another question for you that this see if this is parallel for you as well. So, by the way, if my mom were still alive, she’d say, you really should have been an attorney, and it’s like that’s the one thing that’s always fun for me. And the one thing about law I know you probably argue. There’s good lawyers and bad lawyers, but you at least have to have a license in marketing. Anybody consider a marketer right? Anybody can. So the for us, the thought leadership has been really helpful from a competitive standpoint, to help us to stand out as differentiating. Because and we you have to be the real deal, too. You can’t just jump on a box and start talking. You have to actually know what you’re talking about.

But I mean, law is super competitive even at the level you guys are playing, which is the highest level in healthcare. You’re like one of the leaders. But do you feel like beyond the fact that you’re getting inquiries. Do you feel like that’s been a big help to you over the years, just in terms of the credibility and helping you win the business that you want to

Scott Becker

Yeah, I think yes and no. I think I think, certainly from a credibility standpoint. But what I what I, what we talk about internally, a lot in the law firm over the years is you could have all the mass media you want to have. But at the end of the day business is still done, person to person, client to client, and so forth, and so on, so I could do all the mass marketing I want, and all the mass media that we’ve done, and have a company, with my name on it. But at the end of the day for people to trust you as the marketing advisor, for people to trust me as their lawyer or their legal advisor, their business advisor, they have to know you and feel like you’re connected to them in a very real way. So, it certainly helps. But there’s, you know, at the end of the day it’s hand-to-hand combat to really build a practice. It’s one-to-one. It’s really getting great clients taking care of great clients and growing with those clients, and that, of course, serves as references for other clients. So, I’d say the I view the marketing, and we talk about this regularly to sales versus marketing. Marketing, we view, is sort of air support. But at the end of the day, you know, and again, the military cliches in a world where there’s real military conflict are so annoying. I get that. But the end of the day, one on one contact. And when I was really building a practice, it was on the phone, one-to-one. It was talking to people, one-to-one. It was every Tuesday morning, emailing the top 20 people I was working with. It was regularly grouping meetings, you know it very much is a very, you know, relationship driven business to go with the air support or the media. And I think you know great organizations have both. But you can never forget that at the end of the day somebody hires Stewart Gandalf to really help them think through and grow and execute. Somebody hired us back in the day, or still does the firm to really take care of what they, what their needs are. Their deal needs are whatever they’re trying to do. And and that’s very, that’s very hands on. I mean, it’s really a still people centric thing

Stewart Gandolf

So it’s so funny. Again. My team would laugh when they listen to this. I actually use the same metaphor about ground troops in air war. And I talk about. And I actually have you just posted something of that in your newsletter recently, and you did it again about another 3 months ago, and I put it on LinkedIn. I quoted you with the whole idea of marketing and sales the difference, and you need both. And you know we get people that reach out to us all the time that are hoping, you know, especially B2B, when they’re doing B2B, and they want to go out and get to influence doctors. I’m like you do have salespeople right? Because, like the stuff we do is not going to do it for you. We’re going to help provide air war. But you need ground troops, and you’d be surprised how many people really naively think that just the marketing is people just going to start calling you, which you know, that’ll happen. But to leverage all that effort is amazing. So I love that. And actually, that leads me to my next question with you. So you know you’ve got the chops from being, you know, a leading respected lawyer. Right? You’ve got that you’ve you now have respect as you know, sort of a healthcare publisher. But you’re taught these days. You’re talking a lot about business, and so I’d love to learn. Have you learned all these? You know that wasn’t even go to business school, I presume, or if you did, it was been a long time ago. But you’re learning about businesses, from learning from your clients and insights like you’re bringing great stuff on your sort of summary. And I I hear this business stuff which isn’t really law. It’s not really healthcare, like, how are you getting those insights? Because I think they’re great.

Scott Becker
Sure. No, it’s a great, it’s a great question. So I was just by background, aside from law school, I’m a CPA. And a finance guy as an undergraduate, so did a double business. Major was always interested in business. I’ve always been interested in business. I viewed the law as a profession and a business. We’re in the media and healthcare world and the business of media and healthcare. So, I’ve always viewed things through a business lens, and if sort of then, you know, spent a ton of time over the years reading on business, and so forth, to almost to the point of ad nauseum where it stresses me out, because I always think I should be doing more when I’m reading about business and stuff like that. So I’ve always been business centric, I think what I would say is, and your point is so well taken, probably 5 to 10 years ago we tried to sort of broaden my brand from being viewed as a healthcare person to being viewed as both a healthcare and a businessperson and I would think that’s probably part of the effort, and I just enjoy it. You know. I mean, you could have spent 30 years in the healthcare world. I continue to live in the healthcare world but have tried to broaden the brand beyond healthcare to business as well. And it’s a constant working process. And I wrote a book about business things, and we try and say, that’s really a business book, not a healthcare book, and we try and still stay very engaged. We serve on a couple boards of directors. I serve on a big not-for-profit board, and we find those things very, very interesting, and we just find it to be just part of lifelong learning versus anything else, and we find it. We find it to be great fun. I mean, I’m always like, you know, whatever age I am. I’m still trying to figure out what I do for the next 10 years. And so we try and make sure that we’re engaged and busy and thinking and learning and and connecting with people.

Stewart Gandolf

That’s great. And so another thing comes up a lot for because, you know, this whole thought leadership thing is fun for me. And you, obviously, and I would say I’d love to get your insight on this. So when people look at what I do and what you do, it looks pretty easy, I think, from the outside. And it’s like, Okay, I have a 20 year head start on you like, we can start these tactics today. But you know, or 30 year head start on you actually, as it turns out, just like you do. What do you ever have people that ask you and or talk to you about these things like about thought leadership? Or have you found that they, you know, underestimated or overestimated? Or does this even come up. It may not come up as much in the world as it does mine.

Scott Becker

Yeah. So what happens is, it’s a great question. So over the years when I was, I mean, I’ve been at the law firm forever now, and for a very long period of time was leading parts of the law firm served on our board, and so forth, and so I was regularly, having discussions with younger lawyers about building a practice or building a business, and then, you know, and still have regular, regular calls with people, you know, almost daily with somebody calling about some kind of discussion, or they want me to talk to their colleague or their son, or their daughter about business, or whatever it might be. And so what I was used to say about in the law business was multiple, different things. But I would say so of all the people that would come to talk to me, you would have a handful of those people that would really pursue it that would really continue on and try and build practices, and if they tried to build practices, and they really put the effort into it one way or another, most of them ended up being really successful in doing so, and many of those are really successful partners at the law firm today who have eclipse my own success and so forth. But for every 5 that really went after it. 40 probably didn’t. The other thing that I’ll tell you is when you’re first, when you’re if you’re at a place like J. Walter Thompson. And you could, you could understand this completely. You ultimately have at some point in your career almost 2 full-time jobs. You’re serving clients of J. Walter Thompson, plus, you’re building your own client base, and at the end of the day there’s almost no way around it. There’s a period of time in life where those are almost like 2 full-time jobs. And you’re just sort of doing both. You’re both taking care of clients and building a client base. The other thing that we talk about often is, where I’ll go down 2 different threads very quickly is one of the keys in any business is building great teams as you start to build that team to take care of clients where you could leverage the team some. Then you’ve got more freedom to be building the business, too. So you’re doing both side by side, but they become a little bit easier if you start to have a team, taking care of a lot of the things for the daily client work that needs to be taken care of. As long as you’re hiring fantastic people, and they don’t require tremendous amounts of management. You’re hiring great people. So so you’re building teams, and that makes it easier as well. And and then then we we do talk often about, you know niches and customer centric because you don’t want to be. You want to really be taking care of customers wherever business you’re in. Really? Well, so you don’t have to keep on repeating the cycle of customer acquisition. So there’s a lot of things we think about. But at the end of the day we talk about it being, you know, it’s a full time job building, a professional practice, a professional reputation, a business, and then taking care of the clients, you end up different periods of time, straddling a couple full-time jobs in a way.

Stewart Gandolf

No, for sure, and I think there’s so much to unpack there. We’ll have to have dinner and talk about this stuff in more detail sometime, because the looking at that, the amount of energy it takes, I would say, on the thought leadership side number one, you have to like it, and I think there’s some natural skill at it like I had no idea I could speak until I had to. Fun. Fact, my 1st speech I had to do wasn’t for an hour, Scott. It was for 3 days, and I never spoken publicly in my life, and now I had to keep an audience for 3 days, and I got locked. The elevator stopped and locked me on the way to my speech.

Scott Becker

That’s wild!

Stewart Gandolf

And so, and I got through it, though, because I knew my material, and it’s like, Wait, I can do this, and I had, and at the time I was taking some challenges and some risk, and was like, I’m just gonna go do this so that I’m jumping without a net. I’ll figure it out. But it all worked out. But there’s so that that I think there’s a little bit of a talent, but there’s certainly a drive, and you just have to keep going. And that’s what the point I was making that we, you know, since day one we’ve been, we’ve only we’ve had content going out, you know, every week, at least, with a very brief break during Covid, because that other issues would drop. We pause for a couple of weeks. But the it’s a commitment thing. I think you really have to be good at it. And the other part you just brought up about the 2 full-time jobs. And you know, philosophically, it’s exactly that. Like we work. I work on both sides. I love the client side, but I still keep the content side going. Because that just is the elixir that solves so many problems because of that thought leadership. We’re not, you know, panicking over getting new clients, because clients come to us and we want to take care of them. And I guess the question that you know that you I’d like to lean into as we get close to wrapping up. Here is the you just brought up. There was something it’s really hard that hasn’t always been easy for me is hiring the right people, and you’ve had to, you know, doing a law practice as well as starting a business. Any tips for us, because that’s a lot what you’re doing, running such different businesses like, hiring right or met time, management, or anything like that. Because, help me, please. I’m still learning this stuff. That’s for sure.

Scott Becker

Yeah, no, we always think about hiring. As you know, the the thing that I, the number one lesson I would take about hiring is, is the uncertainty of it, and embrace the uncertainty of it so, and what I mean by that is it’s always an educated guess. I try and start with criteria, whether it’s grades, scores, people staying at the same job having professional references. There’s smart enough. There’s personable skills, personal skills. There’s drive.

But what I’ve seen throughout my career is the following, and this is why I think of it as an educated guess, and you can’t over or underestimate too quickly. I’ve seen so many times where people came into a law firm, or a media company, or any business, and somebody had already decided those people were the next perfect fits, the next perfect people for the firm or the media company, and and as often as not those people would work out or not work out. I’ve also seen time and time again people come in where people underestimated them, because, even though they might add great credentials or great grades or great work ethic. They were high motor people, but not necessarily big out out in front of you. Personalities. So so people underestimated and so many of those people that were. You know, the lesson I take away from all this stuff is you don’t really know what you have in people until they’ve worked with you for some time. So, when you prejudge that person is going to be a star, that person’s going to suck as often as not, you’re going to be making an error, and so we try not to prejudge too quickly.

We hire people. We understand. It’s an educated guess, and we have to figure it out over time, and some of your best people weren’t great in their 1st job at the company, but they’re great in the next job. It’s you can’t prejudge too quickly who you’re hiring and how great they’re going to be. So that sort of is one. The second thing that I try and be very clear with our managers about is it’s very easy for managers to get gun shy about hiring if they’ve had bad luck with a couple hires, and this is something we want them to absolutely avoid getting into that mindset. We view every hire in some jobs. Hiring is easier, and I don’t want to simplify too much. But if I’m hiring a technical job, often people have the technical chops or they don’t, and then they have the drive to keep on doing it, and the diligence, or they don’t. There are other types of jobs. Sales is a perfect example of this right? Say, the hit rate on a technical job might be 70%.

The hit rate on hiring a salesperson might be 30%. And that’s not because but just the nature of the job is different. They require different kinds of skills and more intangible, more subjective, more other things until they get going. And then they’re very numbers driven. But certain types of jobs are much easier to fill a spot with. Others, you’re going to go through more people to get the right people easier to hire a technical person than a great manager, and you often don’t know what you have until you have people for a while. So we’re big on not prejudging. We’re big on our managers not getting scared. We don’t want them making a ton of bad mistakes on hiring, but we absolutely worse than that, is getting scared to hire, because then you could never grow and build the next team if it was like, if I was going to give you one more thought. and this is something I’d read a hundred years ago from business. Author used to read a lot, Guy, Jeff Fox, or so, you know, when I was younger building practices, you know, and he was. He had this concept that you want to avoid. And his his phrase was, I think, sevens higher fives, and what you want to always encourage people to do is hire people that are as smart or smarter than you as good or better than you, you know, and I often talk about in Stewart. I’ll go on for one more minute, I promise I’ll shut up in a second.

Stewart Gandolf

We’re good. We’re good.

Scott Becker

But we talk of the evolution of a founder in 3 phases, and this goes to that point. A founder 1st is doing everything, you know, like, when I was 1st building Becker’s Healthcare, I was doing the agendas. I was running the conferences, talking to the hotel, doing everything. Then you go to the next stage, and it’s the same in any business. You go to the next stage, and you start to hire a lot of people. And those people aren’t necessarily better than you, but they’re still allowing you to leverage somewhat. So, you go from 0 to 2 x just because you’re getting some leverage.

That’s the second stage of being a founder. The 3rd stage of being a founder is, everybody you’ve hired for a different director role is better at that role than you are, and that’s not false humility. But you get an editor in chief who’s better than you’d ever be. As editor in chief. You get a person who’s running the sales side, who’s better than you’d ever be on the sales side.

You get somebody who’s running agendas. Yes, they’re going to take your input, but they could do it better than you can. And that’s when a company could go from 0 to 2 x to 10x, you know, to use phrase of the day type things because you’ve gone to this evolution to now you’ve hired people that are all better than yourself, and one of the errors we still see people making. I just saw it in another organization I’m involved in is the lead of something. Hire somebody who he doesn’t feel threatened by. And this is no, you don’t want to be threatened by your employees, but you better be willing to hire great great employees, great great teammates, because that’s how you really create systemic great organizations. And and so bear with me. I hope that’s helpful. But that’s how I view the evolution of a founder.

Stewart Gandolf
No, I’m eating this up. I’m eating this up. I love. I appreciate the extra time we’re spending. I wanna so that leads me to another question then, because this was something that was sort of a back pocket question I had for you. But I think you just let me right into it, which is all right. So you’re dealing with, you know, presumably pretty big companies a lot of times when you’re in the law chair. How many? And you’re being engaged when you’re doing the lawyer side of it to be the lawyer, do you?

How often does the business stuff come up where it’s just like, Okay, we can talk about this. But like, this is something I just want to talk to you about. Does that ever come up for? You cause all that insight in the on the business side of it. When you’re making a business decision versus a legal decision, I’m assuming that’s that comes up pretty regularly for you.

Scott Becker

Yeah, it’s a great question. So I don’t practice law at the level I did at one time where you’re in the middle of everything. But but I’ll tell you what, what I where over the years, what what you find is, you have different kind of clients, and I’m sure it’s very much the same with you that value you in different ways. So so some clients, you are wholly they’re business, trusted advisor like I served on a couple of clients, boards forever where they valued both what we’re doing on the legal side and executing and on the business side, and and certainly some of my partners, Holly Buckley. Jennifer Walsh, Jeff Cocko, Bart Walker. People value them both for the legal and the ability to think and understand business, and the business are in, and a lot more than that, just naming a couple names very quickly. And then you have other clients that very much. I remember a client, really, really bright client from a huge organization. You know, and when I was younger I might have been more impulsive and injected my business judgment, and the client was very clear.

You’re not here for your business judgment. You’re here because we need you to get this stuff done, and the last thing I want is you in a meeting injecting your business judgment that might in some ways be different than my business judgment. And I’m the client. You’re the agent, and and it’s and it wasn’t. It was he was right, he wasn’t wrong. He was right, and different clients work with you in different ways, and you know, we always say to people in organizations, in some situations you’re a 1. In some situations you’re a 2 and and meaning in some situations. You’re the leader of the project in other situations. You’re a part of the project and teammate in the project, and you have to be able to live in different roles.

So, like I’m an operator. In some places I serve as a board or an advisor in other places, and my job might be to give some advice, but I can’t go too far on it, because I don’t want to go back into the shoes of that person that’s running it, and so I could give advice, but they ultimately have to make the final decisions of where we’re going. So, I think it just depends a lot situationally on where you’re at, and and what you’re, you know. And obviously there’s other clients that treat you just like a vendor. And that’s not very fun, as you know, you know, but but at the end of the day, you know. But at the end of the day you understand where you sort of wanted to. We’re there for this purpose or we’re there, and they want your business judgment or advice in a different ways. It just depends on the client. Of course you develop deeper and close relationships with those clients that want to work with you holistically. But you really appreciate the others as well.

Stewart Gandolf

Very good. Thank you, Scott. This has been fantastic. I know that. Any events excuse me. Any events coming up, or you know I can put any whatever links you want in this, in the description.

Scott Becker

Sure.

Stewart Gandolf

You’ll want more for your newsletters or events, or anything you want.

Scott Becker

No, no, we’ve got 2 big events coming up. We’ve got the Beckers Healthcare Annual meeting coming up the end of April. We have the McGuire Woods Healthcare, Private Equity Conference coming up in May, both big events. But whatever is great and we’re very excited for all of them.

Stewart Gandolf

So I’ve had a pleasure to participate in the McGuire Woods Conference forever, and we’re actually going to be participating in some of your conferences this year at least one and looking forward to the Beckers side of it as well. So, I’ll see you in Chicago at least one of those, maybe a couple of those pretty soon. Scott, this was fantastic. I knew it would be fun, and I thought the origin story would be. You know, I don’t know if you get a chance to talk about that as much, and it’s like to be. The star of that story is always fun. So you did as I knew you would. It was an awesome discussion. So, thank you for your time.

Scott Becker

Oh, my goodness, thank you so much for having me on! What a great pleasure! Thank you, Stewart.

Stewart Gandolf

Good deal.

Scott Becker

Thank you, sir.