Larry Mathis on Leadership: What Hospitals and Startups Can Learn from a Healthcare CEO’s Playbook | Growth Elevated

Podcast Introduction and Guest Background (00:00:01)
Julien introduces the podcast, the Growth Elevated community, and guest Larry Mathis’s background and credentials.

Houston Methodist Overview and Larry’s Career Path (00:02:19)
Larry describes the size, scope, and evolution of Houston Methodist, and his rise from administrative resident to CEO.

Initial State of Patient Service and Cultural Challenges (00:04:19)
Discussion of Houston Methodist’s reputation for science but poor patient service, and the need for a cultural shift.

Transforming Organizational Culture and Service (00:06:38)
Larry explains the multi-faceted approach to changing the culture, including hiring, training, and compensation focused on service.

Recognition as a Top Workplace and Sustained Culture (00:07:35)
Houston Methodist’s recognition as a top workplace and the lasting impact of the service-oriented culture.

“Nervous About Service” and Early Transformation (00:08:14)
Anecdote about the staff’s reaction to the new service focus and the early stages of cultural change.

Innovating Hospital Experience: Hotel-Like Service (00:09:36)
Larry discusses transforming the hospital environment to resemble a luxury hotel, including lobby redesign and direct room assignments.

Industry Influence and Adoption of Service Innovations (00:11:40)
Other hospitals begin adopting Houston Methodist’s service innovations in their own designs.

The Canoe Story: Leadership in Crisis (00:12:23)
Larry recounts paddling a canoe to work during a Houston flood, exemplifying hands-on leadership in emergencies.

Leadership Maxim: “The Troops Eat First” (00:17:16)
Larry shares the importance of prioritizing employees’ needs, inspired by military leadership principles.

Employee Engagement and Communication (00:19:30)
Larry describes regular communication with employees and emphasizing their critical role in patient experience.

Leadership Maxim: Perseverance and Consistency (00:21:00)
Discussion of perseverance as a key executive trait and the importance of repetition and consistency in leadership.

Leadership Maxim: CEO’s Ultimate Responsibility (00:23:52)
The CEO is responsible for all organizational outcomes, a standard drawn from military command philosophy.

Building and Retaining a Strong Leadership Team (00:25:21)
Larry discusses the value of developing and retaining internal talent rather than constantly recruiting from outside.

Empowering Successors and Delegation (00:28:07)
Larry explains how he empowered his team to lead in his absence, preparing them for future leadership.

Leadership Maxim: The Unique Role of the CEO (00:29:01)
The CEO must focus on strategic leadership, not routine tasks that others can do.

Life After CEO: “Life Begins at 40” and Retirement (00:30:33)
Larry reflects on his decision to retire early, travel, and serve on boards, and shares life lessons from his career and personal journey.

Closing Remarks and Gratitude (00:34:14)
Julien thanks Larry for sharing his experiences and leadership insights, and the episode concludes.

Speaker 1 00:00:01 Good morning. This is Julien Castelli. I’m the host of the Growth Elevated Leadership podcast, where each week I talk with inspirational leaders and entrepreneurs in the tech industry and beyond. Past guests have included CEOs and CSOs of great companies like Work Front, Healthcare Pathology Watch. In a moment, can it be the San Francisco 40 niners and many more? This episode is brought to you by Growth Elevated. We are a community of tech founders, CEOs, and CSOs who are committed to working together to share best practices and learnings in an effort to help all of us become better leaders. We do that through educational programs like this podcast, as well as our blog, and of course, our annual Ski and Tech Summit, where we bring tech leaders together from around the world into beautiful Park City, Utah to enjoy, networking, skiing, and a lot of fun. If that sounds great to you. Check us out at Growth Elevated. Today I am super excited to welcome Larry Mathis to the podcast. Larry is the former CEO of the world famous Houston Methodist Healthcare System, one of the top medical centers in the world.

Speaker 1 00:01:11 Larry led that organization from 1983 to 1997 before before retiring and becoming an active board member at several public companies, including Health Trust of America, Alexion Pharmaceuticals, and and Central Pulse. Larry? Larry is also the author of the Mathis Maxims Lessons in Leadership that we are going to explore today. Larry, welcome to the program.

Speaker 2 00:01:40 Thank you, Julian, it’s good to see you. And I’m glad to hear it’s a nice day in Park City.

Speaker 1 00:01:45 Yes. Yes, indeed. Beautiful summer. How’s the weather in Houston?

Speaker 2 00:01:50 Hot and humid.

Speaker 1 00:01:52 That’s what I would expect. That’s absolutely what I would expect. So, Larry, this is exciting. As you know, we often work with a lot of smaller companies entrepreneurs in the tech space. But your experience is leading a large enterprise is really valuable to for leaders, and we’re excited about exploring that today. Tell us the size of the Houston Houston Methodist healthcare system. How large an organization was that that you were leading?

Speaker 2 00:02:19 Well, at the time it was it began as a single hospital, which was a teaching hospital affiliated with its medical school, Baylor College of Medicine.

Speaker 2 00:02:31 And in the process of my elevation to CEO and to that point, I joined as an administrative resident, which is the lowest executive rank you can join after my Army experience, and then worked my way up through the ranks in the last before becoming CEO. I was chief operating officer of the organization, so it went through a lot of evolutions, and by the time I was coming in as CEO, we were in the process of changing it from a single hospital organization to a multi hospital organization with a lot of fringe companies and relationships. So at about the time, I guess it probably was about $1 billion a year gross revenue corporation. And I think at its max about 12,000 employees. Now it’s much, much bigger since it’s a system that we created.

Speaker 1 00:03:29 So that’s that. That is definitely a large enterprise organization, 12,000 employees, billion dollar revenue organization. You know, obviously very profitable, very complex environment. you know, you you had a great career there. And you, you, you summarized some of your lessons in the Mathes maxims, that, that I want to go through today.

Speaker 1 00:03:48 That that was a great guide book. Usually, these interviews are much more difficult, but you’ve summarized a lot of the lessons in advance, so I’m going to just pick some of them and ask you to tell some of the stories. But I saw that that one of the many accolades you got there. There’s that. The Houston Methodist was one of the 100 best places to work in America. And I remember you talking about outstanding service being one of the most effective marketing strategies. Tell me about what was the service like when you started and how did you attack that problem?

Speaker 2 00:04:19 You know, Methodist. And like I said, I spent my growing up years as an executive there for 12 years before I became CEO. And I learned that Methodist was a great scientific and teaching, institution. It was a lousy patient service institution. And so my challenge as the new CEO coming in was to emphasize the great things that that organization had done scientifically and in research leading up to my accession as president and CEO and then changed the culture.

Speaker 2 00:05:04 And that’s the biggest challenge I had, was to to refocus that culture. And I’ll just give you one example here. What I’m talking about Houston is hot and Houston is humid. And we were a heart hospital where people were coming to have their chest open up to repair their hearts, and they would have a hard time finding a place to park. They would have no help with their luggage. And so we were asking them to park out an outlying hospital parking lots and carry their own luggage into the institution.

Speaker 1 00:05:37 If they didn’t have heart problems beforehand, they might get them coming in right service.

Speaker 2 00:05:41 And that.

Speaker 1 00:05:42 Was.

Speaker 2 00:05:42 Just the start. Pardon me.

Speaker 1 00:05:44 If they didn’t have heart problems before that they may have created it.

Speaker 2 00:05:50 Precisely.

Speaker 1 00:05:51 So. So what did you know? You were observing that through your career and and and it also sounds like you had a different prioritization that you were dealing with. They were they were a science based focus versus customer service based.

Speaker 2 00:06:07 What was it was outstanding medical care.

Speaker 2 00:06:11 That’s what they were good for. Doctor DeBakey and the early transplants in the United States. Did them at at that end.

Speaker 1 00:06:19 That’s right. They were famous.

Speaker 2 00:06:20 That’s right. They were famous for it. The Duke of Windsor from, England had come to the place for patient care. So it was known for great patient care, but not service. So.

Speaker 1 00:06:32 So how did you go about trying to change the culture and emphasize customer service?

Speaker 2 00:06:38 You know, Julian, it was a multi false, focal approach because to change a culture like that with that many people in.

Speaker 1 00:06:48 Yeah, 12,000 employees.

Speaker 2 00:06:50 And the same and at the same time expanded to outlying new institutions and everything was an all encompassing. Challenge, which meant hiring, training employees, educating them, evaluating them, compensating them. All of that had to be integrated into this emphasis on service. And I’m happy to say that I’m very, very pleased with what you brought up about that book. In 1993, about the best places to work in America and its places to work, not hospitals.

Speaker 2 00:07:35 So 100 best places to work in America. And by that time we had changed that culture. And I’m happy to say that I’ve been gone from there for 28 years doing the board things you mentioned. And it still maintains that culture of caring and service of the people who are being Magically treated and cured. From a medical standpoint.

Speaker 1 00:08:01 You know, one of the quotes that I circled in the book was, Mr. Mathis has us nervous, nervous, nervous about service, service, service? Who said that? And where were you in the, transformation at that point?

Speaker 2 00:08:14 We were very early, as you can imagine. Well, because it had not been an emphasis of the organization and more the the way I got my jobs coming up was financial. we, we had financial problems. And, when they wanted to turn that around, finally they turned to me, a junior executive, and gave me, chief operating officer role to do that. And I’m happy to say we did. We changed that, the financial situation, but it was all encompassing.

Speaker 2 00:08:52 And so the organization did get a little nervous, nervous, Snobbish. Nervous about service. Service, service.

Speaker 1 00:08:59 Now, at some point.

Speaker 2 00:09:01 That exactly that executive is is no longer with us.

Speaker 1 00:09:06 So the, one of the things I think that Methos is famous for at some point, you ended up going from that difficult environment. We described walking in the Houston heat from a remote parking lot to almost like a luxury hotel. I know that the lobby ended up becoming like a entrance to a Four Seasons or something. Where was that? In the in the transformation. And was that a hard thing to to do that? That’s that’s not very usual for, for hospitals. Right.

Speaker 2 00:09:36 We, we took some criticism about that publicly. but we, we felt perfectly comfortable with what we were doing because our whole philosophy was, you’re coming to a high tech medical facility, but we want to make it easy for you to get in, Easy for you to. To go to your room, have your room assigned.

Speaker 2 00:10:01 And that’s another story. I mean, in the old days, people would be told to come to the admit the admitting office and sit there and wait all day for a room we went to. We would have the rooms assigned before people came to the hospital, that sort of thing. But all of these things had to change. and over time, it got, it got into everything, like I said. So we didn’t want the, the hospital to smell like a hospital when you came there to feel like a hospital when you.

Speaker 1 00:10:38 Come in the hospital, smell is not something that is is thought of in a positive light. It’s intimidating.

Speaker 2 00:10:45 Precisely. And so we wanted to change those things. That’s why we introduced Bellman and, direct room assignment and and a beautiful garden interest to at the Crane Garden, which is a beautiful facility. So if you wanted to criticize us for it, you could and we had a rationale for it. And through the years, people came from other hospitals and in other countries, as well as the United States, came to us to see it, to evaluate it and see if they could do it too.

Speaker 1 00:11:24 So that was a little bit risky. You were innovating because you didn’t have other hospitals to look like that. You were actually looking at.

Speaker 2 00:11:30 Not those days, not.

Speaker 1 00:11:32 You were looking at world class service organizations like hotels as an example, how to make people feel comfortable.

Speaker 2 00:11:38 Exactly.

Speaker 1 00:11:40 Has this been adopted now at other hospitals? If other people come to Methodist and say, we want to follow that.

Speaker 2 00:11:45 Even even in their design, when new hospitals are being built, that this sort of thing is being incorporated. Yes.

Speaker 1 00:11:56 Now that’s awesome. You must be very proud of that.

Speaker 2 00:11:59 I am. And like I said, we took some criticism of it along the way.

Speaker 3 00:12:03 Yeah.

Speaker 1 00:12:04 Sometimes the best, best idea is don’t don’t look. Look good. Right when you do them. And it’s in retrospect when you, you can see the see the value. So congratulations on that one. I want to get to the math maths maxims. However, before we do that, one of the most exciting parts of your book is, around a canoe story.

Speaker 1 00:12:23 And I think that was related to, you know, leadership is a seven day a week, type of adventure. But but I think I read that you actually paddled a canoe to work one day, and I’ve seen some Houston Houston floods. So please tell us that story.

Speaker 2 00:12:39 Well, I try to make this brief, but, early on in my career as a junior executive, Methodist, had been flooded in one of our floods. And I had the experience of watching, a 1000 bed teaching hospital go dark with people.

Speaker 1 00:12:58 A thousand people there under critical care.

Speaker 2 00:13:01 When the when when the, electric boxes from the city were underwater in our facility and then wiped out and then our generators were also underwater. It was a terrifying.

Speaker 3 00:13:16 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 2 00:13:17 Four years later, when the rain started again and it threatened to flood us, I said, I got to get in there. It was like 7:00 at night. I’d already just gotten home from, my position. And so I set out and I started driving down there, toward the medical center.

Speaker 2 00:13:37 And the water was getting deeper and deeper. So I pulled off into a bank parking lot, parked the car, and then started walking. And I walked down to.

Speaker 3 00:13:45 Are you are your.

Speaker 1 00:13:46 Feet getting wet at this point?

Speaker 2 00:13:49 my knees are getting wet.

Speaker 1 00:13:50 Your knees, your knee deep water in Houston, like most people can’t even imagine that. But Houston is kind of in a bayou, right? Like, it’s a it’s a low lying city.

Speaker 2 00:13:57 It’s got all those miles which are supposed to be drainage ditches, but they drain into the bay and the bay just when it tide comes in, just backs up. So they’re not draining anymore. They’re coming up. so I get down to an intersection, under a, by, over overpass. And the the the water is up to my chest by then.

Speaker 1 00:14:22 And so what were you wearing?

Speaker 2 00:14:24 Jeans and sneakers.

Speaker 1 00:14:26 Oh, my gosh. You’re totally wet.

Speaker 2 00:14:29 Holding my wallet and stuff up here.

Speaker 1 00:14:31 Oh my goodness.

Speaker 2 00:14:32 And I get to the cross cross under the bypass.

Speaker 2 00:14:37 And I’m standing on the parking lot of the gas station when a canoe and paddling a canoe comes up. And I said.

Speaker 1 00:14:45 In the middle of the street.

Speaker 2 00:14:46 Hi there. good to see you. He said. I said, what are you doing? He said we were checking for people in these cars which were underwater, and you could see the, their headlights. And I said, well, well, where’d you get that canoe? And he said, oh, right over there, there’s canoe rental stock.

Speaker 1 00:15:04 A canoe rental store in the middle of Houston. What? I said.

Speaker 2 00:15:07 Can I rent a canoe? Oh, yes, sir, I’m the owner. I said, okay, well, I gave him my gold American Express card at the time. Told me I can’t. I don’t have any cash to pay, but, let me rent a car.

Speaker 1 00:15:19 The one you were holding above your head.

Speaker 2 00:15:22 Right out of my wallet. so we I got into the canoe and, there were two paddles and started straight down toward the medical center, and there was a steady flow of water enough to float a canoe.

Speaker 2 00:15:39 Got to the turn on University Boulevard, and we turned there and went down, and it was water. And I could see ahead there was traffic going across in front of the the hospital, but there was a huge crater that was right there in front of the hospital, and the water was just pouring like.

Speaker 1 00:15:59 Was that like a construction site? Like, are they doing some construction? That’s why it was just filling into the hole.

Speaker 2 00:16:05 We were building the Scurlock Tower, the new Scurlock Tower there. And so the water was pouring in like Niagara Falls. And I well, I just so happened to pick up a kid that was walking, wading through that water. And he got in the front seat of the canoe. And I said, listen, when I say paddle, paddle, damn it, because we gotta.

Speaker 1 00:16:28 You gotta avoid the waterfall.

Speaker 2 00:16:30 That’s right. We didn’t want to go in there. So we came down. We fortunately made it across the the traffic that was going on on that street.

Speaker 2 00:16:40 And then I said, paddle, damn it. And boy, we paddled and got over into the parking lot. Fortunately, fortunately, at that time the hospital was not flooded and so the lights were still on. But I think I think that that is a leadership example of what you got to do sometimes just to set the example.

Speaker 1 00:17:01 You get there. You know, rain or snow or stormy weather, you know, that’s that’s that that is a perfect example of that kind of leadership.

Speaker 2 00:17:11 Or nervous nervous nervous people about service services.

Speaker 1 00:17:16 Well, Larry, I’d like to just bring a couple of maxims. And I know you’ve got some great stories about it, but one of the one that kind of combines both your military and your corporate experience was that the troops eat first. tell me what what inspired that? In the military, I understand, but but you saw it in both sides. Military and corporate, right?

Speaker 2 00:17:38 absolutely. Because it’s a mindset. And that’s what’s important in most, militaries around the world.

Speaker 2 00:17:47 The officer class is a class apart. It’s set above the men, and the men are sort of second class citizens. so in the United States Army, they have this attitude that when you’re in the field, your troops eat first. Make sure that they are taken care of because they are the important ones out there. And so that’s I, I kind of adapted. I’d spent five years as a regular Army infantry officer and paratrooper. And I adopted that kind of philosophy in my leadership with the Methodist people, because you got to have the, mindset that these people, as one of our leaders once said, the dignity and worth of the institution are vested in you. And he meant the employees of the Methodist Hospital. And that is the kind of veneration for those people that you have to have. And you lift them up and they, they they learn it, they feel it and they appreciate it when they are taken care of. And we had the philosophy that if you took care of the troops, your employees, they would take care of your patients.

Speaker 2 00:19:04 And they did, and they still are today.

Speaker 1 00:19:07 Yeah. I bet you that was a big part of that, that, that that service turnaround too, right? Because I I’ve heard that many times, I think the Ritz-Carlton has that, you know, ladies and gentlemen, treating ladies and gentlemen, if you if you treat your team well, they’re going to treat the customers well. Right.

Speaker 2 00:19:21 Precisely. And it’s true.

Speaker 1 00:19:25 Well, that’s that’s terrific. And was that a big change? Is that part of your culture change?

Speaker 2 00:19:30 Absolutely. All of that. The attitude about the the executives attitude about the employees, the appreciation for them, in fact, I that’s another aspect of this change. I set up communication systems where once a quarter I would meet with all employees He’s at several meetings, obviously, over all the shifts, and tell them that you are not only the hands of the organization speaking to the employees, but you’re you’re the heart and soul of the organization and how the your interactions go with our patients will be moments of truth for this organization.

Speaker 2 00:20:16 And if they go well, it goes well for our organization. And people tell that in their home countries, in their home states, and our reputation gets around and it it redound to our benefit. So I really always emphasize that. But like I said, Julian, this was an all encompassing, all France kind of, exercise.

Speaker 1 00:20:44 Absolutely. That’s a great one. One of the other ones I’d like to talk about, you said that after integrity, Perseverance is an executive’s most valuable trait. Talk to us a little bit about that maxim.

Speaker 2 00:21:00 Just outlast the bastards. That’s that kind of from. From my executive and my, officer experience as army officer. it’s easy to give up. It’s easy to stop trying. It’s easy to say, well, we’ll try something else, or we won’t. We won’t make this work. But sometimes you’ve got to make it work, and you’ve got to stick with it. And you gotta stick it with it for a long time. Like the things we’re talking about.

Speaker 2 00:21:33 You know, these weren’t necessarily easy at first.

Speaker 1 00:21:37 Yeah. I was going to say just because you’re a big organization just doesn’t mean that everything just goes as planned. You can’t just gonna snap your fingers and get results, right. These I’m sure you had ups and downs.

Speaker 2 00:21:47 And when they’re nervous nervous nervous about service, service, server servers. You’ve got to convince them of why it’s important and why they’re part of it is important. They’re key. And so I mean, I’m proud of what we did there. And it developed for us a reputation of being a great service organization. And it redound to our benefit because we had patients from all 50 states every year, all 50 states and from more than 80 foreign countries. So and in my philosophy was at that time we did not advertise anything, but my philosophy was if they have those patients have a great experience, a service experience here, and they go back to wherever they came from and tell their friends that that’s the best marketing you can do.

Speaker 2 00:22:37 And it did in and increase our business and increase our reputation around the world.

Speaker 1 00:22:44 How often do you have to. Did you have to repeat your core strategies and your core priorities? was repetition and consistency. A key part of getting the message across 12,000 employees.

Speaker 2 00:22:56 And a communication system that set it up. I mean, we had, every, every six months, all employee meetings where I every time I was standing there myself talking to them about their role in the future of our institution and how important it was and what how much we, the officers or the executives, appreciated what they did. And we did. I mean, they were it. And I would often tell them I can’t be at the bedside every time, but if you’re sweeping the floor, you can, if you’re changing the bedpan, you’re there to interact with the patients. You have the communication that the executives can’t have. So you’re more important than the executives in that sense. So yeah, it was it was constant. I mean, it really was Terrific.

Speaker 1 00:23:52 Let’s move on to the next one, which is, the CEO is responsible for all that his or her organization does or fails to do. Tell me a little bit about that one. What was the inspiration for that maxim?

Speaker 2 00:24:05 The inspiration was the United States Army, where the philosophy was for commanders, those those put in charge of troops, what the commander was responsible for all his organization did or failed to do. That’s a brutal standard for leadership. It really is. And plus, it was a brutal standard for us because I knew this was my career as an executive in this place. And it turned out to be so because I worked there for 27 years and we had that philosophy. We’re going to be there for the whole time. And so we knew we would have to live with our mistakes. We weren’t just breezing in, being picked for the job as CEO. Working for five years, making some changes and then moving on. Now our team was there for the, for the duration. So that’s the kind of attitude.

Speaker 2 00:25:07 It came from the Army, but it’s the kind of attitude that we still try to impart to our employees, so that they would impart it to our patients, too.

Speaker 1 00:25:21 And I know you were really proud of the team that you, built over time. They’re talking to me about about building a team that can have that kind of longevity and have that kind of impact on culture.

Speaker 2 00:25:32 This is a sore spot with mine, because a lot of executives, when they get a job, they come in and they decide, well, we’ll just wash out the team and I’ll get my own people. And that’s one of my maxims. When you recruit from the outside, you don’t get better people. You just get different people. And the challenge for the leader is no matter who’s on the team, to lead that team effectively. So I think you can put too much emphasis on getting new people and it’ll be better. It’s never better. It’s just different.

Speaker 1 00:26:09 And what was the team that that that you had there? And, I think you, you managed to keep them for quite, quite a long time.

Speaker 1 00:26:16 Right. And had some really great, opportunities to, to pass along the leadership to your team.

Speaker 2 00:26:23 my leadership team is still leading the institution out there. one of my immediate successors, Ron Girardeau, who was my chief operating officer the all the time I was, CEO, and chief financial officer, then ran the organization as CEO for ten years. So he and I together ran it for nearly 50 years. And then, I. I was coming up and I, I was picked to be a leader of one third of the organization. We called it the third Division, and it was, diagnostic and therapeutic. services like radiology, pathology and that sort of thing. And, When I had that, I was assigned by the then CEO, some subordinate executives and those subordinate executives then stayed with me through my, rise to chief operating officer and through when I became chief operating officer, they became my senior vice presidents in the organization, running hunks of the organization. And then I became CEO. They became, subordinate corporate entities, leaders.

Speaker 2 00:27:45 And so they stayed with me my entire career. Three of them, Jim Henderson, Ron Girardeau and Mike Williamson. They were outstanding, and I had ultimate faith and trust in them, and they knew that and they performed accordingly.

Speaker 1 00:28:01 Well, that’s that’s great to be able to have have that kind of longevity. You can really have impact. That’s fantastic.

Speaker 2 00:28:07 I give you another little thing, you know, as you know from my, biography, I’ve been very active outside the organization, too, in leadership positions. And that took me away from the organization, constantly. not constantly, but pretty frequently. And, when I go, I made it a policy of mine never to call back and insert myself in the management or the decisions or the problems that were going on while I was gone for 2 or 3 days, because I never I felt that I would never have the full story. And if I didn’t have the full story, I wouldn’t be a good leader or a good change agent, so they had to deal with it and they knew that and they handled it accordingly.

Speaker 2 00:28:51 So.

Speaker 1 00:28:53 So you empowered them to to step up when, when they were there and they were ready for the leadership roles. When, when when their time came.

Speaker 2 00:29:00 Right.

Speaker 1 00:29:01 Fantastic. maybe a last maxim was that I’d like to discuss with you is that the CEO can do other people’s jobs. No one else can do the CEO’s jobs. What inspired that? That maxim.

Speaker 2 00:29:19 CEOs that I saw were doing the easy jobs, the jobs that looked high profile and good things to do. For example, we had a former executive who went up to a northern hospital and in a snowstorm, chose to go out and ride one of the snowplows and operate it. And it struck me that if he were out there riding a snowplow in a snowstorm. Who was back there thinking for the organization, planning for the organization, and supporting the organization? Too many CEOs, in my judgment, and in my experience, chose to do the easy things. I mean, one opened the mail every day, for God’s sake, but because those are easy things to do, the hard things are to think for the organization, to plan for the organization and to lead the organization.

Speaker 2 00:30:22 And if you are distracted from those things by other things that are not as important, you’re not serving the organization well. That’s where that came from.

Speaker 1 00:30:33 Well, that makes perfect sense. Well, Larry, you know, you’ve you’ve written a second book after the Mathis Maxims because you’ve had such a prodigious, career and and, experiences after retirement. So the last maxim I want to talk about is life begins at 40 and then lasts for 24 hours. you had some thoughts about, your career progression, and I think it’s worth sharing so we can learn from it.

Speaker 2 00:31:03 I don’t know that you want to take life advice from me, but it’s. I’ve had a very, very blessed life. I’ve had great children, responsible children, and great great grandchildren. that’s been a blessing. life begins at 40. Came from a session we had in Vietnam during the war. Combat officers sitting out there, and we were drinking some red wine. And the guy said, you know, the last time I drank red wine, I, I was turning 40.

Speaker 2 00:31:45 And he said, I woke up the next day and had such a headache and. And I said, life’s like that, isn’t it? I mean, you think it’s going to be all roses and all. All of a sudden it turns against you. No matter how long it is, it’s your time. It’s your time to excel. It’s your time to lead. If you’re in that position. And it’s your time to contribute if you’re in that position. So I’ve I’ve been blessed in my career. I’ve been blessed in my relationships. And I personally have been blessed in my marriage and my children and grandchildren. And, you know.

Speaker 1 00:32:26 I can certainly attest to that. What what what what what made you decide to to retire early and explore the world the way you that you have and get involved in board work that we talked about earlier?

Speaker 2 00:32:41 I thought I was going to die early. both my parents died early of heart disease. I had my first heart attack when I was 44. By the way, I’m 82 now, so I was wrong about this.

Speaker 1 00:32:54 Well, you’ve got the Houston Medical Center Methodist Message Center behind you, so you’ve got the world’s best health care.

Speaker 2 00:33:01 Frequent flyer here. Do you know of Methodist? So. so I really had no expectation of living long. And there were some things I wanted to do. I wanted to travel. I wanted to see as much of the world as I could before I died. And I’ve been to 147 countries now, so. And we’re still picking them up as we go along. So, the board thing just sort of happened, but I’m pretty sure it happened because of my leadership positions in the industry. I mean, of course, all three of my public company boards, the drug company and the, the other two, wanted somebody high up in the industry. And so they they gave me their independent director position. So and that was very beneficial financially in many other ways to relationships and others. So that was a very gratuitous thing. And it supported me through a lot of travel and, a lot of expense experiences that I wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Speaker 2 00:34:08 And it’s a cute little book, too, if you read it and all kinds of stuff in it.

Speaker 1 00:34:14 Well, I’ve been I’ve been fortunate enough to, to participate in some of your travels, and I can I can certainly attest that that, you, you you’ve designed the perfect, second, second career and second travel travel experiences with, with with your family and your friends. So congratulations on both your great career and and a great retirement. And thank you so much for joining us this morning Jillian.

Speaker 2 00:34:37 Thank you. It’s a it’s an honor and a pleasure to be here I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 00:34:41 All right. Thanks so much.