Walk the Doc Episode Three: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Good morning everybody, Doug Skarada with Walk the Doc. I just got here to work and I have to apologize I did not do my Walk the Doc last week; because we are very excited we are in the process of trying to open a second location in Portland and we're the shopping for a spot. So it's been kind of time-consuming, and I'm really excited about the topic this week.

I wanted to nail it. So start off by welcoming back square pegs, round pegs. There's a place for you too and I love you all hope you enjoy it but this is a square peg kind of a business I guess. And so we had talked about core values; learning from my mistakes and we'll probably keep discussing those topics as we go along. Also there's a lot of people not part of our organization, or watching these and that's cool man. Love it. Bring it on. You'll get to see what it's like for a young family and a young business a startup trying to fix medicine. So walk in the front door here, kind of do my little turn around thing, it's our office this is Modern Nose Clinic in Salem. And come in here and I'll sit down here in just a few seconds.

So to recap we discussed our core values in the past and we'll probably get back to them in just a little bit today. And today we're going to talk about our reason for being; why does the Modern Nose Clinic? It's the origin story right; so to begin with we have this premise. Let me tell you a story to begin with. I'll tell you story, I'm gonna get the details wrong.

In 2005 there was an earthquake in Santiago Chile or somewhere in South America. And, there were 30 men who were trapped a half-mile underground - which is I think the height of the Empire State Building times two -underground. And they found their way to a little safe shelter underground that had enough food and water for two adult males to last for ten days. And there was no way that anyone knew how to get down to save them. 66 days later; I'll tell you what happened.

Okay, back to our walk with the doc, so the reason why we exist is medicine is broken. And I think that we we can spend a whole episode talking about all the ways it's broken; and we will on subsequent episodes because it's important to understand in what ways it's broken; so we can say in a very meaningful way how we're gonna go about fixing it, but this one will just take it for granted that it is broken on multiple levels. And we believe that the Modern Nose Clinic and our family, including you all as patients, are going to work for a solution.

Our Passion and Our Niche

So I'm gonna talk about two things today; it's our passion and our niche. So our passion is to innovate to excellence. So for all the square pegs out there if you believe in innovating because you feel like we need to improve and do better; and you believe in the hypothetical possibility of excellence then you are you are in the right spot. Our niche is where are we going to innovate for excellence; it's gonna be with next generation nasal care. And so when we see other things that look like they're attractive and we should do it because it could make sense, if it doesn't fit in our niche of next generation nasal care we just throw it over the fence. Because it’s the one thing that we do, and we believe we can do it better than anyone else, as long as we stay focused. When you do everything; when you do a little tonsils and thyroids and this and that you could only be so good. and so we aspire for excellence which this is how we're gonna go about attempting to get it.

Okay let's head downstairs; actually let's carry it wanna walk down down to the elevator.

So it's important to me that all of you all team members of the Modern Nose Clinic’ and actually a Modern Nose Clinic extended family of patients and supporters’ they understand our mission of our company. And because if you don't understand that, if you don't believe in it then you will never have an emotional connection which is necessary for us to accomplish our ambitious goals. So I’m just kind of walking down to my think tank.

So those thirty miners who are trapped a half-mile underground in Chile, they’re their only hope was to function as a team. Which is kind of a little bit what we're all trying to do here; there's no way that one individual can fix medicine. In fact it's quite ambitious even for one clinic; however in our own humble way we will fix this one little corner of medicine. That's what we're working on. So they had teams of people above ground working to get down, and they also had a team those thirty individuals who are trapped and basically, I don't think that any electricity, they had no medicine, it was dirty, they had very little food, and they're probably scared. I'd like to believe they're probably very scared, so the more back to them in just a second.

Our first core value is to elevate the clinical experience for the patient but also for the provider.

So you know basically we believe, remember our first core value is to elevate the clinical experience for the patient but also for the provider. And so we have this idea that there are millions of healthcare workers out there, there are medical assistants, there are nurses, there are administrators, there are providers of all levels, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, physicians, and they all need the Modern Nose Clinic; because the they really are dissatisfied.  The percentage of health care workers who are at the verge of burnout is frightening. If you ever go to see a doctor and you're kind of like “ what is wrong with that doctor, they just don't seem like they care.” They're probably on the edge of burnout and they probably don't know it. So we believe that we're going to meet that need. And I know; I think that that sense of urgency that there are people thirty people trapped underground, and if we don't break down there as soon as possible like today would be good something bad could happen. And we feel the same way about health care, that unless we can kind of create this model so there's another option. So those people who are square pegs and they want to be the best they can be we'll have a home. And that home will be with us here in the Modern Nose Clinic. Let me explain:

So here is my my dry erase board; remember before is talking about an operating system. Had a core values, a vision, are people without great people you can't accomplish things, talking about you all today, our data which is also worthy of a few talks, our processes. our problem-solving, which were very good as it turns out, and our traction or our momentum; which translates our vision into reality. And for now it'll be opening another location in Portland. But over here I want to talk about this guy named Abe.

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

Have you heard of Abe Maslow? I probably spelled it wrong, I just don't know but he was famous for something called hierarchy of needs. And the hierarchy of needs, and I'm not gonna belabor this, has to do with there's the basic needs; you know physiologic needs to met ; you have food, water, and air, and then there's safety you want to feel safe, and then higher than that there's social, you want to feel like how do you fit in, and then there's a esteem, and the highest one is self-actualization; and very few people ever get to that point. Our entire clinic; everything about us the patients we take care of all focus on the top this pyramid. Let me rework this pyramid just for a second.

Okay so here's a reworked pyramid, because we want to simplify it. Okay so we've got our basic functions for a clinic; which is seeing patients, scheduling them, checking them in, rendering services their success, you know how well are we doing that, so we're measuring everything. We want to know how well the patients are doing over time. We want to see where we're good and where we're not good and really try to improve everywhere we can. Yeah that's fine, that's higher than the basic functions and that's great. Most clinics never get there. They never measure anything or they're measuring everything and they don't really come to any solid, you know changes.

But up here transformation; and this is where we lead. This is our theme. This is true for us as individuals. We want people, square pegs of this world unite. If you guys want to have something more in life; you feel like there's a ceiling in your job. You can only do so much and then your responsibilities stop; you're not allowed anything more. That's not true, here we feel like people are capable of amazing things and they are. And so there could be a person who works up in the reception area who becomes a marketing person. There could be a person who is a medical assistant who becomes a surgical tech; goes on to become a provider. So there could be administrators who go on to get more accounting background, or become basically a chief executive officer of multiple locations. So we always feel like there should be something more to go for; we feel like that this is where we want to spend our time as an employee here in our organization, but also our patients healthcare. This is where we spend all of our time.

Oh a 90 year old grandma spends a million dollars the last week of her life before she dies; how can we chop that million dollars down to nine hundred thousand. And that's important that's like no child left behind, who wants to leave a child behind. But everyone's  focusing on the most expensive things and how to save money; and then there is all the stuff in the middle that our patients are up here. They're high performing people, intelligent people they're people who want to achieve the highest degree in life. They're snoring, their spouses are snoring, they wake up tired, they can't get a good night's sleep, they're getting by okay; but they'd like to thrive. They'd like to be the best they can be’ snore no more they've got allergies they're so sick and tired of it and they'd like to just have it cured. If they can cure it ; is there an easy way to cure it. They want to understand it better; they want a smart solution. These are intelligent patients that we have; they take information and they translate it .

They take their vision of having to have best life possible and to traction or they're gonna move the the game forward. And in our clinic we're measuring data to make sure we're doing it well. We've got good processes, we've got excellent people to render those services and whatever problems arise are very good at solving problems. So for our employees we want to live up here for our patients; we want to live up here and and and so we're about transformation and remember what is our reason for being? Our reason for being is -I'm sorry but my paper and I'm trying to forget where I stuck it all down a little bit crazy there okay- so our passion is innovate to excellence and our niche is next generation nasal care. It's important to understand that (and there may be a quiz just saying).

Okay, so those miners who are trapped underground, and there was really no hope for them at all. There was no technology available at that time that knew how to get through that hard rock  ,it was particularly hard rock, and teams from all over the world came together. And these teams worked together okay and they listened to each other, and they respected each other, and they collaborated in an environment that enabled them to do that because they had a sense of urgency. We have a sense of urgency, yes it's terrible that miners are trapped underground, but it's even more terrible the billions of people are suffering from poor health care and we have no good medical system right now for dealing with that. So our goal is also extremely important. There are healthcare workers out there who need us. They're trapped underground, they've got crappy jobs, they've got no hope for the future, there's nothing interesting about their life at all. They need the opportunity to work at the Modern Nose Clinic. So yeah, we need to open another place up in Portland, and another place, and another place ,and we need to bring on square pegs from all over the world. We need to have patients who believe in this vision; who can come in and join this journey. Because there needs to be an emotional connection for this to really make a difference.So, what was I gonna say, the end of the story is first they saved them.  What they did was they found a way to kind of create a tiny little opening down to that that safe chamber underground. And they're able to deliver water, and food, and medicine, and communicate, and that gave them time. That's why they were able to survive for 66 days and every one of them, I think they deployed some safety pod and dragged each them up through the safety pod. Every one of them was saved.

And so that concludes the walk the doc this week. And we talked about our passion, which is innovate to excellence, and we talked about our niche, which is next generation healthcare, we talked about our reason for being, which is that medicine is broken, and we are the solution, and we're gonna do it together as a team and it's gonna be fun. It' going to be  hard work; it's gonna be fun. There's gonna be risk. It's gonna be worth. It's something worth risking for. And so for those of you who are part of our team I love y'all man. You guys are great; and I think our team's gonna get slowly bigger as we start this next location ,including other you know providers and whatnot and we will stick with it. We're gonna find square pegs; happy people; fun people to work with and this is gonna be a culture that we all enjoy coming to work and we're working hard and in fighting the cause.

All right, signing off.

Doug Skarada

The Modern Nose Clinic

We Know Your Nose.

I just want to say another thing here, this is a big day by the way the last week or so we've been working hard. Dr. Lee and I've been working hard and I just want to tell you that I know it's gonna be a killer day because check out the socks I'm wearing today can you see these are electric socks? I mean you know we're down to have a great day oh and when I'm wearing a pair of socks like this and if any of you guys are curious leave a comment or whatnot. I'll give you the backstory about electric socks yeah.