Don't need to know this. What's the outcome? Why do we not

do the same when our sleep gets bad or when our mood changes? Like,

why are we willing to accept those things even when

help is offered? I don't take it. Some of the things that exist in my

brain exist in the brains of, like, 10 other people in the world. Because

I'm that good at what I do for a living, I can't run a calendar

to save my goddamn life. All right, here we go.

I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing record.

Boop. Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard.

Welcome to Different Not Broken, which is our

podcast on exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking

around feeling broken, and the reality is, you're just different, and that's fine.

I don't know if this makes me, like, peak Elder Millennial

or if it's just the way I learn, because I am not of.

Well, I am kind of a visual learner, but I want to learn things

fast. I just want the information in front of me. But

we have reached the point of the timeline

where everybody feels like the explanations they

send or the content they create or the

education they put together has to be in video.

I say this as a person who actually creates a fair amount of video,

so I'm somewhat guilty of this as well. But I want to speak

for. Maybe it's not visual. Maybe it's that I'm tactile, so I

need to be able to actually do it. I don't know. I want to speak

for all of the elder millennials who are like me.

Don't send me fucking videos.

I don't want them. I want a list.

I want things written down so that I can read them and

consume them and jump around in the order the way my brain needs to jump

around in the order and look for the parts that are actually important to me

and skip the ones that aren't. Don't send me a video.

Especially if I'm paying you for something. Don't.

Don't send me a video. Because here's the thing. I'm paying you

so I don't have to do anything with that thing that you're

doing. And if you send me a video now, I

have homework, and I am paying you to

do the homework. That is not how I consume information.

I don't know why everything has to be a

recorded explainer. I don't need a recorded

explainer. And this is not just for work. This is just

like in general life. If I want to figure out how to do a thing,

if I go to the Google box and I say Google, how do I blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm not picking the YouTube video you give me

first. It's not going to happen because I don't want to sit through

three and a half minutes of how you learned how to

cook fried chicken from your grandmother's

best friend's beekeeper. Like I. No,

just give me something that I can scroll through

so I can get the information. I don't want the

explainer, I don't want the background, I don't want any of it. I just

want a list. Now there are times

where I am coming to consume your content very

voluntarily. And then I want the story and the

side quest and the list and the whatever. And if I come out of it

learning something, great. But if you are trying to give me information that

I need succinct, package it up, make it

very easy to consume. Don't send me a video. If you send me a video,

I'm going to respond to it. I'm not going to watch this. Can you give

me the highlights? I don't have time to watch a 20 minute video to

learn the thing that I'm paying you to do. If I have 20 extra minutes

in a day, that is a miracle and it is not going

to your video. Don't send me videos. Somebody who,

one of my employees called me yesterday and was like, hey,

so and so sent over a video that they said we need to watch. So.

And I just went nope, nope.

And he was like, you're. What do you mean nope? And I was like, I'm

not, no, no, I'm putting my foot down. I am not

watching it. Can you give me the bullet points? Can you give me the highlights?

And he was like, so you, you want me to watch the video? And I

was like, if you could, that'd be great. Or you can go back to this

human and say, hey, can you send this in a list that is consumable in

the way that we consume things? Either are fine, I'll get the information.

But I'm gonna get into that video and I'm gonna be like, don't need to

know this, don't need to know this, don't need to know this. What's the outcome?

That's the outcome that I need. Awesome. And then I just wasted 19 minutes

of 20 minute video because the nuts and bolts. I'm so proud that you know

it. I'm so proud that you're good at it. I support you in being good

at it. That is information you can keep in your brain where it belongs.

And you can just give me the one that. The part that I want, which

is the outcome that I am paying you for. Thank you very much.

Certain members of my team learned yesterday that if a video comes through, I'm going

to pretend it's dead. It doesn't work. The link is broken. I'm not

watching it. Send me a list. Send me bullet points. Voice

notes are the same thing, friends. Voice notes are the same thing.

And thankfully on voice notes, at least I get the.

The transcription. And that's like a beautiful, happy

medium because it means that the person who tends to do better

talking can share their information that way. And the

person who consumes better by reading, I can get my information

that way. But I'm just saying, if there's no transcription and you

send me a five minute voice note that is going into the voice note

chasm and it's never coming back. It's just not.

I'm sorry. I apologize that you did all of that work on

my behalf and I consumed none of it. I do apologize. However, if

there's transcription at the bottom, awesome. We can do that

same thing with your video. If your video

translates into, like, captions that I can just read,

we're golden. Excellent. That's the way I want to consume information.

If you just send me a video as, like, here's all the information that you

need because then I have to take notes from that video. No,

it's not my job as your job. I refuse.

Anyway. I don't know if that's an elder millennial rant or if that's just a

my brain doesn't work that way rant. I feel like there's probably

a lot of elder, like, we grew up, like, I still want to go. My

instinct when I need to learn stuff is still to go buy a book. That

might just be me reincarnating the ghost of

somebody from the late 1800s or something. I don't know. But I just assume that

that's who I actually am inside. That's fine. But, like, I still want to go

read stuff from a book. And books you can, like, thumb through and you can

find the right page and you can read just the parts you need. And it's

great. Technically, you can do that with websites too. But,

like, yeah, that's. That's the way I want my information. Please provide it that

way. Or just know that it's gonna go into the void,

and we only use the void for screaming. So if that's not

what it is, it's probably not gonna get the attention that it

deserves. Sorry, that's the way my brain works.

This week we have a very, very special guest who I can't wait to talk

to. It is Joanna Strober. She is the CEO of Midi Health, which

is an incredible woman focused healthcare company

that is again, focused on perimenopause, menopause, and

all of the changes that we tend to see that have historically been,

like, ignored, or we pretend that they don't exist, except they very much

exist. So I'm so excited to talk with Joanna and to

learn a little bit more about her company and also just talk about the things

that got us to a place where she felt like this company was needed

when it absolutely, very much is. So, Joanna, thank you so much

for joining me today. Thank you. Well, do you mind giving us a

quick introduction from yourself about the who, What, Why? Tell us a little bit

about the company and about kind of what got you to this point where you

realized that this company was so very necessary. Yeah. So

I'm Joanna. I am 56 years old. I have

three children. I've had five careers. At

least I have. So I've done a lot of different things in my

life. And I am a woman, obviously.

And when I was starting in my late 40s, a

lot of things started going wrong. I wasn't sleeping very well, I was

gaining weight. I was having some marital issues. A lot of things were going wrong.

And I went to a primary care doctor, and that doctor

told me to get therapy. They sent me to a marriage therapist, to a stress

therapist. They told me I needed, you know, anxiety medications, and they prescribed

an SSRI. They sent me to get a sleep study. They never

said, oh, wait, maybe this is all related to your hormones. And why don't we

think about your hormones and maybe this is a hormonal issue.

And so I had a long, you know, a struggle with this. And eventually I

got to a doctor and that doctor gave me the right medications

for me, and everything changed very rapidly. It

was a concierge doctor. I had to pay them a lot of money, but it

was worth it because my life changed dramatically same time. I

just felt this sense that everyone had needed to have access to

women care. That was started with women first and started

with thinking about hormones first instead of them being an afterthought.

And so that was really how I got the idea of the company. And what

was exciting to me is that now,

because of the insurance changes over Covid, I could basically take

the breast woman's practice, the best women's health in the whole world,

and scale it. And I could get the best doctors and say,

okay, write great care protocols. Write care protocols

for sleep, for anxiety, for night sweats, for mood changes.

Write those care protocols and then we will use technology to give everyone

access to those care care protocols to the best, highest

quality care, and we can get it covered by insurance now. So

that's really how we came about doing the company. And how

long would you say it took you between getting the,

I think what we now perceive to be very dismissive response from your

typical primary care, which we see all the time, to

finding a doctor who actually listened and

understood the realities of being a woman in your

late 40s and how biological changes sometimes drive those things. It

took a long time. So that's obviously what made me sad, is that it took

a long time. You know, you have to remember, like, perimenopause

was not something people were talking about just a few years ago. So

I was searching for these things online, but there weren't

like, experts in perimenopause, which is what I was

experiencing. I still had my period, so I was not in menopause.

There were not a lot of doctors out there talking about perimenopause, and there weren't

a lot of online people talking about it. So part of the problem was I

was searching, but I was searching for the wrong things. So

I think women now today are much smarter. But that discussion has changed a

lot in the last few years. But for me, that discussion was rough because I

didn't get access to the right information. I feel like a lot of

women, we do that to ourselves before we even go looking for the information. We

go like, well, I'm not sleeping at night, but it's probably these 60 things I'm

doing wrong and has nothing to do with something that's out of my control. I

probably did this wrong. And then we gaslight ourselves out of care until actually going

to seek it. Is that something that you see within your patient population now? Is

that something that you've kind of built messaging around to try to address?

Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I mean, I think you're right. We stop sleeping and

we think, ugh, you know, we don't think, oh, I should go

proactively try to fix this. We don't do that for

whatever reason. And honestly, it comes up a lot in sexual health.

A lot of our patients have stopped having a good sexual relationship with their

partner, and they're just blaming themselves. Right? Like, they

don't think, oh, maybe this is physical, maybe this can be treated.

Instead, they just. Their marriages are suffering and they're not having sex

and they're angry and they are not seeking help. And.

And we see that a lot. So I do think that

we as women don't take enough care of ourselves. And, and, you know,

we're probably prioritizing our family and. Or other people and not.

Not ourselves. I think a lot of it, you know, I joke to myself, like,

when our eyes get bad, we immediately go get glasses. Right? Like,

we don't think, oh, I should just suffer and have bad

eyesight. So why do we not do the same when our sleep gets

bad or when our mood changes? Like, why are we willing to accept those

things? And, and I guess that's part of what I think about is, like, these

are all part of aging. Let's. Let's be proactive. Let's fight these

things. We don't need to just deal with them.

So looking at kind of the populations that you see and

maybe your own personal experiences, the experiences, the people you interact with,

how often do you see these symptoms

manifest as poor concentration, as

executive dysfunction, delays or difficulties

that maybe were. I never want to say that they didn't exist before because

I. I tend to find that when you start getting into these questions

with people who are complaining about these things in their late 40s, it wasn't that

it didn't exist before. They just were better at coping with it. They just were

better at kind of. I won't say ignoring the fact that it existed, but

just, like, getting by. Whereas you tend to hit this wall where all of a

sudden you're like, these things aren't working anymore. How often do you see that

manifesting in the population and. And what programs and

things have you guys designed to try to address that specifically? So I'm not

a doctor, so I want to be careful on how I address this. Right.

Totally understand that. We do see it a lot. Right. And it's. It's such

a confluence of things. And so that's part of the challenge is that it's such

a confluence of things. Maybe you're stressed about your kids and you're

stressed about your work, and you're not sleeping and you're gaining weight

and your concentration is shot. Are you surprised your concentration

is shot? Like, all those coping mechanisms that you had that, like,

enable you to thrive, those coping mechanisms are going, boop.

You probably developed some really great skills to cope with those things.

And then your coping mechanism, as your body is changing,

those coping mechanisms are harder and harder. That's a lot of what I

think is going on. Like, your brain is full and then you add

anxiety and then, like, how are you supposed to do all this? So I think

that I like to think about what we do as iterative care. And what we

should do is we try one medication first, we see if it's better, we

try one supplement, we see if it's better, we add something else and see if

it's better. And let's do one step at a time and iterate

with you and see, are you. Are you able to concentrate a little bit more?

Maybe we need to up the doses of estrogen a little bit. Are you now

able to concentrate a little bit more? This is not medical advice, but.

Right. For some people, B12 could be something that is very

effective for them. There's actually incredible research on

lavender and how lavender can actually be very calming for

people. And so instead of trying Ativan, which has a

lot of other negative effects, maybe you try

lavender. Like, I think my job is to give you all the science and to

give you the information so you can a little bit be a science, experiment with

yourself and try to figure out what. What works and what makes you feel better.

But I think, I do think that a lot of this is that we develop

coping mechanisms. So maybe you have some adhd. We all do on

different levels. Right. Or maybe, I mean, having children, I can tell

you, like, that's what happens. Right. But you, you get through it because you develop

coping mechanisms and then as those get challenged, I think it just

gets harder. So that's kind of how I think of it, is, you know, how

do we help people to manage those things and build those coping

mechanisms? Back up one more thing on this and

then I want to jump out of the kind of more medical side of things

and move over to the kind of business side of things. Let's say you're

a woman or somebody who's afab, et cetera, who

goes to their primary care doing what you think you're supposed to do. And you

say, I'm having trouble sleeping, my concentration is all over the place. I

feel like I'm responding to things poorly, I'm gaining weight and I don't know why.

And they give you what we kind of treat as the standard response, which is,

well, eat fewer calories and exercise and maybe

this is just anxiety, which, like, as a person who runs a

mental health practice, it could be anxiety, but it also could be 7,000

other things. And let's maybe not chalk everything up to anxiety.

What would you say to somebody who maybe just got, whether they

realize it or not, dismissed by their primary care and

has to find another path? Or it's like, either

not really give up, but like, accept the onus, this is your fault,

or go pursue another avenue. What would you say to that person who's in that

situation? So, you know, I don't want to blame primary care

doctors. You know, the truth is they are given 10 minutes a visit

to take care of you, and it's not necessarily

their job to do what you just said. Right. The question

is, and this is honestly why we created midi, is

we needed to create a different care pathway. So I don't think instead

of like, that, they're doing their job. Their job is to, you

know, give you a medication or give you something. That's why. So I don't know

if you've seen the research. 20% of women are on SSRIs in our age category.

20%, that's crazy, right? They do not all need

to be on SSRIs. But the easiest thing for a doctor to do is say,

okay, do you want to try an SSRI? That's the easiest way to take care

of it. Instead of this iterative thing that I'm talking to you about, let's try

one medication, let's try something else. Let's think about estrogen. Let's think about it

like they don't have time for that. That's not the business model of

care. And so I try not to actually blame them. The other

thing that's actually really important is they can only know so much, right? And new

research is coming out all the time, but you can't count on every primary care

doctor to know all of the new research coming out. It's impossible. That's why

we created our company. Like, that is what we created the company for, is for

what you're talking about. Okay, So I want to change

topics a little bit because you are not only. You are absolutely running an

exceptional company that's providing really excellent care to women, but you also happen to

be one of those women, which is convenient. And you

are playing in a space and playing, I mean, working, existing,

building amazing things in a space that doesn't welcome a lot of women.

And I wanted to talk a little bit about what. What that

particularly has been like. Do you feel like your kind of venture experience was

different. Do you have any wisdom that you can pass on to the

next round of, you know, female founders who will be going to

search for that funding and figure out how to run their companies? And is

there truly, is there anything you would do differently? Because I've been, you know, I've

been running my company now for about two years. It's not my first company, but

I can think of maybe 150 things that I would do different just off

the top of my head. And so I wanted to just get your perspective on

that about what it's like to be in the space you're in with just

in this climate, in, in the funding climate in general, especially

considering how funding has changed in the last three years so drastically.

Honestly, I feel very fortunate and I'm, I don't really think a

lot about the other companies or I just think about building this

company, which is actually very helpful to me. So, so it doesn't help to get,

oh, it's a hard funding environment for women. Like, I don't think about that

stuff. I just think my job is to build this company into being the

best company and to prove to people that a women's health

company can grow to be a really big important company in the world. That

is my goal. And you know, if I fail, then I will

fail, but I'm going to work my damnedest not to.

But I, I think, you know, if you start thinking about all those other things,

it's very hard to actually focus on building your own company. So I don't, I

just try to just focus on building this. So I want to touch on what

you said, which is that a woman's health company can

do well. Was there ever pushback from people saying like,

nobody's either nobody's going to invest in this or this isn't. This

isn't the company that's clear to people a few years ago that

women's health is a thing that's okay. Like, I don't think

that's, that's just, you know, things you have to come up with new

ideas. And the reason why women's health company is a thing is that

women are looking for it. If they're not looking for it, it doesn't exist. Right?

So it's a catch 22. If women just keep going to the old

system and not going to new, innovative women's health companies, then companies

won't exist like this. So there's a market. It's just about a market.

Women get botox right? Women get, they go to

dermatologists, they like, you know, I think of it like women are

looking for beauty, they're looking for health, they're looking to feel better.

And our job is to solve that. And. But that's not how historically

healthcare has been built. And so we just had to prove that there's a different

way of building a healthcare organization. And that's, it's hard. And you

know, there's a lot of work in proving it, but that's really what we're still

doing is proving that that is, that is a real business. Did

that ever make you kind of incredulous as you were

trying to explain this to people that you had to like actually spell out for

people that women are different and sometimes

require different healthcare? So I'm gonna say yes. But

there's a pattern recognition for people you have to develop.

When I'm trying to get funding, I'm not. This is not charity. Right. People have

to believe you can build something into a big company. That's the belief. There is

a pattern recognition of, oh, there's been Google, there's

been Facebook, there's been, you know, this big company, like, does this

look like that? The answer is no, it doesn't. So

we don't have the same margins as software companies. Right. Like there's a

pattern recognition there and we're breaking that pattern. And so my job

is just to show that now we have to prove that there's different patterns. Right.

And there's different ways that people can be successful. But I don't blame the

investors. Like they are trained. Their job is just to make

money and they have certain investments that make the most sense to them that can

make money. And now, now I have to prove that I can do it with

a different pattern. Well, you hit on something really important that I think we probably

don't talk about enough in, in healthcare. And, and when I say healthcare, I mean

specifically either value based or fee for service healthcare. Though I think health

tech probably experiences this some to a degree. But

like, you know, when you start talking about like hockey stick growth,

like you're not gonna get hockey stick growth off of insurance reimbursements. It's just

that's not the model and it's one of the harder things. I mean, especially as

we started having funding conversations as well, like explaining to people

that there is a part of you that has to want this to

succeed just as much as you want your money back. Not that we're

not saying we're going to give you your money back. Not that we're not saying

that we have multipliers here, but like we're not selling

widgets. You know, you're not selling something that has a cost of goods, of goods,

two of two dollars that you're charging $12 for. That's not healthcare. I do think

that AI is going to change healthcare and I think it's gonna

actually create some pretty amazing opportunities to

enable providers to just focus on the care and

we can automate the rest of it, right? So if you can automate pre authorization,

you can automate billing and you can automate a lot of the other tasks

that are take a lot of time and energy from the

providers and you can make it so your only job is to do care and

the rest of it is automated. I actually think that's a pretty extraordinary opportunity.

So I mean, we're looking at that very carefully, right? How do I use AI

to train our providers to offer better care more

efficiently? There should be less burnout because they can spend less time on

paperwork, less time fighting to get reimbursement for

weight loss medications. Like, right. A lot of the things that they do that they

don't really enjoy, we should be able to automate, so we should be able to

actually just enable them to spend time on what they do, like which is actually

talking to patients. And so I do think there are really interesting

technology companies or, you know, AI platform

companies that will be created that will enable better healthcare. So I'm

actually very optimistic about that. I think there's a part of that that we don't

talk about enough because I, I understand the hesitance toward AI as much as I

understood understand the, the eagerness toward it. Like I get

both sides of that. And I was a skeptic, I still am a skeptic,

but very much a skeptic of it in healthcare. But the more I get

into some of these newer systems and again I get pitched

stuff, not only pitch stuff, but I get asked to consult on stuff like this

all the time. The thing that I'm coming around to, especially

around like prior authorizations and things that you mentioned, is that, you know, my

hesitation is always, okay, well who is this going to displace? Is this going to

displace somebody who's needed in the healthcare system or who currently does an important role

in the healthcare system who will no longer be important because we are creating

these automated systems? And what I

have found, the more I dig into this is we're,

we're fixing things that aren't getting done anyway. Like the number of

prior authorizations that physicians offices just don't do because they don't have the bandwidth.

And if it's not approved, they just say it's not approved by your insurance. Even

though there's probably a form, there's probably an appeal, there's probably another

level that you can go to. There's probably like a line, a phone line you

can yell into, and those things are not getting done. And that's, that's

part of, I think that's part of the deal. Like, they do it on purpose.

If we, if we bureaucratize this so much that you, we won't have to spend

the money on the medicine. And I totally get that. But those

solutions that you're talking about, what they're doing is basically

fighting back against the bureaucracy, not against the parts of health

care that we actually need humans involved in. Like, if a, if we don't need

another human to ever do another prior authorization and that person can ensure

that our patients are getting the exceptional care and the time, you know, and the

access to things that they need faster. Like, please, let's build a system that does

that, that prior authorizations are never something that we were supposed to have

entire people, you know, focused on within a

healthcare organization. They are just literal bureaucracy to save

the insurance company money. And so, like, yes, I agree with

you. I think if we can finally find the pieces that get

patients closer to medication without. I mean, right

now we have a practice that we run that we have to do between three

and four prior authorizations for a single medication. It takes

weeks, even if we get an immediate response. Because sometimes the systems

don't notify you, sometimes they don't send the prior authorization through the right system.

Sometimes we have to sit on the phone to find out. None of that is

necessary. That is all healthcare bloat. And if we can throw AI at the healthcare

bloat and actually get people access to their own care,

I'm on board for that. So one last question before I let you go.

And again, I so, so appreciate you giving us this time and sharing

about what you're working on. Cause it's so important to our listeners if you meet

somebody who, like you, maybe has an idea for a company

that is, has never seen, you know, the,

the marketplace has not seen anything like it before, or they're about to go on

to their, their venture journey and they don't know where to start,

or they're nervous. What would you say to that person who is like,

you on day one where you had this idea, you know, you're

going to get a lot of no's. And, and my suggestion is

you listen to them very carefully. So don't just assume that they're

not taking you seriously. Listen to them, listen to what they say,

get their feedback. I think being humble and listening is actually very helpful.

If you get insulted by the feedback, it doesn't help you.

So my suggestion is listen really carefully to what they say. See

if it's relevant, see if you should listen to it, follow it,

not follow it, iterate. But you know, a lot of those

people who turned me down at the beginning of the process gave me

very, very valuable information and some of them

ended up investing later. So I actually think you should be very

excited about your idea, but you should be very humble and listen because

those people who are turning you down, their job is mostly to turn people down,

right? Their job is not to invest in every company. Don't be

insulted. I think a lot of times as women, we get insulted, for example, and

we feel hurt and we feel like, oh, they're, you know, they're sexist

or they're this or they're this. And the truth is they're only going to make

a few investments a year. Maybe yours is the right one. But

I would just listen to them and see what they're saying and then keep iterating.

And if you believe in your company, just keep building. And I think the more

you don't get insulted and the more you just listen and just stay in

learning mode, the better off you are. Well, Joanna, I really super

appreciate it. Thank you so much for the time. It was lovely talking about

you. If people want more information about your practice and, and what you guys

do, where can they find you? Yeah, we're at join midi.com so just j o

I n midi.com and we offer insurance covered care for women

for really all parts of women's health in all 50 states.

And now we'll go to Alison, who has this week's

small talk. We have a question from Omar in Dearborn,

Michigan. I'm realizing how much I've internalized

the idea that needing support equals failure.

Even when help is offered, I don't take it. How do you learn to accept

support without feeling like you owe people something?

Well, first you can ask them if you owe them anything.

It's a really good way to like handle it right up front.

I really appreciate you doing this for me. How can I help you back or

what can I do in return. And if they say nothing,

you take them to mean nothing. Because it is not

your responsibility to repay a

debt that they haven't told you that you have.

That said, every single person

in the actual world needs. Needs help.

Every person. I use this as the example all the time because it is so

silly, but it is so true. I run four

companies, four very successful companies,

all of which are doing amazing things. I am busy

from morning till night. Some of the things that exist in my brain, this

is not me bragging, this is just an illustration. Some of the things that

exist in my brain exist in the brains of like 10

other people in the world. Because I'm that good at what I do for a

living. I can't run a calendar to save my

goddamn life. I'm physically

incapable of doing it. If you ask me when

I'm available, I'm like, I, I can maybe

check. I'm not sure if you want me to put an

actual event on the calendar. I will do it wrong.

I will do it wrong every time. I will forget to invite people. I will

put it on the wrong time. I will put it in the wrong time zone.

I will use the wrong video setting. All of it. I will

do all of it wrong. It is the simplest part of my day

and I am incapable. And everybody's

like, use a calendar integration thing or a

scheduling link. And I do have a couple of those, but I also have like

multiple calendars and multiple sets of visibility for multiple

people in different companies. It's so complicated. I can't run

a simple one. But you add that level of complexity to it.

Nope. So a couple years ago, I had to literally say to

another grown human, I am physically

incapable of doing this. Can you take this over for

me? And it was so freaking embarrassing

because I can build a complex

50 state entity with all of the different pieces and parts that it's

supposed to have to be a compliant structure that has

everything that you need, including complex licensure,

schematics, and billings. I can do all of that,

but I. I cannot click a button on iCal. I

can't do it. That is a very

silly example of what could be a very

genuine need for help that you're explaining. But the point is

that everybody, even the most productive people, even the people who

have the biggest support systems, even the people who

look like they have it together all the time and never break

a sweat, even those people

need help sometimes. And sometimes we need help in way, in places that

are silliest things. Now I often need help in things that are very. Not

silly. Not silly at all. This is kind of

calendar related, but one of the times that my mom got sick and I was

like literally running to the emergency room in the middle of the night, I had

to call our chief clinical officer and be like,

I have no idea what needs to happen tomorrow, but I can't do any of

it. I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. I don't know what I'm responsible

for. I don't know what my day is going to be like. I don't know

if I'm going to have access to my phone. I have no idea. So

you've got to figure it out. And she just was like, okay, I got it,

no problem. But that was like. That was not

a. I'm silly and my brain's weird and I

can't do this thing. That was a real, genuine need

in the middle of a real crisis where I needed to be able to say

to somebody, I need help and I need you to

just do it, make the decisions, take care of the things.

I will trust you, whatever you can do. And had she not

done that, the fallout from me just ghosting

for several days while dealing with this family thing could have been

really bad. There was a ton of stuff on the schedule, a ton of really

important stuff that we needed to be doing. And, like, do I pay her

to be in that role? Absolutely. But I very much could

have tried to juggle both things because as the

leader of the company, I should be able to figure all this stuff out. And

I have. No. No. I needed help.

And there was no way I was getting through that week without help,

despite the fact that I can do a whole lot of shit without any

assistance and put in long days and

love working and love being productive and love getting things done. There

was no way that I was getting through that period without help.

And that is not a failure. That is a reality.

That is not something that I did wrong. That is a situation that I was

thrown into, which is probably very similar to what most people are

experiencing. It's not something you did. It's something that is happening around

you or to you or whatever. And asking for

help is in no way a failure and in no way

weakness. In fact, what it does is it builds your network stronger. And then

when that person needs something, when they need somebody who is reliable and

who will show up and who will fill need like they did for you,

they'll know that it's you. And at no point has she come

back to me since really heroically jumping in and just sorting

the shit out. Has she come back to me and reminded me that she

did this for me and that now there was a list of things that

I need to do for her? She would never. But that's not the relationship. She.

I needed help, she did the help. There's no tab left for that. And

at some point, if she has a thing that she needs help with, she'll come

to me and I'll just be like, done. That's what you do. So ask

for help. Figure out how to ask for help. Now, if

you need help and you don't know how to ask for

help, you can start a conversation

by saying, you know, with somebody who you trust, who you think would be helpful

by saying something like, I'm drowning and I

need some. Somebody to help me with something, but I don't know what it is.

And let that person tell you what things they can help with,

because that's a real reality of needing help, is that sometimes the

ask in and of itself is so overwhelming because there's so much that you don't

know where to start. Let that person weigh in. Sure, I'll be happy to

help. How can I. Can I clear your calendar? Can I make a phone call

for you? Can I call so and so and then start

ticking things off the list by not adding any additional emotional

labor to yours? Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean

it.

Don't give me fucking homework. I got

all my degrees. I did the homework.