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.