Episode 1567: Interview with Donovan Pyle About His Book Fixing Healthcare

===

Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,567 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast.

Donovan Pyle: I'm Donovan Pyle. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent, your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to ask the hard questions is key.

And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this The Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

You're, you're right. You know, the, these things that we, we just assume are commonplace and these are best practices, and, and this is just the way it's done. It just takes, someone's taking a step back sometimes and say, you know what? This actually doesn't make [00:01:00] sense. Why aren't they watching your hands?

Right? Why? Why aren't they using a checklist?

Scott Maderer: Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling in the Inspired Stewardship Podcast who will learn to invest in yourself.

Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's podcast episode, I interview Donovan Pyle. I asked Donovan about how healthcare business and stewardship align. I also asked Donovan about how his faith affects his views on healthcare, and Donovan also talks with you about how having a servant leader mindset helps you build strength in your business [00:02:00] and in your life.

I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living. Assemble the Puzzle of your Calling by mastering your Time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over@inspiredlivingbook.com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there.

I'd love to see you get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Today I'm joined by Donovan Pyle, the CEO of Health Compass Consulting and Arthur of Fixing Healthcare. Donovan helps businesses with 100 to 10,000 employees, cut healthcare costs and improve benefits. He's a thought leader tackling the $300 billion in annual waste with an employer-sponsored healthcare, helping clients save an average of $1,856 per employee annually.[00:03:00]

Donovan's Insights are featured in Employee Benefit News, Yahoo Finance, and SHRM, and he's here to share actionable strategies for your organization. Welcome to the show, Donovan.

Donovan Pyle: Ah, thanks so much, Scott. Appreciate you having me.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. I'm glad to have you on. This is one of those topics that we're gonna get into today that I think.

Is interesting around, healthcare and the healthcare system. It's a hot topic today. A lot of people are talking about it. Of course, as a coach, when I work with people on finances. Health and healthcare and what do we do and all of that. That's always a topic that comes in. But before we go there, you know I shared a little bit in your intro about some of the work you've done in the past and then some of the work you're doing now as well as your book Fixing Healthcare.

But talk a little bit about your journey and what has brought you to the point where this is the focus. This is your calling, this is what you're doing. [00:04:00]

Donovan Pyle: Yeah. I look, looking back I never would've seen it coming. I grew up playing music in upstate New York, which is, if, upstate New York, it's filled with hippies and rednecks and they all get along wonderfully.

And growing up I was just, just, and I still to this day and am absolutely addicted to music. You can see here behind me, I have tons of gear and I've got more gear in front of me. But, yeah, so long story short, I, I started playing music professionally when I was 15 years old in upstate New York.

And I was typically playing with guys in their thirties and forties and, we'd be playing songs, music from the Grateful Dead at bars and things like that. And it was just a blast in the late nineties. Music was my sole focus. I went to college for music.

And ultimately ended up moving to New York shortly after nine 11 and played full-time there for about 10 years. I played on, on, jingles for Chevy and HBO and Nike and things like that. So if you were listening to, or if you were watching TV in the mid two thousands, you definitely heard some of my playing.

Probably the biggest gig I had was I was a [00:05:00] mixed assistant for a U2 record that was being mixed in Manhattan. So yeah, lived that dream. Ended up touring with a band that was signed to EMI. Then ultimately the band, the their EMI went bankrupt shortly after.

And then the band was pretty much done. And I was like, you know what? It's been a, it's been a phenomenal ride, but I'm 31 years old and I'm getting tired of going to bed at 6:00 AM I want to change directions. What's the furthest thing from the music business?

And, I've got a we had a, we have a family friend who's been in the insurance business for years. It just seemed like a really solid gig. He worked hard. He got paid pretty well and was pretty well respected in town. And I said, wow that looks like a good, just a really good quality of life.

Let me get into that. I know nothing about this business. So yeah, long story short ended up. Getting hired by a, an insurance carrier out of Chicago called combined Insurance, which was later acquired and rebranded as Chubb Workplace Benefits. [00:06:00] And so yeah, that was my first foray into the insurance business.

Again, new, absolutely nothing. We were primarily selling. Disability insurance, which is a fantastic benefits. And one of my favorite benefits actually. And so benefits brokers were my customers and benefits brokers. They're charged with selling health insurance, ancillary lines of coverage like disability, life insurance, et cetera, to employers.

That's a main, that's the main distribution channel for employers. And, during that time I noticed that, they weren't, they didn't all, not all of them seemed to be laser focused on bringing the best solutions to, to their clients. And I was working my way up through Chubb's the division that I worked at Chubb.

And I was getting a little bit stagnant. And I was also learning. I was discovering how some employers. In some parts of the country, like Rosen Hotels here in Orlando had found very different ways to finance and procure healthcare [00:07:00] for their organization, and were getting drastically better results than what the typical channels were for purchasing healthcare.

For employees, and I thought, wow, this is really fascinating. What an amazing challenge. I saw how it, during open enrollment meetings, I saw how healthcare was always it was a bummer, right? The costs were always going up. Employer, most employers were watering down the coverage we're just getting less and less for our money every year.

And so I saw how that, that really impacted the morale of employees through these open enrollment meetings. And I was wondering, geez why aren't more employers embracing the tactics and strategies that people like Harris Rosen from Rosen Hotels here in Orlando pioneer, 30 years ago?

Why are more people doing that? I naively thought, geez, alright, if I just move to the brokerage side of the business. Jump the fence over there, I can start scaling. Those kinds of inno innovative solutions probably help a lot of people and probably make some money [00:08:00] doing it. So I went and worked for a national employer, built a book of business, helped some of our customers in a really big way, and then was terminated.

Completely out of the blue. And it was really devastating 'cause I thought, geez, our role is to really protect our customers and serve as a fiduciary to them. Really look out for their best interests. And sometimes that, that, meant moving business from one carrier to a different vendor.

Right? That's what that requires. And, after my termination, I discovered that it was really because of the incentive model of the brokerage industry. And so this is something I talk about in my forthcoming book, fixing Healthcare is understanding the landscape. And so I think a lot of executives would really benefit from further understanding the employee benefits, the health insurance and the healthcare landscapes, and how they're interlinked the history of that.

So one thing we talk about is the history. How did health insurers even start? [00:09:00] And I thought this was fascinating, doing the research on this was that as medical services, the prices of medical services started to really increase in the 1920s with medical advances, et cetera, et cetera.

Hospitals began having a hard time. Getting patients to afford their services on an on-demand basis. You're probably familiar with this, Scott, 'cause you're a student of the game and history. But the first health plan came out of the Dallas Teachers Union in 1929 where this entity got the teacher's union to prepay for their services at 50 cents per employee per month for 50 cents per employee per month.

These teachers could go to Baylor Hospital and deliver their babies. That was the original intent, and so it was such a successful model distribution model. Having employers prepay for hospital services that other hospitals around the country [00:10:00] took note of what was happening in Dallas, and within the next 10 years, 11 more health plans popped up around the country.

Now here's the funny thing though. These health plans were actually founded and funded by hospitals. So I'll just restate it. Health insurance companies were being founded by hospitals, for distribution purposes to get people to prepay for their services. So that was the original distribution path.

And then after the federal minimum wage laws went into effect a lot of the health insurers in the country flipped their W2 Salesforce to 10 99 contractors. Now one of the unintended consequences of that was that now these independent sales agents could sell multiple health insurers products, right?

Instead of just selling one now, they could sell three or four, or, there were dozens in the market at that time. [00:11:00] So this inadvertently created the brokerage industry. That's all good and fine. To have, salespeople selling products, that's very ty, commonplace. The challenge though is that employers typically expect their broker to ma help them maximize the return on their benefits investment.

We're gonna spend all this money each year to help us attract and retain talent, to help, improve the physical health of our organization, the productivity of our organization. How do we get the most value for our money? And the challenge with the legacy system and architecture of the industry is that brokers make more mon since they work for insurers and pharmacy benefit managers, they make more money when costs go up, not down.

They're commissioned salespeople. They get paid bonuses, retention bonuses, all this backdoor money yada. And so that really undermines their ability to provide employers with unbiased advice.

That being said after my termination I [00:12:00] founded one of the first fiduciary based benefits consulting firms in the United States in 2018, health Compass Consulting.

So we're a management consulting firm that really serves as an antidote. To the benefits brokerage industry.

Scott Maderer: Yeah, and we'll definitely get a little bit more into a couple of those points here in a minute. But before I, I go there, can you share a little bit about how your faith journey intersected with your life journey through, through music, through working in the healthcare industry and through what you do today?

Donovan Pyle: Yeah, absolutely. So I think I, I was I consider myself to be lucky that my parents had have had and have pretty strong faith and and so yeah, I was raised Roman Catholic and I think that's, that really has done a couple critical things for my life. One, I think it really helped inform my moral compass as a human being and my wanting to serve and help society.

And two, I think [00:13:00] people of faith have an inner strength in that it gives them the strength that they need. Better equips 'em with the strength that they need during difficult times. And Lord knows we all have difficult times. And, we can either believe that things are gonna be okay and act accordingly and move throughout life with that solid belief.

Or we can just obsess over what's wrong. And it's really, I, I feel bad that I've learned this later in life, but. It's really a choice. And so I think, as I'm getting into my, my, my late forties here it's becoming more, more important as life, throws more things in front of you.

Yeah I feel very blessed that way.

Scott Maderer: What you're talking about, healthcare one, one thing you mentioned and. I had heard this or had known this in the past is, with the hospitals getting together and starting and specifically what they were funding a lot of times was around around babies being born, around having people come in to have babies [00:14:00] and you stop and think about that for a minute.

Part of the reason for that, I would imagine is. As a hospital, the one event that people come to the hospital for that everyone is happy about is having a baby. Yeah. Every other time you go to the hospital, it's pretty much this is bad news. So it is connected, I think, to, in a way to, to actually the PR around.

The service as well.

Donovan Pyle: 100%. And you're right. In the 20th century nobody went to hospitals except for the indigent.

Scott Maderer: When

Donovan Pyle: there were, they were, there was nothing they could do. There was basically, I forget the exact mantra, but it was something to the effect of, let's just keep these people as comfortable as we can.

'cause there's really nothing we can do to save their physical being. So with medical advancements in the early 20th century they were trying, you're exactly right. They were trying to change the narrative that, hey, we can actually cure things. This is a new, this is a new concept.

And so our hospitals are actually clean now, [00:15:00] right?

Scott Maderer: The doctors know how to wash their hands. It's amazing.

Donovan Pyle: Yes. And who knows, we might even use checklists. So yes. It was absolutely part of, the PR campaign to change the narrative that, hey, we can actually help you and, improve the quality of your life.

For sure.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. If you haven't folks anyone listening go look up the history of doctors washing their hands around surgery, doc, Dr. Lister and Listerine, that's where we get that name and those sorts of things. And just realize that, and again, that actually came outta Obste obstetrics, it came outta the baby industry because it was, doctors would go.

Cut up a cadaver and then turn right around and, go deliver a baby. And women and babies were dying and it was finally somebody that went. Huh. May, maybe we should wash our hands between those two events. That's and use some things to clean up. And yeah, sure enough, all of a sudden, baby started being delivered a lot more healthy.

That wasn't that long ago. It really wasn't.

Donovan Pyle: You're right. These things that we just assume [00:16:00] are commonplace and these are, best practices and this is just the way it's done. It just takes, someone's taking a step back sometimes and saying, you know what? This actually doesn't make sense.

Yeah. Why aren't washing your hands? Why aren't they using a checklist? So yes. I think that's analogous to. You know what the new fiduciary based benefits firms are doing is saying, listen, this old this is the old architecture of the industry, and that's all good and fine.

But it, no the world has changed. It no longer serves the needs of employers and patients. We need to evolve.

Scott Maderer: So going back to that, you mentioned fiduciary earlier and I talked to people about, the difference between a fiduciary and suitability. And the idea of knowing how someone is compensated.

And again, not that people shouldn't be compensated, that's not the point. And not that people shouldn't be compensated even well, but knowing where their money comes from helps you know, something about. [00:17:00] Where they might be making decisions, where they might have conflicts, these sorts of things.

Yes. So talk a little bit about what you mean by fiduciary in the healthcare industry and what's different in terms of where the money comes from, where it flows through for people?

Donovan Pyle: Yeah. I think, it's a very timely question because a lot of this is starting to come to the surface in the media.

And I think, it might be part of the reason why we're seeing some disruptions in the markets right now. What's interesting is that federal law under what's called ERISA has been around since 1973. And it's, it's, the scope of it has been over retirement plans and health and welfare plans now, fiduciary laws in erisa.

Started being enforced on the retirement side of the house in around 2004. And what that did was completely transform that industry where and the reason that it started being enforced was that financial advisors were, most of them were [00:18:00] being compensated on a commission basis to basically just sell products.

And that's fine. But again, suitability versus a fiduciary standard, these are two different standards. But the problem is that, yeah some products, some financial vehicles pay better commissions than others. And the old Charlie Munger quote, it's, show me an incentive and I'll show you an outcome.

It certainly applies. And so financial advisors were steering customers, employers and employees to certain funds that paid them more than others. And so what happened when the fiduciary standards were apply enforced on the retirement side of the house. Was that it forced a lot of financial advisors to transition from selling products for commissions to selling advisory services for a fee.

Okay. And that might seem like a a, just a slight distinction, but in reality it's a tectonic change in perspective. From the advisor's position and what their role is. Their role isn't to sell products. Their role is now to sell advice to sell [00:19:00] services, and that's a really big difference.

So I looked at that in, in 2018 and said, you know what, this is a very, this is a, we're on a parallel track here on the health and welfare side. We're a little behind the curve, but it's gonna happen and sooner than later. And it is happening. We're seeing signs of this right now so that's, that was really the thesis for my firm Health Compass was that we sell, we don't sell health insurance, we sell advisory services for a fee. We're gonna, we're gonna help you assess who you are. Understand we, when we really understand. Who you are at a deep level, what your needs are as an organization.

And then we're going to run our procurement process. We're gonna evaluate the market and really give you a lot more visibility into the marketplace as to the strategies and solutions for procuring healthcare. And then we'll implement and manage. So those, that's the full service bundle that we offer.

But going back to your question in 2021. The Consolidated Appropriations Act of [00:20:00] 2021 included, that's a huge document, but one of the things that was in there was a series of broker transparency rules. And so they, the federal government wrote that into the bill because again, they saw that some.

Some carriers and pharmacy benefit managers were paying brokers more than others, and this was undermining the broker's ability to give employers unbiased advice on what to buy and what not to buy, or even if you should buy anything at all. Sometimes not buying, oftentimes not buying a product is the best solution.

So that's really, a huge regulatory change in the environments. And so really all it does is it requires a 4 0 8 disclosure form, like similar to what financial advisors have been using for 20 years. I would tell you, anecdotally speaking we find that very few brokers are actually complying with the law and using the correct forms and disclosures.

So that there, so that employers actually understand [00:21:00] how they get paid and who they work for. And I think it's very simple because I think a lot of 'em are frankly a little bit embarrassed by how they get paid. And that's a shame because, while there is this massive conflict of interest that's in, in the architecture of the industry, benefits advisors, quality benefits professionals are so needed.

Right now, the look at the inflationary rates of health insurance, mid-sized businesses are looking at 10% year over year. It's completely unsustainable. And by the way, 25% of what businesses spend on healthcare is considered waste. That equals up to about $4,000 per employee per year in waste.

So we've got this we've got, multiple things can be true at once, right? There's conflicts of interest, but we really need these people too. And so that's really the message I'm trying to send to the marketplace is that, knowledge and visibility and clarity on this topic.

Is the first step towards fixing a system.

Scott Maderer: And and one of the things I like to remind people of, and this is true, the insurance industry, this is true in the healthcare industry. This is true in the [00:22:00] financial advising world. It's typically, it's not that there's a quote, bad product or a good product.

Usually the bad comes about in giving someone a product that isn't the best product for them or the right product for them. Absolutely. It's less about the product and more about the application of that thing. Absolutely. And and a fiduciary rule versus suitability, a suitability rule is simply I need to sell you something that is suitable for you.

I need to sell you something that's suitable for healthcare. That pretty much just means anything that covers healthcare. I could argue that it's suitable. So again, now I'm back to I can sell you A instead of B because A pays me more. I'm not breaking a rule where fiduciary, like you said, is the concept.

There is no. I actually have to look at it and try to sell you the product that is actually the best product for you and your situation. And again, for a financial advisor, that may mean [00:23:00] hey, for you. This thing over here that I get paid a thousand dollars a month for, is it the right product?

So I'm gonna sell you this thing over here that, that doesn't, or I'm going to give you advice to, to do something different even though it doesn't put as much money in my pocket. And obviously. In the healthcare industry. That would be for brokers. Brokers could technically do that Now.

There's a,

Donovan Pyle: They can all do it. They can all do it. And so here's the rub though, and I like to illustrate this is, through something that we call the health plan maturity model. If you're in technology you're very familiar with maturity models.

And what it basically means is that over time as your organization becomes more sophisticated and has more resources and is more knowledgeable, you are going to continuously optimize within your environment. And so we built a maturity model for healthcare. And we show employers this all the time.

That you're, even though you actually, we did this yesterday, even though you're a business that's been in, you've [00:24:00] been around for 50 years, you're still at the early stage, you're still at the beginning stage. And the reason for that is that brokers, one, they're not gonna progress you through the maturity models, that you get more value over time because one, it requires more work.

Two, given their revenue model, they make less money when they do that. So why would you wanna work harder to make less money? Nobody wants to do that.

Scott Maderer: And

Donovan Pyle: so it's really a system that's not fair to them for the, the thousands of people that are mean and are trying to really help their customers.

It's a system that doesn't serve them well either. So what we're, what my firm and others like mine are trying to do is, say shine a light on a different revenue model that allows them to do well by doing good.

Scott Maderer: Talk about what's different, what, how is your company incentivized versus, the standard model that we've talked a lot about.

Donovan Pyle: Sure. Like I said earlier, we don't sell health insurance. [00:25:00] We don't sell those products. We get paid a fee for running what we call our API end process, which means assess, procure, implement, and manage. Those are the full suite of services that we provide. And just to use, to use a metaphor, if I, if, if I'm a physician.

And I just meet you for the first time. I'm not gonna just start prescribing you surgery. Because without even understanding running tests and really knowing who you are and what your problems are, so we have a formal, we've developed a formal assessment process that we really understand our customers at a deep level, what their goals are, short term, long term, their tolerance for risk, how they define risk, their tolerance for change management.

And oftentimes, as you start working your way up market, there are more and more stakeholders. Involved in decision making.

And how much they understand about alternative financing, mechanisms, et cetera, really dictates their [00:26:00] comfortability with the decisions that they make.

So that, assessing who they are is of course really a paramount step. And before we can diagnose and prescribe anything, once we do that, then we can. We will, run our procurement process and give our customers much more visibility to the marketplace than they've ever, most of them have ever had.

For, just to give you a sense of that, Scott, most employers during their renewal season, they are shown maybe three or four different carriers in the market. In reality, let's say, you're a mid-market group, there are dozens of products out there in the market. That doesn't, by, to your point earlier, that by no means that they're all right for you, but you should absolutely have visibility to what's out there because one, you should just be aware of it.

And two, we can use that for leverage in, in negotiations with other vendors. So from there, they have, they, they have much more visibility, which gives them [00:27:00] better pricing, purchasing power, et cetera. And then and then from there we will implement whatever program they decide to go with and then manage it on a month to month basis.

And we're talking about if you go into benefits management, which we don't have, three days to talk about here there's a lot that goes into that. Just to complain. Benefits management these days is a really big deal. We keep we, we provide our customers with a, like what we call a benefits management calendar.

Every month there's a laundry list of things that need to get done. And the reality is most companies, especially, smaller, mid-sized businesses, they don't have internal resources to do these things or they're not even aware of what they are. To my point earlier, the role of benefits professionals is hugely needed.

Right now. We need more people to join the industry and really go deep and provide that technical expertise to serve employers.

Scott Maderer: Absolutely. And when you think about from an employer's point of view obviously healthcare is a. As you said, it's it touches so many different parts of the business because it's a cost, it's an expense, it's [00:28:00] something that they use to attract and keep employees that are good.

It's a competitive advantage. Yeah. And yet it's also an area of. Waste at times, and it's an area of very complicated decision making that oftentimes, even if you're an employer with two, three, 4,000 employees, you don't necessarily have the skills and the resources to understand.

Market because it's dynamic and it's changing and it's moving. Or the

Donovan Pyle: bandwidth, yeah. Or the bandwidth to even focus on it. Yeah.

Scott Maderer: Yeah, exactly. It takes energy away from the thing that you're supposed to be doing. So how do you see this for companies as a, an advantage or a, a principle that they can use to help themselves, do what they're good at and focus on growth and legacy and actually take care of their employees too, because I do think most companies want to take good care of their employees. They just don't necessarily know how to do it.

Donovan Pyle: Yeah. [00:29:00] Absolutely. The relationship that we like to have with our customers it is similar to the relationship that they have with outsource legal services or their outsourced accountant.

And so we are subject matter experts. And so if, unless you're a large organization where you bring benefits, expertise in-house, which most organizations just don't have the budget for that, it doesn't, there's not enough ROI there. So you're gonna want have a fractional benefits officer.

And so that's really the role. That's the organizations like, like mine play. And so if you're gonna have that relationship, it's. Absolutely critical that they actually work for you. So the analogy I like to use is that imagine if you worked with a CPA who got paid by the IRS, right?

You would absolutely pay more in taxes than you should every year. So you would never be able to trust them. You would have to learn a lot about, you would have to spend a lot of time and energy learning about tax law every year, which changes every year, just like healthcare. Regulations change every year.

It would suck [00:30:00] a lot of time and energy away from your core, functions. And so it's just, it just doesn't make sense. So yeah, I think getting unbiased advice is step number one. Everything else, all the tactics, all the strategies, we can go down those rabbit holes for days. But if there's one thing to take away is you have to get unbiased advice that unlocks a world of opportunities.

Scott Maderer: So I like, I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there, is there anything else about the work you do or your upcoming book that you'd like to share?

Donovan Pyle: Yeah we've, health Compass, we're on a mission to help eliminate the $300 billion a year that employers overpay for healthcare and, we do that because I think, and I've experienced this in my life and I think most people do, is that, financial security is so important to the, to, to the health and wellbeing of our citizens.

[00:31:00] And if you're someone that studies social, what we call social determinants of health. Population health expert you quickly realize that financial stability is a leading social determinant of health. It's actually way more important than access to healthcare as far as your overall health and wellbeing goes.

So let's not bankrupt ourselves so that we can have access to. Healthcare, in some cases, very good healthcare, in some cases not so good. Healthcare, let's not, it doesn't make sense as a society to bankrupt ourselves in that pursuit. If you've read David Gold Hill's unbelievable novel from 2013 called Catastrophic Care, he makes the case and shows how 30% of the average American's lifetime income is going towards healthcare.

Whether it's through taxes, through payroll deductions, through employee contributions, when you add it all up, 30% of the average American's lifetime income is going towards this. [00:32:00] And that's why Buffet calls it the tapeworm on the American economy. So I, I think we have to be in, let's not just sleep, walk.

Towards this, this end here. Let's make a choice about what's important and let's change and act accordingly. And the reason for that is that, without some sense of financial stability, people are not inclined to pursue their dreams. They're just not as inclined to do it.

And I think that's a real shame. And in a worst case scenario, it can result in political unrest. And I think we're starting to see some of that as well. Not to get too meta on you here, but I think it's it's real. It's had, it has real world implications. So I think, as a society, we need to make a conscious decision about how we're gonna address this.

Scott Maderer: And again, I would encourage people to study history a little bit. Yes. If you don't, if you don't understand what Donovan is talking about. There, there are several historical examples of [00:33:00] unrest caused because of financial disparity, financial lack of financial security, or even just a percept perceived feeling of it.

It is even that's the other thing. Is it, yeah. It is not, it can be reality. It also can be perception. It's, those things are both equally important.

Donovan Pyle: Absolutely. Yeah, we it's so easy for us to get to forget in this Instagram world that you know, the poorest person alive today.

Lives better than the, the richest king 150 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. It's yes. Your point's well taken.

Scott Maderer: Yeah. How again, go back to the healthcare system and modern medicine and people forget that the average lifespan. Not that long ago would be 30 to 40 years.

At your age today, you would be considered a very advanced, long lived. Oh my goodness, I can't believe you've lived this long. And I would be dead shaman. And I would be dad. So there, there's, modern medicine has really and sewage and sanitation and [00:34:00] other related topics, but it's all connected.

My brand has inspired stewardship and I like to run things through that lens of stewardship. So for you, when you I've learned that word means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So for you, when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

Donovan Pyle: I think if you take it, literally it's really caring for something or someone and, I think it was Ralph Nader's dad who said apathy is the strongest force in the world. And I, I think stewardship is probably the antithesis of that. Yeah, it's really about caring for others.

And and I think it's hugely important.

Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a moment that I invented this magic machine, and with this machine, I could pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future. Maybe 150, maybe 250 years. And through the power of this machine, you were [00:35:00] able to look back and see your entire life, see all of the connections, all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left.

What impact do you hope you've left in the world?

Donovan Pyle: I think, I think the biggest legacy that most of us leave behind is our children, if we're lucky enough to have them. And so far our kids are pretty young. They're five and three right now, but they're pretty amazing.

I do say so. Yeah. So I think, the goodwill and and the kind the moral fiber of them and they're wanting to help others is the best we can ask for. Yeah. Yeah, speaking of having young kids, I was my, my 3-year-old daughter, she has really gotten into to religion recently, and it's just been fascinating to see someone so young embrace it and evangelize it.

She'll literally be, we have, we entertain at the house quite regularly. She'll have her friends over, and she is, she's literally reading the children's bible to them, or showing them the pictures. Anyway so it's just [00:36:00] fascinating to see. And I love it. But, it was I was reading I think it was a passage from Matthew.

With her before bed the other night. And it, so it I'm paraphrasing here, but I think I, my, my interpretation was that the message was, something around he Jesus was encouraging people to the adults to be more like kids and that they were very trusting and humble.

And I thought, wow that's. That's really powerful. I think especially in this day and age if there's one thing I think people need to do in the internet age is give each other the benefits of the doubts, right? Most people are really good people. They really are.

They mean well. They want to do well, they want to help. And in this day and age, it's so easy to take one sentence that someone says and mischaracterize [00:37:00] it, flip it on its head and make them the villain. And I would just ask people to pause and listen and learn from their perspective. And I think actually that's one of the things I love.

I think I actually, I think it's one of the reasons that podcasts have become so popular. Because you can actually learn about people on a much deeper level. And so giving people the benefit of the doubt, I think is hugely important. So I encourage people to do that when they can.

Scott Maderer: So what's coming next?

What's on the roadmap as you continue on your journey?

Donovan Pyle: Yeah obviously, having a young family that's that's priority number one but and they take care of me as well. These things all work together. Other than that it's really right now focusing on, launching my book fixing Healthcare how Executives Can Save Their People, their Business and the Economy, which is gonna be out later this year in 2025. And yeah, it's my first time as an author and it almost [00:38:00] feels like starting a second business. It's it's such a big.

Process and to really, do it and launch it correctly so it actually makes, gets some visibility and makes a difference in people's lives. So yeah. Yeah, that's, that that's the focus that we can ra raise awareness around this really important topic. So

Scott Maderer: you can find out more about Donovan over@healthcompassconsulting.com.

Of course, I'll have a link to that in the show notes as well. Donovan. Anything else you'd like to share today with the listener? Awesome.

Donovan Pyle: Great. So if you are an executive, a business owner or an employee. Who would is, passionate about [00:39:00] trying to improve the financial and physical health of your organization? I would encourage you to take what we call the total benefits assessment. It's a really quick, free tool that we use. To score organization organizations in the seven key categories of benefits value you can find it at our website, www.healthcompassconsulting.com, and takes about three minutes to complete, and you'll get a customized score showing you how to improve in those seven key categories of value.

Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode. Please. [00:40:00] Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes.

Rate all one word iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review, and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time. Your talent and your treasures. Develop your influence and impact the world.