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Becker Private Equity & Business Podcast
Strategic Pete Takeover: Scott Becker on Legacy, Leadership, and Building Becker’s 5-1-25
00:51:54
In this special takeover episode, filmmaker and marketing mind Peter Murphy Lewis flips the script and interviews Scott Becker, diving deep into how Scott built a media platform that shaped healthcare conversation, the power of team-building,
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- [00:00]
Scott Becker
This is Scott Becker, and we have a special edition of the Becker's Healthcare podcast that lost release on Becker Private Equity today. And the format today is a little bit different. This is a situation where Peter Murphy Lewis, who does film documentaries, has got a fantastic marketing mind and marketing firm and does so many interesting things, but one of the things he does is he comes on podcast and does what he calls the Strategic Pete takeover, where he interviews the host of the podcast and talks to the host of the podcast. So this special episode involves Peter Murphy Lewis, who was just phenomenal and a great interviewer. I learned a lot from having him interview me, interview myself on the Becker's Healthcare Podcast and the Becker Private Equity Podcast and talk about business, healthcare, and a lot of other things. And it was really just a pleasure. So we hope that you enjoyed listening to the special episode of the Becker's Healthcare and Becker Private Equity podcast. Thank you very much. And thank you specifically to Peter Murphy Lewis for making the time and energy to do this. Thank you.
- [01:03]
Peter Murphy Lewis
What happens when the guy who's interviewed US presidents, Fortune 100 CEOs and healthcare's biggest names becomes the one answering the questions? Don't leave the podcast. Hey, everyone, I'm Peter Murphy Lewis, documentary filmmaker and creator of People Worth Caring About, a series shining a light on healthcare's unsung heroes.
- [01:21]
Scott Becker
But.
- [01:21]
Peter Murphy Lewis
But today I've hijacked Becker's Healthcare podcast mic to flip the script in a big way. You know Scott Becker as the voice guiding conversations with presidents, pioneers, and industry giants. But today, we're turning the mic around to uncover the architect himself. How he built a media empire, the bold ideas he's betting on, and the principles he lives by when no one's watching. If you've ever wondered what it takes to shape an industry or how a lawyer became one of healthcare's most trusted voices, this episode is for you. Now, I have to be honest, and I said this before, I said record, I'm a little bit nervous. I produce documentaries and help CEOs find clarity in their chaos. But today, I'm a pupil. I'm a student. Scott didn't just build a business, he's built a platform that answers better questions if I walk away a little smarter. After storytelling, strategy and legacy, we all have one listening today. This is full circle moment for me because Scott interviewed me back in December 2024, and now I get to turn the tables. So welcome to Takeover. Scott Becker, it's an honor to have you as a guest on your own podcast. Let's dive in well, Peter, thank you.
- [02:31]
Scott Becker
So much for having me. What a pleasure. What a brilliant idea. I absolutely love it. And this, I'm hoping is the least stressful, whatever period of time for both of us today. So just enjoy yourself and I'll do the same. Thank you so much for, for the idea and the chance to visit with you. Thank you very, very much.
- [02:49]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Love it. I have to start off by asking a question about what AI told me. Is it possible, Scott, that you have done more than 7,000 interviews on podcasts?
- [03:00]
Scott Becker
That is probably, I'm sure, correct, yes. I mean, we do. Most of ours are short form podcasts. That's fascinating that that comes up. I've never done that with AI or Grok or any services like that, or ChatGPT or whatever you use. That's fascinating. That's probably right, yes. And it's, you know, many of them are 10, 15 minutes in relatively short form. But that's probably right, you know, that's probably right, yes.
- [03:29]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Wonderful. Well, then let me prep this a little bit for the listeners. I want to start off with this. There's leadership and then there's building something that changes the way an entire industry thinks. There are conversations that don't just inform. They rewire how we understand power, service, and scale. And today I'm talking to the man who's done that in healthcare conversation. He helped define it. He didn't just build Becker's healthcare into a media juggernaut. He did it with a mindset that puts listening before talking, humility before hype, and mission before ego. Scott, we all want impact, but how do you build legacy without losing yourself in the noise?
- [04:10]
Scott Becker
Yeah, no, I think it's a great, great question, and you're way, way too kind. Clearly, the concept is we believe in a couple of core concepts. One is that you can't do anything seriously without a team. And so at the end of the day, there's a handful of things I've been seriously involved in. And the core lesson I learned a long time ago, and it came out of a couple of discussions and some reading and just growth, was that nothing gets done seriously in any serious way without a team. And so for. For myself, the things I've had great success with, I've aligned with and built great teams. The place where I've fallen short, I've not made the investment and the time and the effort to build serious teams. So anything you do is built around building teams and great people. And you learn to have in your life and your business and your professional life, your Personal life. What the phrase today is ride or die people, people that you really want to ride or die with, they're just so reliable, so great, so good at what they do that you want to stay so close to them and work so close with them, really, either your entire career or long, long periods of your career. There's, there's another concept you mentioned, and I, and I love the concept of this. We've always been a big fan of what we call doer managers. People that manage and do that. They don't lose sight of the fact, you know, it's almost like the physician leader president who also is still involved and sees some patients, although it's hard to do today in the complexity of today's world, but a concept that people aren't scared to do and manage. And so when you mentioned I've done 7,000 podcast, that's probably, that's probably a right number. That's probably me working too much in the business, being too much of a doer versus a leader and a thinker and strategist. But it reflects a lot of how we do a lot of things with a bit of a team and a bit of a grind and not being afraid to get your hands dirty and be what we call a doer manager. The worst thing we've had in business, I say the best thing we've had in business is leaders that also do leaders that see leaders that help, you know, and you get to people that are running these scaled organizations, health systems. You talk about the association of Nebraska Hospital association, where they're running big, big things in Nebraska medicine or whatever it is, or huge systems. And they can't really do everything. They've got to spend much more time on their top eight to ten lieutenants and people that they're working with the teams, but they can help set the culture too. But this concept of a mixed doer manager, we love building teams, we love being a doer manager. And we also. And a constant believer whenever you start something new. Some best advice I got a year or two ago is from somebody when I was starting something new and the person was very harsh, very clear with me and was along the lines of, if you're starting something new, you can't delegate everything until you again understand what you're doing in this new thing. And I thought it was harsh and great advice and that person was right on in their advice to me. So you sort of never lose focus on learning and growing, but it's all about teams and strategy and niches and so forth. But it all starts when you can't do anything serious without a great team.
- [07:26]
Peter Murphy Lewis
So based on that advice and the new things that you were thinking about starting, did you start and delegate or did you slow down and be like, he was right, I need to be involved and I don't have the time?
- [07:36]
Scott Becker
Yeah, no, you've, you've nailed it. Really. Because that's exactly the issue of a lot of things I do that I sort of, that hit this balance between, you know, advanced hobbies versus businesses. And if I really want to turn the next thing into a serious business, I've got to find the serious time to commit to it and spend the time. Actually, one of the things we talk about in business constantly is finding what we call product market fit. You know, building something that people actually want to buy and that you actually want to sell, that you want to do both of, you know, and so we talk about this so much. And to your point, you know, I sort of made the decision that I've got so many things on my plate, I better stick to this for the moment. What it was is an advanced hobby versus a business. Even though I love it because I don't have the energy or span to deal with customers in the right way on that while still taking care of the things that we do at Becker's Healthcare and back on the things that we do at the law firm apartment we're at. So we sort of said you can't do it at the level it needs to be done to really find what want to find and don't have the energy to take the next step to find the right people to do all that without first investing time, myself and understanding product market fit really well. That's a great question, Peter. That's why you do this for a living.
- [08:56]
Peter Murphy Lewis
How big is your team? You talk a lot about team and I do as well. I find that I like to create culture. I'm a little bit of a doer. I love to delegate. I resonate with what you're saying. Wondering how big your team team is today?
- [09:08]
Scott Becker
Sure. So at Becker's Healthcare we have about 100 employees, but. But you have to remember one of my colleagues, the CEO Jessica Cole, really runs the entire company day to day. And I'm able to serve in the role that I serve in, which is more or less chief content officer, board member, advisor, podcaster, speaker, those kinds of things. So she really runs the day to day. Got a very large editorial team, about 30 plus people, nice sized commercial team and events team. We're a Big believer in that you stack people around your core areas and outsource what you don't have to have internally. So our role, be a magnet to listeners, to readers, to attendees. Stay really closely connected to the health system community and our people's job. More and more, it's not just putting out information, but it's also staying really closely connected to the community, to the people that listen, read, attend to, make sure we're resonating and we're on board with what they're thinking about. So about 100 people there. The law firm itself, which I am at one point was on the board of, at one point led a division within the law firm. I don't know how many employees today, but 6,7000 employees at the law firm. It's a large, large, you know, national law firm and so forth.
- [10:21]
Peter Murphy Lewis
But I want to transition a little bit into a conversation around your audience and a product. So I'm kind of teed up like this. Most founders scramble to launch a product, and then they beg people to care about it, and they're too late. Everyone's selling you something before you've even seen them or they've seen you. But you, Scott, you're different. You built the crowd before the curtain even lifted. You flipped the model on its head. You didn't start with the pitch. You started with trust. At least from. From my observation point, as someone who spends his days helping leaders find clarity in the chaos, I had to stop and really think about that. Because what you've built, this wasn't an audience. You build a relationship. And relationships are not rented. They're earned. So most founders scramble to launch a product, and then they beg people to care about it. Everyone's selling you before they've even seen. But you, Scott, you built the crowd before the curtain even lifted. You flipped that model on its head. You didn't start with the pitch. You started with trust. At least from my perspective, as someone who spends his days helping leaders find clarity in chaos. I had to stop and really think about what you're doing, because what you built, that wasn't an audience. You've created a relationship. And relationships are not rented. They're earned. So how do you actually build an audience that turns into a profitable strategic platform, AKA product?
- [11:51]
Scott Becker
Yeah, so that's. That's a great, great question. And you have to remember, I'm an incremental builder. Some people are visionaries. I am not a visionary at all. I'm an incremental builder. I'm a tester and build builder. And When I first started this company, Beckers Healthcare, you know, it was like a lot of things in life, it was very, very incremental for the first 10 years. And this goes back 30 plus years ago. Didn't have employees, outsourced everything. We did a very simple newsletter in a very simple conference each year. And that's very different than today. We've got 100 employees, we do probably a dozen conferences a year and we have millions of people that read one way or another what, what the, what the company does and what the editorial team does. But when, when getting started, you know, in any sort of business there's. This was not intended at first to be a business. It was first intended to be sort of thought leadership, trying to learn, trying to make myself an expert in the healthcare world, learn about the healthcare world, being what we think of today as a thought leader. Thirty years ago, people didn't use that term, but that's the term. So I started doing newsletters, started doing conferences, and didn't even understand that this was potentially a business for some time. And then what happens is started to grow, relationships started to grow, an audience, started to grow what we were doing. And at some point, and this goes back 20 plus years ago, started to look at this and say, oh, this could be a serious thing, not just an advanced thought leadership thing or advanced hobby. And so, and at the time, the world didn't move so fast 30 years ago. There's so many things that were easier 30 years ago. Like when you say to your kids, you know, or I say to my kids, well, I paid my way through school. Well, that was easy 30 years ago when you went to state school and it cost a thousand bucks a year, you know, the ed, you know, or when you went to, even when I went to Harvard Law School and it was nothing compared to what it cost today, you could pay your way through school. Today the cost of these things have been so crazy you can't do so. But building an audience, building a business, you know, 30 years ago, it's really early in the Internet stages. We're really early in building digital newsletters, digital websites. We competed against a great publication, it's still a great publication that was very focused on print and print magazines and so many things are by necessity. We ended up doing great because we couldn't compete with them in print. We evolved in deciding we had to be the leaders in digital. And at the time, the digital world wasn't such an information overload world. And it's not to downplay what we did but it was a much less competitive world 20, 30 years ago. And I was able to sort of dawdle with it for 5, 10 years until I started to figure it out and start to really hire people full time in the company and grow the company. And then in life there's block and then there's making some good decisions. Some of the early good decisions I made in both the law firm and in the media company in Becker's Healthcare was when I attached to or started working with great people. I'm a big believer that you double down on what's working great. And when I started to work with great people in the law firm, it was a person named Jessica Cole and some other people not in the law firm, in the media company was Jessica Cole and some other people in the law firm, Amber Walsh, Holly Buckley, Bart Walker and some others. But, but when I had great Melissa Saban and others great, great people working with me, we, we then made every effort to take care of them, to make sure they were thriving. We were thriving, that we were growing. And so many of the people that have been with me for the journey, both in the media company back at southcare or at the law firm, been with me for a long, long time. We were miss not mentioning people like Katie Atwood and Ali Warner and Laura Derrida and Scott Jones and Mark Gamble and a lot of others that, that have been with time in the media business. But the key is you sort of, you're constantly, you know, businesses can be very simple. You're trying to find great people that work with you and great customers that you work with and sort of providing that mutual product fit of what works. And so we started building an audience, we started building an editorial team. Now we've got 30 people in the editorial team, really hardworking, smart people. We were ahead of the game in terms of short form journalism. And this was again, my learning is almost always incremental. And I've been with people that are just brilliant that could think in the seventh draft. That's not me. So when I first started this, I would write long strategic pieces and I thought they were really smart. And what you'd find is nobody would read them or the audience for reading the long strategic pieces that I thought were brilliant was very small. What people really wanted was short form ability to see what's going on in their sector, what's happening, what's a quick sense. Like they couldn't, nobody could digest the long term stuff for very few people wanted to, but they could digest and wanted to Digest the short form content that gives them a sense. Here's what's going on in my area. And so one of the real works was trying to get the editorial team and everybody grew up in a different editorial age. Not today. Today it's easy. Back then, trying to convince writers to write short form was literally a war was brutal. Today, the people that come out of journalism school, that come out of multimedia school, that's what they do. So they think it's weird that someone would write a 2,000 word, a 4,000, a 5,000 word piece. They're all used to writing shorter pieces. That's what people read and get a sense from. Things are. But it was very different 20, 30 years ago. Same thing with our conferences. Years ago. We moved towards relatively short form. People on stage, people talking, panels, just like our podcast is 10, 20 minutes. And we used to have this old saying, every speaker would say that they needed more time and every audience member would say they needed less time. And we say that somewhat jokingly, but one of the things we evolved to, and it was a learning process, was shorter form, almost everything versus longer form because that's where our audience was. That's what they would, would respond to. And we would get when we really moved hardcore to short form journalism a long time ago, and the overriding amount of positive compliments we would get were literally about that. And it's listening to those signals and constantly listening to those signals. And I guess that goes to product market fit in any business thread. It's really understanding your audience, really listening to those signals. I mean, few of us, when I first started this, you know, it's back in a different. It was a niche within healthcare and people would say, oh my God, you were so smart to pick that niche. That niche really ended up being a growth niche. But the reality is like everything we do is there's some test and trial and error testing and so forth. And one of the great phrases we use is fire bullets, not cannons. But I was so smart to pick the surgery center industry, which is where we started 30 years ago. No, I had tried and tested three different areas and that was the one that really moved forward. You know, if. If some people are sports fans at the scoreboard at a big NBA arena or a lot of arenas, they used to have this thing called the M and M race, you know, where the 3M and Ms. Would race and one color would get way ahead of the other colors. And what happened with me was we were testing three different areas at the time. This goes back 30 plus years ago it was disease management, it was cardio, and it was the surgery center area. And the surgery center area was like the M and M that ran way ahead of everything else. And the smart thing was something we talk about is people all the time. We doubled down on that area and then we doubled down on the great people that were working with me. We did everything we can. I remember having to like have deep discussions with people. We're almost in the startup stage saying, we're going to pay you really well. It's going to be a great opportunity, we're going to take care of you and stuff like that. And trying to convince great people to stay. When we were first building great, great talent people, but we believe in doubling down on what's working. Doubling down people doubling down on the same thing in business, doubling down on where, you know, the business is at. And then 20 plus years ago, we expanded into hospitals and health systems and into healthcare, it into orthopedics and spine. And then again, you follow what's going on. The business has grown to where a huge percentage of the business run hospitals, health systems. I wouldn't have expected that, but I was smart enough and I understand why it did now, but I was smart enough once it started going well. Like the M and M race to put more and more resources into that. You know, we have, we have a phrase in the law firm that we used to use. I don't know if people use this anymore, but best people on best clients, same thing. Best attention on the most important areas. And it's a constant evolution. And it's not, most of us are not smart enough to know abstracted what those are going to be. But most of us are smart enough to pay attention once we see it and to start doubling down on those areas. And so that's sort of how we evolved to grow the podcast thing. You mentioned that stat on 7,000 podcasts is an amazing stat. I did not realize that. But we started podcasting prior to Covid and it's like many things, I was ready to give up on podcasting. You know, podcasting is challenging because you're, you're speaking to a person, but you're also speaking abstractly into an audience. And you don't get immediate feedback like you do when you're giving an in person speech or a webinar. And so a couple years into podcasting, I was ready to essentially give it up for all practical purposes. And then Covid hit and Covid hit and also in the stats because we get, I get Daily stats on how many people are listening, what they're doing. And the numbers went through the roof of the number of people listening and the connectivity. And connectivity. You know, all these businesses today, particularly so much artificial intelligence with so much technology. The difference in business today, yes, you have to be great on those things. But one of the huge differences of business today is this connectivity and following the signals. And so we ended up doubling down on podcast. I mean, and so because it ended up being. People were listening to it, and so we ended up very engaged in it. And 7,000 episodes later, we're still doing it. Probably not as many episodes a day as I was back in the day. But it's. But a lot of it is listening and growing and incremental. It's not in being smart enough to, you know, we always say grind plus think. And so grind plus think. So do what you're doing plus think. But you have to assess. But it's, you know, I could go on and on. Peter, I'm going to stop for a second and give it back to you. Sorry about that.
- [22:24]
Peter Murphy Lewis
No, I. And you may have already answered this a little bit, but maybe not. I like how you talk about kind of leading indicators, you know, listening closely in what's working and not the M&Ms. Make sense to me. I think that I approach kind of growth in the same way, but I want to transition a little bit into kind of learnings from. From legal and then also into the media company. So I don't know many lawyers who end up interviewing presidents and shaping industries. You came from law, probably the most structured traditional paths out there. And obviously you're here, you're leading conversations that reach millions. Now, as a media company, that leap is a big one. I'd like to know what, what have you learned from the media company that serves you as an attorney and also what served you as an attorney that helped you grow into this media company? Sure.
- [23:19]
Scott Becker
So there's, there's. There's three concepts that we use constantly, and they're, I think, almost universal to business. But there's certainly apropos to both the media business and the law business. First of all is we think of three concepts. Niche centric, niche centric, team centric, and customer centric. So we think of those three things constantly. So. And what does that mean? Niche centrics means that you're not. That you're in some sort of niche. Not in everything. You follow me? So Becker's Healthcare has been very successful. We're very focused on a niche area healthcare and then niches within healthcare, similar to the law practice was very focused. Me ran our healthcare department for a long time. All of our work was with hospital health systems, surgery center, surgery center chains, private equity funds that invest in healthcare, but it's all in healthcare. So we were niche centric. And those things evolved over time, but everything's niche. The second concept, we've talked about some, every serious business, you know, people talk about, these are kind of class, these iconoclasts like Steve Jobs and Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and all these other people, Judy Faulkner at Epic, but every single person. Nobody does anything serious without a team. It's true. The greatest compliment to Steve Jobs is the company has survived and thrived after he was done because he built a great team. And Tip Cook has ran it similar with Microsoft and Bill Gates. The greatest compliment to Mike, to Bill Gates. It's not that he started something, not that's great, but it thrives. And he built such an institution that's fantastic today. And it's not too different with Jeff Bezos and others. But nobody does anything without a serious team. So the second thing is serious team. Everything's about building serious teams. There was a guy early on in my career, a lawyer at another firm, Jerry Peters, who just harped on me about teams. Teams, teams are everything. And I took the advice to heart. I sort of understood it, you know, and then we have a belief in teams. There's a core concept in teams and colleagues. And it's this thrive, thrive mentality. It's not top down. They have to thrive side by side with you. They have to have a MEOWS or not a Venn diagram where you overlap what they're doing and what they love doing and what the firm needs them to do or the company needs them to do. There's got to be these constant overlaps, but it's this concept of they thrive, you thrive. So most of my partners in the law firm that grew up with me have now surpassed me. They now make more money than me. They do fantastic at the law firm. They thrive. And you have to, as a leader, view it as thrive, thrive where there's very strong limits to how far you can go. And same thing in the media company. My leadership team does fantastic. They've done great. The whole company is great. But it's really a thrive, thrive thing. It's not me trying to tell them what to do every day. It's they thrive. I thrive more side by side. And through that team building. The third thing is customer Centric at the end of the day. And so many new software companies miss this. Everything's about are you actually taking care of a need for a customer? And if you don't keep doing that, you end up in trouble over time. So at the end of the day, we have to create a huge meeting. We have to make sure that there's lots of people in the audience there that can really enjoy being with each other, networking with each other, and we've got to make sure there's the right audience there so the people that pay the bills for the conference can visit with people they need to visit with there. You know, so we have to really make sure it works for everybody, both the companies that are there and the audience is there. It's got to work for both. And all these lessons are, you know, they, they work across sectors. In the law sector, we have to make sure that we're taking care of our great customers, are getting what they need from us, our clients in that, in that regard. It's the same thing in the media company. Gotta make sure people are taken care of. I'm not sure, but there's so many lessons that go back and forth. There's differences, but at the end of the day, you've got this connectivity, you know, as the law firms enjoy and use more AI and technology tools, at the end of the day, clients still hire lawyers and law firms and people that they trust are going to take care of what they need to take care of and do it consistently, reliably for a long time. In the media business, our advertisers, for example, they trust that they're going to get in front of the right audience by being with us and they're going to connect with the right people and we have to perform on that. It's not, it's, it's, you know, it's like, it's like everything every single day has to be performed on. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's. But, but a lot of the concepts, I think, you know, and I can go on and on about the concepts, but, but a lot of the concepts come back to customer centric, niche centric, team centric. We take care of those things. A lot of things work well.
- [27:59]
Peter Murphy Lewis
I want to take kind of that concept of teams, but also move into one of your super niches, which is healthcare, and couple it with a question around leadership. So, and, and forgive me if I paraphrase one of your quotes from a previous interview and get it wrong, but I think it's close to what the way that you approach. So my question is, why is leadership in healthcare so slow to change? And the quote that I found from one of your interviews says tech's moving at light speed, but some healthcare decisions still feel like they're written on a fax machine. So even with AI and predictive analytics and tech that's practically. And tech that's practically reading minds today, decisions still feel like it's 1995 sometimes in healthcare. What, Scott, what's breaking down in institutional healthcare leadership that keeps it from keeping up with the pace of real change that you and I see in other industries?
- [28:55]
Scott Becker
Yeah, I don't think. I think that's a quote from somebody that was on one of my shows. Not myself, exactly, but just to be clear about it, I think it's a. It's a telling quote. I think our healthcare leadership overall in our nation does an incredible job in an impossible situation. And let's talk about that for a second. We've got about 340 million people in our country. You've got about a million 100,000 physicians in our country and about 3 million to 4 million nurses in our country. Physicians don't get out of school till they're 32 or so. 30, 32. Right around then half of them are going part time by 40, 45 for a billion different reasons. So we have this tremendous shortage of physicians and nurses compared to the amount of people we need to take care of in our country. That's just a math problem, just a horrible, challenging supply and demand problem. So the healthcare ecosystem has tried to catch up with all kinds of technological solutions to help leverage better that physician community, that nurse community, and all the other technicians, everybody else that helps take care of people. But we are in a spot where we are horribly short in the supply and demand curve, the amount of people to take care of the demand that we have. And that's going to get worse before it gets better. One of the things I always say about health care is every single one of us is the consumer. So you can only. It's one of the beauties of health care. Every single person is a consumer. So we know what we know about the system and we know that in certain areas, you can't find a primary care physician. In other areas, if you need a specialist, you got to know somebody to know somebody to get to the right specialist. And this is becoming more and more people's experience. In many states, if you want a new primary care physician, you've got to see if you could pay for a concierge physician. And some of these lessons might be lost on people that are so healthy in their 20s, by the time they get a little bit older, everybody's got ailments of some sort, you know. And so I think our health care leadership, it is really, really good and playing in a very, very tough game. I mean, you've got a situation where healthcare leadership, California is a perfect example. California is trying to legislate that a hospital can't charge more than a certain amount. But what happens is that's somewhat ludicrous. And it's not a knock on hospitals, it's not a knock on government. But if they have to keep on paying their staff higher and higher amounts just to be able to have the staff they need to take care of things, they're sort of, they can't be stuck at a reimbursement cap and they're already stuck in it anyways because of Medicare, Medicaid, commercial payers and so forth. But the idea that you could legislate that without legislating the input cost is just, is just a horrific concept. So I mean, I think our health system leadership, you know, back in the day, the health system leadership would look like in a, you know, it would look like, you know, oh God, I'm trying not to stereotype. It would look like a small town, an older guy that looks like me and maybe a ruddy face guy and stuff like that. Today the people that run health systems are bright, driven professionals. The older ones, the younger ones, they're bright, driven professionals trying to do the best they can. I came from originally in my career a physician centric practice to where everybody thought hospital administrators were not good. And then as my practice evolved, we started working with big, big houses like, oh my goodness, these people work really, really hard and a lot of them are really, really smart and they run big organizations. So I don't know that I think you're dealing with an impossible challenge. You're dealing with 340 million people, 1,060,000 doctors, a million one doctors, and trying to take care of our growing expansive population with the resources that these people have is an impossible problem. And what happens on the technology side, people say you could fix it through technology, you could fix it through preventive medicine. Obviously, I think this anti vax concept, and I don't mean to offend anybody, is ludicrous. I mean vaccines, the polio vaccine, the measles, mumps, rubella, we need those things. I think people have different perspectives on it, but this concept that Technology will fix everything. If you're a health system leader, you are getting an explosive amount of technology sold at you and trying to figure out which ones really solve the problems you have versus not real challenging situation. There's also always this concept from politicians and others of, well, it should all be preventive care. In the other bigger nations, biggest nations in the world, preventive care only goes so far because we can only prevent so much. And if you look at countries like China and India, which have the two biggest populations in the world, they have a harder problem than we have. But it was. The limits on preventive care were very apparent during COVID where they were just totally short. Doctors and nurses take care of people. So India got overrun for a period of time. China had to lock everybody up because it couldn't afford to have containers. We don't have doctors and nurses. So we need to solve the problem of having enough doctors and nurses to go with the technology. The job of the leadership of these big house systems, reimbursements relatively flat. They're seeing more patients getting paid the same or less, and costs are going up, and they're just in an impossibly difficult situation. So I, you know, I do think there are challenges, but they're really tough challenges. And I give great credit to these systems that are working for trying to constantly solve them, trying constantly to provide great care. It's almost. We go back to this thing of customer centric. One of the beautiful things that we've said it before is all of us are consumers. We might not know perfectly, but we know when we're in a doctor's office or a system and we're taking care of really well, and we feel it. It might not be perfect, but it's not gonna be perfect. But we know when it's staffed or not staffed. The flip side is we've all been in hospitals, or at least I have, where you're like, oh my God, there's nobody here at night, and I'm stuck here in a hospital bed. This is very not comfortable, you know, And I've been in hospitals where, you know, no board member at that hospital takes their family to the hospital. I'm like, oh, that's a hospital that has to align with somebody else. You know, there's, you know, it's a great, great divide and great challenge out there. But I think hospital leadership is, you know, in the old days, it was all boys network. Everybody in town that had a contract, the hospital was on the board with the hospital. Those local construction firm was on the board of hospital, and they were there to make sure they got all the construction projects. The local law firm was on the board of the hospital. Make sure they got all the law. You know, it was a different world than it is today. I'm sure there's some of that still today. But by and large, you're dealing with sophisticated, bright professionals that are driving serious organizations and trying to make choices as to which technology to adopt, which is going to be a leverager of physicians, which is going to be a replacer. You know, where's that line where you could really make do with a lot of technology versus a lot of people? And it's, you know, if you're 20 something, you think technology should do all of it. By the time you're 40 or 50, you want some people help as well. And you realize you need doctors, nurses too.
- [36:04]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Yeah, Scott, I want to transition into content world. Outside of podcasts, you've published a number of books. Which book is the hardest and which was the most enjoyable and why?
- [36:18]
Scott Becker
Yeah, no, that's a great question. It's a great question. So back in the day, I was involved in and wrote and drove a number of healthcare books. Healthcare nonfiction, healthcare, legal books, healthcare business books, stuff like that. More recently, I wrote a business book. And it was written for different reasons. And trying to figure out the why, the real why there but the concepts of writing books. Each of the books I'd written before, I wrote with some minor amounts of help. And this is like the thing that one of the things about life is we often have to relearn lessons time and time again. So When I wrote four books, like 20 years ago, I remembered how much of a headache it was and how much my time should be allocated elsewhere versus writing more books. And so one of them was called Health Care Law Practical Guide. One of them, I take it over as leader of one, was called the Physician's Managed Care Success Manual. One was a surgery center book, another one was a surgery center book. And I remember back in the day, 20, 30 years ago, writing these books and be like, this is a huge headache for the amount of benefit that comes from it. But one of the problems with life is there's a great quote on this. You have to relearn these lessons periodically. So the last couple years, I wrote another book about business. They called the Entrepreneur's Edge, how to Build, Grow, Manage a Business, whatever. And the amount of headache in writing the book, and I shouldn't say there's not benefit to it, it's certainly not a Profitable exercise, but. But a really interesting exercise and there's lots of positives out of it. But you know, the question of, like, if I write another book, I'm going to use a serious. Not ghostwriter, but somebody seriously helped me write it because the amount of hassle compared to the amount of, you know, the. The cost benefits. Very hard on it, though. This book that I wrote on business was intended to put together a lot of my management and investment thoughts in one place. Partly so I had them in one place and part of that, my children, for others to make sure I had them in one place, I guess reference them now. The finest moment of that book was my daughter's in her mid-20s or one of the daughters in her mid-20s and she had a bunch of friends over and they're all young professionals, they're all really smart young people. They're young adults now. And one of them asked me, what would you do as a beginning investor? And so of all the different things that came out of this book, the most fun thing was the daughter's friend not realizing I had written a book and said, oh my God, let me show you the chapter on that. And that was like the moment of like, ah, this was almost all worth doing, that somebody was actually interested in what I had written or thought about in it. But it's. Yeah, no, I'm dawdling with working on another edition of this book and I go back to this concept of I constantly have to relearn my errors of is that really a good place to put my time or not? And we're trying to figure it out, But I do love it. I could go on and on about this, Peter. There's been so many mistakes I've made in it. I could go on and on and on about it, but it's a fascinating process. But it's hard work.
- [39:30]
Peter Murphy Lewis
I had somewhat, about 15 years ago ask me the question, what is the book that I've read the most? And then they followed up with which is the book that I've gifted the most. I'd like to know your answer to both of those.
- [39:47]
Scott Becker
Sure. So the books I gifted the most, back in the day, there was a book called the Go Giver, and this must have been 10, 15 years ago or so. And I gave a lot of these books out. I love the attitude in it, I love the thought in it, I love the whole thing in it. And I gave a lot of those books out. It might have been a gift I gave out to clients one year, to others one year I thought it was just a great, great book. I have given out some of my more recent book a decent amount and I'm always a little embarrassed when I do, so it's always a little bit like, a little bit goofy. But the Go Givers book I gave out regularly, that was written by a third person. There's so many books over the. There was a time when I'm still an avid business reader. I'm as much an avid fiction reader as I am a business reader and documentary reader. Listen or read a ton. Back in the day, there was a book by a guy, Jim Collins. James Collins was one of the great business thinkers of our generation, or the generation back, you know, who wrote a book called Good to Great. And the concept of Good to Great was that it's all about building teams. You know, strategy is important, but you come up with the right strategy. If you get great people on your team, you can figure out strategy and figure out product market fit. But if you don't build a great team, you can't do it. And there's so much of what he wrote that really resonated with me. And it's not like I've come back and read it a bunch of times and all those kinds of things, you know. You know, I wish I was one of these people that could say, like, you know, I guess there's probably a right political answer to this, that the most read book I've got is the Bible. But it's not, you know, it's just not. It's just not. It's that it's not the New Testament, it's not the Old Testament, it's not a religious book. I wish it was. I wish it was Orion's, you know, holiday Stoics book about meditation. But it's not. But, but the books that have stuck with me are different books that, you know, there's so many books I've read, but there's a handful that stick with you. Like, there's principles of them that became, you know, guiding for you, you know, and. And so I think I would say the Go Giver is the one that we've given out the most by far. We went through a period of time when I published my own book last year that gave out a lot of it. It's sort of embarrassing. It's like you send it to people, have them, don't want it. You know, it's like, you know, it's like, is it, you know, it's like, you know, you just, you sort of. It's A little embarrassing. Sometimes you're giving out your own book, and some people really appreciate it, and you're really thankful. And some people are like, oh, my God, you give me another thing. Like when people send me books in the mail, Captain, I'm like, oh, that's a burden versus a thank you. Because now I got to read something. And. But the book that I've given out the most is the Go Giver for sure. It's been a long time. And then the one that stuck with me was a lot of the stuff that James Collins wrote. Jim Collins wrote about business. I thought he was just right on.
- [42:21]
Peter Murphy Lewis
In terms of doing content over and over every single day. It's hard. It's hard to stay fresh. It's hard to stay fun. I've done television for 10 years, and I'm doing three documentaries this year. My secret for staying fresh and having fun is doing little prep. So I show up authentic. What does your routine look like, Scott, so that you still enjoy it every single day?
- [42:47]
Scott Becker
Well, I. I'm a huge fan of what you just said. Like, you know, like, we've got some interviews coming up at our meeting next week where there'll be a mix, you know, like. Like, I. I get to interview coach Nick Saban, who's a famous football coach. And like, you know, we'll send them 12, 15 questions, but there's no prep. Other ones are done, and either the people want to or want to do so much prep and trying to make sure you're still fresh. I mean, there's different things. So my routine looks like every morning I get up, I write sort of what I'm watching from a business perspective or healthcare perspective. At least a couple days a week. I do solely on healthcare. A few days a week solely on business, and just follow what's going on. And I love that. And we write a newsletter out of that on podcast. We record usually an interview a day, and then often two or three short pieces a day. One of those is easy because it goes to what the core business use of the day is. But the other ones are the ones that take more creativity. And some of those. Some of those days were better at it than others. And you're right about constantly staying fresh. And when it goes right, like we did one today on love the 90 percenter. And this concept is, you know, and so many things come out of discussions and meetings and talks that we're a believer. If you got people that work with you and they do things 90% great, you better love them. And you Better appreciate them and you better not nitpick the other 7 to 10%. You could talk to them periodically about if they want, about getting. But you better love the 90% that they're doing. And that came out of a discussion, you know, where we've got a team that's doing incredibly well and somebody had some criticism and I'm like, don't be criticizing that, that team and those people and they're doing 93, 97% of stuff fantastically well, better than they've ever done it, you know, love the 90%. So that's a concept, you know, there. But many of our podcasts are creative and fun. You know, I was with, you know, we did a podcast that's more on the creative side, the Lost Art of Counting and, and somebody might read that title and think it's a serious podcast, but it's, it's really about either on the golf course friends that don't caught all their strike strokes and must have missed the art of counting, or the personal trainer doesn't count all the reps or whoever it is and sort of, but it's, but it's humor and creative and fun versus a serious business podcast. And it's, it's a constant effort, you know, and you know how it is like days where you're sharp days where you, and you're, you're, and you're in a good centered place, your more freedom is better. Other days you're sort of just trying to get through it and try not to put up stuff that's sort of like, that's not worth reading because you're just sort of like, you know, you're tired or you're not energized, you're not in a good spot. I mean, I, I, I, I think it's just a very human experience that like, you know, I, I was having a, I do a lot of today Twitter and X Pulse for ideas. I was having a tough day the other day and the Twitter poll was, you know, what do you do when you're feeling down or not motivated? You know, and I think most of us have, I mean, most of us, as far as I could tell, most of us have days like that. I mean, I really was comfortable talking about it. But so you, you know, and so it's, it's top of mind and you get it back a fasting number of perspectives, you know, and you actually learn something almost every time you put out one of those questions and polls. You know, I find it so there are all kinds of different Ways of like, you know, from the people that write back really helpful things, the people that write back, profane things, just, you know, you sort of, it's great fun. But the constant effort to put out content and think and, and grow. And this was the issue of like this is the challenge of, you know, grind, but think and, and sometimes I get such into the motives grinding. I'm not thinking about who it's attaching to, who's listening, who's. Who it's doing great with or not. You know, it's a, it's another effort to, to grind and think. And sometimes I'm very good at it, sometimes not as good at it. You know, the constant challenge in terms.
- [46:45]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Of how you've changed. You know, you've been interviewing for, for a decade, two decades, three decades at this point. Maybe you've find you've fine tuned your craft over time. I know that I did that by spending a lot of time on Cal Fussman, a journalist from Brooklyn who went to University of Missouri. I just deep dived on him. But I've changed my craft less over the last couple years than I did the beginning. What have you done in the last couple years that you have done to improve your interviewing skills?
- [47:16]
Scott Becker
Well, here's what I'd say, and this is really a fascinating take and bear with me on this, Peter, because you are a fantastic interviewer. You interview how we try and teach people to interview. You're really, really good at this. And so what I mean by that, when I'm doing a bad job interviewing and being the interview, it's too much me and not enough of the guest and piano. And so we have this core theory that should be 10% you, 90% the guest or pick a number, it doesn't have to be exactly, but it's, but it's like. And you are an amazing, you do an amazing job of being patient, thoughtful, and then asking a question and letting the guest talk. You're really amazing at this. And it's something that we've tried to teach people because at our conferences we'll have several hundred sessions. Some of our conferences meets lots of different people moderating some juniors, some seniors, some more experienced. And what I try and tell people is it's 10% you, it's 90% that, it's the more you constantly think that you're not the show they are, the better off you are. And so that. And you are a magnificent at this. The second thing I would say is so much of my ability to do it right depends on How I'm showing up that day and, and I've gotten better at better knowing that it's not me. When I'm on the stage, I'll generally relax and be okay. But like back in the day when I would do poorly, it would usually because I was abusing this rule of 1090 or 2080 and I might have been too caffeinated or too, too amped up where I jumped in too much. You know, the other thing we tell people is so you know, one is control yourself. Two is realize it's 1090, 2080, whatever the number is, not to be perfect. The other thing that we say is you're not a rote interviewer so you might start off with a set of questions. But you know, the difference between better level interviewing is when you then lean in and ask the follow up question of something even though it's not in your script or on your whatever on your set of questions. We think about a lot of those things. And for me a lot of it is, you know, like on Monday we've got one of our big conferences. I probably got five or six sessions. I'm running, I'm moderating, I'm interviewing. That's probably too much for me to have the right level of patience for everyone. On Tuesday and Wednesday I've got three a day, which is probably the right number for me to show up the way I should show up. So Monday I'll try and get through, not abuse the rules of too much caffeine, of getting off the 1090 thing, the 2080 thing and straight calm enough for control. And then it's, it's a lot of effort to just like to not, not a lot of effort. It's a great pleasure, but it's a lot of effort to stay just thoughtful and aware of yourself and in control Yourself is what I think of as an interview, as a moderator and and so forth. I mean I literally, literally I say it with complete sincerity. You're actually magnificent at this and you make a living doing it so you could tell you're magnificent at it.
- [50:26]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Thank you. It took some time, but that picking up that craft helps with my marriage and with my 8 year old. So I appreciate that. The thing that I had to adjust after one or two years is I realized I had to quit paying attention to the camera. Since I'm on camera 10,000 hours in front of a camera, that's not what matters. Me being authentic is what matters. The camera guy will do his job. He's great at that. I'm not great at camera. I should just try to be authentic and you put those two things together and then hopefully you can make the person you're interviewing the star.
- [51:01]
Scott Becker
I love that. And sometimes, of course, you do a great job of this on a zoom interview, on a computer interview. So it's harder because you're sort of trying to. It's not a normal, it's not a natural thing. And so sometimes it's really easy. Sometimes when we're interviewing people at length on panels, on zoom or. Oh, it's hard because you're like, you have to concentrate in a different way and look at the screen in a different way. That is normal when you're in person and stuff like that. But I love that concept on the camera. I love that.
- [51:28]
Peter Murphy Lewis
Well, it's been an honor to have this conversation with it today for listeners. If this struck a chord with you, do us a favor, hit, subscribe, share with somebody who needs to hear this and keep tuning in to the Becker's Healthcare podcast. Scott, thank you for trusting me with your seat today.
- [51:44]
Scott Becker
Pete, what a great pleasure. Thank you so much for doing this and what a creative, brilliant suggestion. I loved it. Thank you so much.
- [51:56]
Peter Murphy Lewis
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- [51:57]
Scott Becker
The lights on, Grainger understands that you.
- [52:00]
Peter Murphy Lewis
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- [52:07]
Scott Becker
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- [52:13]
Peter Murphy Lewis
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