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The Vurge
The Vurge Podcast brings together trailblazers, experts, and industry disrupters to explore the future of tech and innovation in the healthcare industry. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or have just begun your career, this podcast will bring you thought-provoking ideas and opinions sure to bring value to all who listen. Join us in our latest episodes to stay up to date on the innovative changes that are transforming healthcare as we know it.
The Vurge
Aspire to Inspire: Chuck Podesta's Journey of Healthcare IT Leadership and Reinvention
Venture with us into the heart of Renown Health's IT transformation, where CIO Chuck Podesta's financial savvy led to slashing IT overhead while safeguarding jobs and boosting staff morale. Discover the ingenious strategies that not only reduced spending from 7% to a lean 4%, but also enhanced operational efficiency and fostered employee engagement. Chuck's commitment to maintaining a human-centric approach amid fiscal challenges is a roadmap for any leader looking to navigate the rough waters of organizational restructuring without losing their team's trust and enthusiasm.
Chuck's personal story is a masterclass in career agility and personal reinvention. Here he shares his inspiring journey from an unhealthy lifestyle to crossing finish lines at marathons worldwide. His metamorphosis into a passionate runner symbolizes his philosophy of perseverance and growth, which echoes through his professional mentorship. Chuck's mantra, 'aspire to inspire,' and his candid insights into overcoming setbacks will leave you motivated to set audacious goals and chase them down, one stride at a time.
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Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of the Verge here with Divergent. I am coming back from a workation so I'm all relaxed and ready to talk to our special guest today, Mr Chuck Podesta, who is currently the CIO at Renown Health. Welcome, Chuck.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Rebecca. Happy to be here. I hope you had a good time on your vacation.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was great. I'm loving your attire. I know not everybody can see it, but you have your Western gear on with an awesome hat. I'm sure there's some story behind the hat, so tell us the story.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, the story behind the outfit actually is moving to Nevada and realizing I had the Western cowboy in me all my life and just never been in a place where I could put these kind of clothes on and not feel like it was Halloween. And you know, I'm from the Boston area out east and yeah, it just feels real comfortable. And you know, I grew this kind of big mustache and got into it, got into the Western life and, you know, bought some land and building a little ranch and then I got discovered walking, you know, around Reno like this and now I'm doing photo shoots and Western wear modeling and you know it's basically you're never too old to reinvent yourself, I guess, and I'm living proof of that.
Speaker 1:Yes, you are, I love, I love it, I love it. I'm sure, like go back 30 years or so, you probably never thought that you would be modeling for Western wear.
Speaker 2:No, and I never thought I'd run 12 marathons in 10 years and all the other crazy stuff I've done in the latter stages, latter third of my life.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, let's, let's go back to the beginning part of your career and and tell us about how, uh, you actually started as an elementary school teacher, correct? And how you then transformed into a CIO.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I went to, you know, I went to college for uh uh, college for education and elementary education, where they focus on special needs, and thought I'd in for school and everything and to come out and being, you know, making this amount of money. It just didn't seem to match up in my mind. And so at the time I had a lot of friends that were getting into computers, computer programming. Back then it was now this is, you know, we're talking 1979, 1980. So it was Base 8, fortran, cobol, you know that kind of thing, and they were all getting into that and you had the mini computer started to come out from the IBM mainframe. You had Data General, you had Prime Computing, you had Digital Equipment Corporation called DEC starting out, and so I went back to school and thought I would try it. You know, night school programming courses didn't get a degree or anything but really loved it. You know basic Fortran Just loved kind of creating something from nothing and really got into it. Something from nothing and really got into it. And so happened to be, I think I'm trying to remember what I was working. I think I was working in like a trophy factory during the summer or something like that, making trophies.
Speaker 2:And then I got a job, a data entry job, at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester Massachusetts, at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, massachusetts, and I was in the accounts payable office on these mainframes and happened to run into the individual at lunch that ran the data center and back then it was all you know. Everything was on paper. On the clinical side it was really accounts payable and billing and things like that. That was computerized and the gentleman needed some help in the data center. So I switched from that to become a computer operator. So I started there and learned a lot because we had to, you know, wire up our own printers and fix everything and do backups by hand and you know it was very manual. But you did learn a lot. Running wires through the ceiling, we did all that. Facilities didn't do any of that up in the ladders and it was all point-to-point connections. It was no such thing as a network per se. So that was interesting but it was really on-the-job training. It was really interesting.
Speaker 2:And then from there I went into programming. I became a MUMPS programmer, a MESA programmer, which was Meditech at the time. Mumps certainly is epic. So I actually understand the basic database design of those electronic health records, which is kind of interesting, and did that. And then actually went into systems and operations, which was a CTO Basically it wasn't called that back then so I've had that job moved into programming I talked about the program. Moved into running applications, so I did that for a while. So I've ran data centers, ran applications, so basically I had every job there was at the time in healthcare IT and then started moving up into management manager of data center and then moved into director and then finally got my chance at CIO, became an interim CIO way back in 1995. So I'm coming up on so I never looked back from that point on. I got full CIO and then was a CIO from then on About almost 30 years now as a CIO in all different healthcare organizations across the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You've seen lots of changes right, absolutely, and on both sides of both, both coasts. You've been on as well, so different things happen, yeah.
Speaker 2:The last 18 years or so have been in academic excuse me, academic medicine. So University of Vermont. Then went from there to University of California, irvine West Coast. Lived in Huntington Beach for five years across from the beach, which is awesome. Back East University of Connecticut Health during COVID that was quite the experience as well and then from there out here to Renown Health in Reno, nevada, here to Renown Health in Reno, nevada.
Speaker 1:Love it Now. How many FTEs or employees do you have working for you at Renown?
Speaker 2:Right now we have about 200. I would say we rebadged as part of my, we had to cut a lot of costs here. When I first got here we were spending way too much money in IT, so we rebadged some employees that are still here but they work for another company. We've got a lot of managed services going, but I'd say we're somewhere around the 200 FTE mark. When I first got here we were around 240. We had a lot of consultants as well, probably 30 or 40 of them. So very high cost organization and what's your mix?
Speaker 1:What's your mix for remote onsite I live on?
Speaker 2:90% remote. We actually have a professional employment organization we work through now. When COVID hit, I got here in 2021, July, so prior to that, when there was a lockdown, everybody went remote. As we all know, the building that the IT was in was actually sold, my understanding and so there was really no place for IT to come back post-COVID. So we developed this professional employment organization. We can hire from all 50 states. Now we have employees all over the country through this HR company. They are renowned employees but they handle the benefits structure, the onboarding, background checks, all that good stuff, the recruiting, which has really been helpful to us in getting really good talent, you know, across the United States. So that's been a bonus for us.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So when we chatted not too long ago, you talked about a $150 million turnaround at Renown. That you've been a part of, yes, and I'd love to spend a little bit of time talking about that, because that's very difficult for hospitals to do right now. In this, you know day and age and bringing the spend down from 7% down to four, and you talked about your employees a little bit and things that you had to do, you know, and decisions you had to make as an executive to be able to make that happen. Do you want to touch on a few of those items?
Speaker 2:Sure, yeah, and I'll start with the 7%. And those of you out there that are IT leaders, you know, one of the benchmarks you look at is the amount that you spend in IT, with the percentages of total spend in the organization. Right, and we were at 7% and the benchmark is really 4%, in that range. If you're academic medical center, maybe 4.5, a little higher, but we were at 7% and way too high. And I remember one of my first meetings with the CFO when I walked in and said to her that we're spending, you know, 7 percent. That's, that's way too much.
Speaker 2:And, and you know, she about fell out of her chair, as you can imagine. A CIO coming in and saying we're spending too much money in IT. And she even asked me. She said you're not here to ask for more money. I said no, I'm here to save money. And she goes me. She said you're not here to ask for more money. I said no, I'm here to save money, and she goes. Oh, finally, a CIO that understands finance. And I didn't realize it at the time. But she's right, there's not a lot of CIOs out there that do understand finance.
Speaker 2:And so I put together, you know, over the years I had been in a lot of different organizations that had issues either with culture, teamwork, spending too much money, organization, not, you know it's not organized correctly.
Speaker 2:But this organization had kind of all of them all the issues culture issues, customer service issues, spending too much, chasing shiny, brighter objects, no governance you know all the different things.
Speaker 2:So it was a great way to put together a program, and I call it stick to the knitting, where we really had to focus on getting that seven down to four, and so where I focus was on the areas that had the least impact to people, and then you get down to the most impact to people, and the most impact to people is a layoff Right and you want to avoid that at all costs. And there was actually one about a month before I started and the way they did it was completely wrong. I mean they just. I mean there were staff, people laid off before, managers were laid off, things like that that were not done right. So I started with application rationalization. Right, we had 740 applications way too many, spending $28 million in software maintenance way too much, and so there was a lot of low-hanging fruit there. We found 50 applications running on the network that nobody had signed on to in a particular period of time.
Speaker 2:Again, that's a security risk as well. Right, yeah. And then we started working with the operations side. We put a team together with legal operations, IT supply chain. They met on a regular basis, did a really nice job. I think we're up to our run rate is about $5 million a year in savings, so far off that $28 million. And that doesn't affect anybody. It didn't affect any people. So you start there and then you start working your way down. I did a span of control exercise where you look at you have a leader here with two people, another leader here with three people. You put them together, yes, and you're eliminating position, but it might be a position that is vacant and if it's not, you're eliminating a leader position, not a staff position, and you can imagine that actually was a morale boost for the staff, because they were used to being the ones picked on all the time when it came to the layoffs and
Speaker 2:this time it was leadership that was being let go and again, it does affect people, but it doesn't affect the staff. So you kind of work your way down and the last thing you do is lay off. I actually rebadged. We went into managed services services and we took areas where you look at healthcare and you look at areas where there's other companies that can do it. You know, faster, better, cheaper, basically right Data centers, help desk, desktop support, networks, things like that that that are core competencies of healthcare. You know we take care of patients, right, and so we rebadged. Rather than move them off to managed services, we rebadged them. So the people still had a job. They just worked for another company, but they were still on site. They still have the Redound badge, they still attend all of our meetings. We treat them as if they're, you know, part of the IT family and again, it impacts them, but much less than a layoff, right?
Speaker 1:So you work your way down.
Speaker 2:And we got ourselves from the 7% to the 4%. We're running that now at 4%. It took some time. Also, at the time, we were in the bottom five of employee engagement as well. Customer service is non-existent. Basically, the culture in IT was from a leadership perspective not the staff leadership at the time and most of them are gone. I would say all of them at this point, but it was. You know, we're the experts in IT, you're not operations. We'll deliver to you what we think you need and I hope you like it because we're busy and we're moving on. Deliver to you what we think you need and I hope you like it because we're busy and we're moving on. And so what happened? There is operations. Because they weren't getting the support, went around, bought applications. That's how we ended up with 740, no governance, right, and so we had to flip the switch on that and really do just the opposite of we're here. We're here to help you operations and work with you.
Speaker 1:We're here to serve you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that took a while to change. So we went from bottom five in employee engagement to top five and you would think, wow, you're making all these cuts, morale is going to sink. But you know how did you go from that bottom five to top five in employee engagement in the organization and again it was. You know, transparency and accountability and communication, constant communication.
Speaker 2:you know IT leadership meetings, all-hands meetings on a regular basis teaching them about finance and why it's important to have a bottom line, even in a nonprofit organization. And people get it. They're smart, they're adults, they manage their home, their house money and their savings accounts. So you put it in terms of that and they get it. And so we were part of that $150 million turnaround we lost in 2022, we lost $128 million as an organization and off a base of about $1.6 billion. That's you know. Do the math on that.
Speaker 2:That's a lot. I've never seen it my entire career. And then in 2023, we actually made $24 million. So that's where the $150 million turnaround comes in, and I'd never seen that fast that turnaround either. So that's it's been quite a journey.
Speaker 2:And, of course, it we were a big, we were part of that, being part of support services, but the organization as well, and I can tell you, the CEO that came in in November of 2022 now completely changed Again.
Speaker 2:Just like I focused on IT, he focused on the organization and really got us to look at it as a business, and there was accountability now and goals set and reaching those goals on a regular basis and monthly operating reviews of all areas of the organization and communication transparency the whole thing and it really made a big difference in turning the organization around as well. And so now we're in a phase of strategic planning and really looking at this year as being our strategic planning year and really looking at this year as being our strategic planning year. You know, of course, we have a lot of projects going on still, but 25, 26, 27 are going to be really rolling out the new, renowned health of you know what we're going to be when we grow up and, just as important, what we're not going to be Right, you've got to look at both of those, and so I'm excited about that. It's kind of a new beginning for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you've had a real turnaround. It's super exciting. Can you speak to the change management around, not just you know, cutting off lots of applications or turning off lots of applications to save money, but also the communication and change management around the entire organization? Everything's happening. Why we're cutting things, why we're cutting people and now you're rolling out this new strategic plan and so what are you all doing to make sure that the staff feels inclusive?
Speaker 2:No, it's really important. It gets the teamwork right, and it's very easy when you go into an organization to tell whether there's, to see whether there's. It's really easy when you go into an organization to see whether there's teamwork or not. Right, because there's certain things that you look for, and and there's really three things that you look for Is the team networking? Now, that was a lot easier to do when you're all in one building. Right, because you could see. You could see people you know around the water cooler, so to speak, right, yep, yeah, and people, not just you know.
Speaker 2:You walk into the room and you see all these cubicles and it's like a library, right, that's not networking right, and so you look for that networking people talking to each other, working with each other, and you can. You know, remote, you can still see it. Are there regular teams, meetings and things like that going on? Yeah, so that's one thing to look for. The second thing to look for is when you're in meetings with people, do they feel safe? Is it a safe place? Is it secure, where they can say what's on their mind, certainly in a respectful, professional way. But they can disagree and you can have conflict, and healthy conflict, and not think that you know there's going to be a meeting after the meeting. Where you're going to be, you know, taken to the woodshed by your boss because you said something you know how are you doing that?
Speaker 1:How are you evaluating that? Are you watching their non-voters?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so during those first weeks. You know you're just watching and you attend a lot of meetings. You know you're meeting people all the time. That's part of you know, doing your rounding. I'm building my relationship with the senior leadership team, right, but I'm also building my relationship with my team and I'm watching and I'm listening. And then the third piece of that I look for is do they have a sense of belonging? And in the sense of belonging, do they really understand the work that they do and how it affects the bigger world that we have at Renown? So you know, all the way down to the analyst that, say, is working in a particular area of Epic maybe a pharmacy analyst or something like that Willow do they understand that, the work that they're working on in the project, how that connects to the doctor and the nurse and the clinician giving?
Speaker 2:patient care and how that affects the patient experience and how that and if they don't, then that's not. They don't have a sense of belonging right? They're just coming to work, and so.
Speaker 1:Right, how do you show?
Speaker 2:them right? How do they know that you're actually making a change in healthcare but they're not clinical right? So if you go into an organization and you're 0 for 3, oh boy, okay, now you got to. And a lot of times when you're 0 for 3, that's not staff, that's leadership, all right. And you've got to fix leadership in IT when you're all for three. And so that's what I did.
Speaker 2:I started rolling through some of that because I could see in certain teams they weren't having the networking. They were afraid to speak. They have no clue how they were connected to the bigger organization. And so you start to work with the team. You put leadership in that does understand that I work with my team and make sure the work that they do, that they're networking, my team is networking right, my team is safe in my meetings and my team has that sense of belonging. And then their job is to instill that down. So you work that down through the organization. It takes a good six months to do that, but once you have that now they start understanding, okay, what I'm working for for the operation side and the clinicians.
Speaker 2:Now they're more invested. All of a sudden, people are starting to praise their work, coming back right and that builds up. They get the emails and they go. Thank you, thank you for doing this for me. Thank you for doing this for me. Right now, you start changing the culture in the organization. They start looking at it as as a service uh, and high customer service as opposed to you know, a department you want to avoid, because the first thing you know was the department of no right yeah, turning it around.
Speaker 1:So they're actually thinking ahead and involving IT and a new decision before it's even, you know, on paper, knowing that we're involved in everything and all departments at this point IT and so getting us involved early, but having the organization think of, think of us first, right, we're always trying to get them to go. I always tell the organization.
Speaker 2:Tell the organization. You know, make IT your first call, not your fifth call. If it's the fifth call, we might not be able to help you. If it's your first call, we're all in. We're there with you every step of the way and we put governance in place, working with. We have a transformation management office now and we use Lean. We have a PMO as well and that's organization-wide, not in IT. It handles all projects and we use an SBAR. You know the Situation Background Analysis and Recommendation and that everybody has to put an SBAR together for governance.
Speaker 2:And I do not have an IT steering committee. That's what we call our president's council. We meet every Wednesday for three and a half hours typically, sometimes less. Yeah, and it's a full agenda and not just S-bars. It's, you know, strategic planning, everything that we're doing as an organization. It's all the direct reports to the CEO, me, so senior leadership, the SBARs are presented by the operations and the ones that are IT, the operations and IT.
Speaker 2:So it would be the. You know, if you do something in nursing, it would be the CNO and me. There are no guests, so you know I can't bring my VP to present, so that means I've got to understand, you know what that particular ask is and that forces us to do that, which is interesting but good. It gets us into the organization a little more and that's all changed as well, and so that stopped the bleeding for people bringing in shiny bright objects from across the organization. You know, with startup vendors and things like that, we're still sticking to the knitting. We do some pilots and things like that, but they're due diligence pilots and not shiny bright. It might look like a shiny bright object, but we're doing due diligence on it before we roll it out.
Speaker 1:Right, right right and communication to the organization right.
Speaker 2:Transparency in all things. The CEO instilled these. We call them MORs, the operating views. You know acute medical group service lines Once a month. There's a growth goal, there's a quality goal, there's a patient experience goal, there's a financial goal and it's red, yellow, green and the CEO attends every single one of those and leadership from those organizations come in and they go through those metrics and you're not looking at the greens, you're looking at the yellows and the reds Of course.
Speaker 2:And there's questions around how do you get the reds to be yellows and yellows to get green and move in that direction? And when you come back the next month, hopefully you've got some movement, because there is accountability associated with those metrics and it's a fair accountability. You're not being forced to hit metrics that are impossible to meet. You actually have a say in what those metrics are. But once you decide that you're going to commit to those metrics, then you're going to be held accountable to them and that's changed the whole posture of how the organization operates.
Speaker 1:You know, with that accountability, You've done so much amazing work as CIO and within healthcare and even mentoring. You know younger people and helping and teaching. But what people haven't heard about you and what you said to me a few weeks ago when we chatted and the quote sort of caught me was your life begins at the edge of your comfort zone. First of all, I love that I'm totally sold and bought in your comfort zone. First of all, I love that I'm totally sold and bought in. And where I want you to go and tell us about is your life at the edge of your comfort zone outside of healthcare IT, because you also run these races and these majors and I'm going to let you explain. But you've done some amazing, you know risky stuff outside of health care.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, it's one of these things where you know as you get. You know, and I try to. I do a lot of mentoring, I try to instill some of this in younger people, because I wish I had done it when I was younger.
Speaker 2:You're never the other saying I have, you're never too old to reinvent yourself and I'm living proof of that. But you know, back in when I was in my early 50s, you know you get to the point in your life, your health, you know. Back then you're sitting at a desk, you're a CIO, you're attending meetings, stuff like that. Of course you start gaining weight and you know, and all of a sudden you're going to your doctor and you're on Lipitor and hypertension and you got. You know all personal life change issues and things like that.
Speaker 2:And my kids were in college. You know I had two boys and a girl and you know they were dating and stuff like that. And I started to realize that you know they are going to get married and they are going to have kids. And you know, what do I want to be when the kids come along? Do I want to be the you know old grandpa sitting in a chair, having them run to the refrigerator and get me a beer? Or do I want to be grandpa who's playing with them in the backyard and watching them grow up and being there for graduation of college and high school and all those life things? And it really got me thinking that you know, that's what I want to do and when you change your life you really need to have.
Speaker 2:It can't be short-term goals. It can't be I'm going to lose weight because I got a wedding, attending my daughter's wedding, or something like that, because that's going to be good for a few months. But you know, this was a long-term, life-changing goal. And I remember sitting outside I had a condo in Burlington, vermont it was the University of Vermont and the marathon ran right up the street in front of me and I used to actually sit there with a beer and watch the marathon, right, yeah, and I finally was like you know what, I'm going to do that? And so I started running, and this is probably back 2011, 2012. And I started running and got into some relay races, got into it in 2012 and started running and got into some relay races, got into and then I started doing relay half marathons, you know, building my times up.
Speaker 2:And then I really got to the point where, 2013, I was going to run a relay and my partner hurt his knee. So I had a choice either not run or run the full marathon. And luckily it was three months before the race, on Memorial Day, 2013. And I decided I'm going to go for it and I downloaded Rookiecom marathon, you know, and put it up on the refrigerator and what it said every day I looked and it would say you know, run eight miles today. And you know I'm working and even if I remember, sometimes nine o'clock at night and I hadn't done what it said in this little square and I put my headlamp on and I go outside and run eight miles and it could be raining or snowing or whatever. And I realized, you know, that's a commitment you haven't made and I was getting out of my comfort zone. I was committed because of that long-term vision right of being there for my grandkids, who didn't exist yet, and that was my light, that was out there, that I was going for.
Speaker 2:It wasn't the short term of running the race marathon, but then I ran the marathon in Burlington and if you remember 2013, that was the year of the Boston bombing and I had friends who would run that race you know part of the running club and stuff and they came back with you can imagine just these awful stories and so I was like, yeah, all right, I got to run Boston next year, 2014. And so I did and I ran Boston. You know, it's just an amazing thing. You can can imagine it was such an amazing thing to be in the year afterwards and everything and all the commemoration that went on and it was just, and then at the end of that race and I still remember when I ran Burlington or when I ran Boston, when I crossed the finish line, it was like wow, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And it wasn't so much the race itself that was super hard, but it was like wow, that was the hardest thing I've ever done. And and it wasn't so much a race itself that was super hard, but it was four months of training and doing all that stuff pre-work yeah, I'm the hardest thing I've ever done and that was life-changing because I I started to measure everything against that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I go to work and there'd be a meeting and god, somebody's upset and you know this system isn't working right or whatever, and I have to fix it. I'd be a meeting and God, somebody's upset, and you know this system isn't working right or whatever, and I have to fix it. And I'd be like, is this harder than running a marathon? And I'm like, no, and you know, calm down, don't even think about it, just fix it right your personal life, professional life. So I started to and people would come up to me and say you know what, chuck, you're happier I. I'd be like, really, I'm happier. I'd be like, yeah, they notice it, they notice it, they can see you're happy, I was sleeping better, and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So then somebody told me about the six world majors it's Abbott, it's called the six-star world majors and I was like, well, what's that? And they said, well, if you run Boston, you've got to run New York City, you've got to run Chicago, you got to run London, berlin and Tokyo. And at that time only about 5,000 people in the world had done that. They're really hard to get into. There's some charities, but they're really tough to get into, and so if you do that, and I was like, okay, now I'm all in.
Speaker 2:And I realized you know, when I start something, I really go all the way with this stuff and I really started to like that about myself, right, and so I was really committed, okay, and Tokyo was going to be my last one. So I ran Boston in 14. I ran Chicago in the fall of 14. And I actually ran Boston again in 15. And then I ran New York in the fall of 14. Then I ran, I actually ran Boston again in 15. And then I ran New York in the fall. That was nice, I ever wanted to spring on the fall. Then in 16, I didn't run Boston, I ran London because it was the same time as Boston. So I got that one done and I can't remember if I ran anything in the fall. And then I ran anything in the fall and then I ran Berlin in the fall of 2016,.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that was nice because that was on the first day of Oktoberfest. So after the race, I jumped on a train and went down to Munich and slept on the train and you know, I changed up, slept on the train and, just you know, drank Steins all afternoon. So that was really cool and yeah.
Speaker 1:You needed the carbs. Post-run you needed the carbs.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you meet all these really cool people. And then finally I got into Tokyo. That was really hard to get into. It took a couple of years. In the meantime, I ran trail races. I ran a three-day trail race in Tulsa, oklahoma. It was a half marathon on Friday, 15 miles on Saturday and a half marathon on Sunday through the woods. It was a real boot camp. You're in a cabin with other runners and they fed you. That was pretty cool. I finally got into Tokyo, finished that in 2018, and that was the six world majors. In the meantime, I'd run 2014, boston 15, 17, 19. I ran Boston, but I lost the edge at that point. I'd run a bunch and I got the six world majors and I really there wasn't like like another thing to do there.
Speaker 3:So I started to back off of that Plus I you know, got put problems.
Speaker 2:I started to get a little older but I ran my first marathon at 55 years old, so one of the things you've got to remember is your body is an amazing machine. It will respond. If you treat it right and you nutrition and do the right things there, it will respond. It doesn't matter what age it is, but you know, you still got to be careful, yeah, so I did that. So then, when I came out to Reno, I started dressing as a cowboy. I didn't realize. You know, I really loved Westerns as a kid.
Speaker 2:I remember watching John Wayne with my father, and I was just never in a place where you could wear these outfits and not have to be halloween, right, he said right like boston, I was always in new england and then, you know, down on the beach and hunting the beach, and so I came here, I started walking around and, you know, ran into a photographer and uh, she was like we're gonna, you have to look, we're gonna do a photo shoot. And and again, getting out, here's your life at the edge of the comfort zone. I could even say you're out of your mind, I'm not doing that, but hey, let's do it. So we went out to a small ranch and, um, I had no idea what he was doing and uh, I just told her look, she had a crew there and he said just tell me what to do and I'll do it.
Speaker 2:And I had to do a little bit of acting, because you can't look at the camera and you got to you know, look out here and look to the right, look to the left, and you know, and I started getting into it, I really liked it, it was fun, it was like kind of like acting, and so I got on to all casting and I'm getting hits from there, from as well.
Speaker 2:The kind of directors go looking for extras and magazines go. Well then I finally got my first break, because I got on a cover of a magazine from LA it's a model's magazine and they called me and said that I was going to be in the next edition. And then about a month after that they said I was going to be on the cover. So that just came out a couple of weeks ago. So I'm.
Speaker 3:Yay, congrats.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's on my all casting site and I never was on social media. I never had Facebook or Instagram. So now I have my first Instagram page, at 66 years old.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're better with everything you have going on. I got all my modeling stuff.
Speaker 2:I did a photo shoot out in the snow up here in Mount Rose and I've got that. I'm working on getting that out. I did some studio stuff and I'm hoping to get an agent Within two weeks I'll be applying to a local agency here that if I can get into that I will actually have an agent that will help me get you know jobs in the industry, whether it's modeling, whether it's extra work, you know, on movies and stuff like that. So you know, at some point you know I don't ever see myself retiring, maybe from a CIO position, but really still helping, mentoring people. But having this as kind of a side gig or whatever you want to call it, is pretty cool.
Speaker 2:And so again life at the edge of your comfort zone, whether it's marathon running. I just tell people to pick something that you never thought you could do and it doesn't have to be run a marathon, it doesn't have to be, you know modeling. Just pick something that maybe you're afraid to do or and go do it and and see what happens to your life. It will. It will start to change your life and you know, Rebecca, you mentioned a few things that you were you were doing as well, that fit into kind of that model.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I try to pick one crazy idea a year and and go, go get it.
Speaker 2:and yeah, and I tell my kids the same right, they're not going to sit home on their butts, they need to find something when they're young about yeah, you're exactly right, because what happens you, even though you're doing these things for yourself, you end up inspiring others because they're watching you yeah and yeah, my kid, my kids started when I was running marathons. They started working out and stuff. I said, what are you guys doing? They're like Dad at your age, like my age. I'm like, oh, here it comes.
Speaker 2:They're like Dad at your age, you're running marathons. The least we can do is get in the gym and I was like, wow, I didn't do it for you to do that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and you didn't tell them. You didn't have to tell them, right? I just posted a thing on LinkedIn. My daughter did. I'm a, you know, I was a springboard diver, and so she had to do an inward dive yesterday for the first time ever where you're facing backwards on the board but you jump in towards the board.
Speaker 3:Ah, scary.
Speaker 1:Posted because her first one was a splat. But my point was Simone Miles, Michael Jordan, whoever pick your famous athlete, they didn't become, you know, Olympic champions and everything overnight. Right, you need to have a couple splats before.
Speaker 2:Well, ben, you know, if you think about the Olympics, right, and you see the ski jumping, that's always fascinated me, right?
Speaker 1:I love them.
Speaker 3:Yeah the ski jumping right.
Speaker 2:Imagine the first time that person did that. He stood at the top of that thing and he was like I'm going to go all the way down and I'm going to leap into the air and then I'm going to land on the ground. Guess how well that went the first few times. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:But that isn't whether it's you know your sport or professionally right.
Speaker 2:You have to splat a few times and learn from it and pick yourself up and live on the edge like you're saying yeah, and getting younger people to do that, I think, is super important because that's, you know, if they do it, then then they're going to carry it through their lives, not like me who waited till I was in my 50s to start doing this. You know, start doing it in your 20s or teens and 20s and again they're. You know you got to be, you don't want to go, you don't want to be too risky, right with your life, right things like that. So you want to be measured, but there is a thrill out there, yeah absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:So I always end my podcast with one question, and it's a talk that I give out there as well. We all want to know, with everything you've done, all the people you've mentored and all the risks you've taken, what is your superpower?
Speaker 2:It's actually what I've figured and it's not really a superpower. It's not like being invisible, or, you know, you're seeing, like the Mar-Vell, you know that one person's invisible, another one can throw a flame, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll be wondering, right, yeah, those are superpowers, but mine is really.
Speaker 2:what it's come down to and I kind of mentioned it a little bit is you do these things for yourself, but you find out that they inspire others. Ok, so what my role is now is to aspire to inspire. Right, aspire to inspire. And that's what I have in my head now is all the things that I do now, whether it's a modeling or anything like this. It's okay. What's in it for me?
Speaker 2:All right, living on the edge, right, I'm doing that, but what's in it for other people? What can I teach others with this example of modeling? What can I teach others on the next thing I do? I mentioned to you I'm into competition shooting, now right, and so I ride horses. I shoot guns, so you're in Nevada, and so what can I teach other people by doing those types of things?
Speaker 2:Right, and so that's what's on my mind now is, when I do these things out work, it was stick to the knitting. And when I built that program you know I've gone on different podcasts and I actually walk through that and if you ever want to do it, we can walk through this stick to the knitting. And what I try to do with CIOs they're up and coming leaders, you know, 20s, 30s, 40s even is to do that stick to the knitting program. Don't chase those shiny, bright objects. Because and that's another saying I have is when I was so tired of going into new jobs and cleaning up messes, right, and imagine if I went into Renown and they were already at 4%, where we'd be today at Renown with IT Instead of spending the last two and a half to three years cleaning up that mess.
Speaker 2:So you know I want to build off your successes, cios, not clean up your messes, right? It's another saying, and so I built these programs to help mentor others, so that you know, when you're 35, you do your 7% to 4% so you can hand it off to somebody else, but you can also get that next job, because if you're going up against me and I know I have a lot of user experience forget about that. But if I'm telling my 7% story to 4% and you're telling your shiny, bright object story, who's getting that job? Not you, I'm getting it, and so that's what I'm trying. So I'm inspired to inspire at work with the things I've done with Stick to the Day and those type of programs, and in my personal life, I aspire to inspire with the things I've done with the running, competition shooting now, westernware, modeling and who knows what's next.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I think the universe. I do go to church every Sunday and I pray a lot, but I think the universe. I still believe I have a life to live and the universe is not done with me yet.
Speaker 1:I would agree. I can't wait to see what happens next, what the next risky jump you take, because I know you're going to take off flying. It'll be awesome to watch.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Thanks, chuck. Thanks so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure and I hope you have a great week.
Speaker 2:All right, rebecca, I'll talk to you soon. Take care.
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