Ep 86: The Power of Everyday Leadership with Guest Brian Unell

Ever wondered how you can make a difference in your everyday life? Today, we've got Brian Unell, CEO of VantageHealthai and author of Everyday Leadership, You Will Make a Difference, on the show to help you do just that. With a fascinating journey that started with a statistics degree and led him through consulting and healthcare, Brian shares invaluable insights on leadership and company culture that will leave you inspired.

One key takeaway from our conversation is the powerful role of company culture and how it can be proactively shaped. Brian and I dive into how you can establish a purpose and commitment statement, foster a servant leadership mentality, and navigate the tricky waters of implementing change in large organizations.

Our discussion then pivots to the profound impact of a growth mindset on communication, courtesy of Carol Dweck's theory. We unravel how internal intentions can color our communication style, fostering a more positive environment. As we round up the episode, we reflect on leadership, growth, and the value of relationships. Discover how mindful communication can transform your interactions and eliminate those pesky preconceived notions that can lead to negative outcomes. This is one episode you don't want to miss!

Brian is the CEO of VantageHealth.ai which focuses on simplifying the billing and payment processes for patients while reducing costs and increasing revenue for providers/vendors. Brian also founded Thrival Consulting, LLC in 2020 which focuses on expanding leadership at home, work, and in life as an author and speaker. His first book Everyday Leadership: You Will Make A Difference was released in the Fall of 2022. Previously, Brian served as the Vice President, Revenue Cycle at Piedmont Healthcare (PHC) leading 1,500 team members to drive results for 11 hospitals & >1,000 providers. Brian also worked in PHC’s corporate PMO where he developed the business case and served as an accountable executive for a $180M systems integration project implementing Epic and PeopleSoft. 

Brian has been described as a transformational healthcare executive who has a passion for cultivating talent and driving change to enable sustainable results. Brian defines opportunities, develops strategies, prioritizes initiatives, and drives results via a belief that “Communications and Expectations are 90% of Success” while trying each day to solve more problems than he causes.

Brian holds three degrees from the University of Florida: BS-Statistics, Master of Business Administration, & Master of Health Administration. Brian currently resides in his hometown of Atlanta with his wife Hilary, fifteen-year-old son Harris and five-year-old daughter Sara.

Chapters

• 0:00 Leadership, Culture, and Everyday Leadership
• 5:56 Leadership and Company Culture
• 14:08 The Impact of Mindset on Communication
• 24:15 Leadership, Growth, and Reflection

Transcript

Brian Unell: 0:00

But the cool part about that decision where I went against what my team's recommendation was the one time one of my director ports walked in my office the next day and she looked at me and said you know we disagree with this and I said yes, and she said we'll support it 100% and turned around and walked out. And they did. And it was at that moment in time I knew the culture held.

Kyla Cofer: 0:28

Welcome to the Leadership School podcast. I'm your host leadership and self-care coach, Kyla Cofer. Here at the Leadership School, you'll hear leaders from around the world sharing their stories and expertise on how to lead with balance and integrity. Our goal teach you how to be an extraordinary leader. Welcome back leaders.

Kyla Cofer: 0:54

Today I'm here with Brian Unell, who is the CEO of VantageHealth. ai. They focus on simplifying the billing and payment process for patients, which we know we've all had to deal with that and how much of a pain that is. So thank you, Brian, for your work on that. He's also the author of the book Everyday Leadership, you will make a difference. So our conversation today really talked a lot about three things culture, mindset and that everybody can be a leader. So Brian really believes that everybody can be a leader and we talked a lot about what that looks like and what creating a company culture that you are proud of looks like, and he really gets into sharing some stories, personal stories. My favorite is when he talks about a big decision that he had to make and that was different from the rest of his team and how his team supported him in that decision because of the company culture that they created. So take a listen for that particular story.

Kyla Cofer: 1:48

Brian, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today. It's such a pleasure to have you here, Brian. I really am grateful for you spending time and taking the time to join me here on the Leadership School podcast, so thanks so much for joining me. I would love to just hear about you and your story. You've got quite a unique, interesting story, so why don't you share with us your journey and how you got to here?

Brian Unell: 2:10

Well, first off, Kyla, I appreciate the opportunity to be here. Thank you very much. It is exciting to be able to share my story. I'm born and raised here in Atlanta, Georgia, and where I currently reside, despite the painting of the Arkansas travelers behind me, which is actually painted by my uncle, believe it or not, when my cousin was a assistant general manager there 30 years ago. Believe it or not?

Kyla Cofer: 2:27

Wait, that's a painting. I thought it was a photo.

Brian Unell: 2:29

I know everyone thinks it's a photo but it's a painting. It was left in my parents' basement. I don't think my cousin's wife liked the painting so we got left in my basement so I put up my office. But he knows it's here so he can get it one day. I had a couple cousins who went to the University of Florida for my undergraduate degree.

Brian Unell: 2:44

I was pre-med in pre-acturial science, obviously not sure what I wanted to do with my life, but really more curious than anything else about just learning. I always had a thirst of knowledge, so to speak, and always wanted just to continue to learn. So I wanted to try to figure out what I wanted to do next, whether it was an actuary or a doctor. And, long story short, my grades weren't great but they weren't terrible. But I just hated the science classes and I had taken a number of other business classes with the Actuary Science minor and other things. And I went to the Guidance Counsel's office and I said I need the shortest path out in my junior year and she said statistics degree and I said sounds great. So I had a statistics degree.

Brian Unell: 3:23

So I took the GMAT and did well enough to get into both the University of Florida's dual degree MBA and MHA program and the University of Georgia, and two years later, after completing the program, started Ernst Young Big Five Consulting.

Brian Unell: 3:36

They end up selling us to Capgemini six months after I got there, an Accenture several years after that, but thought I would do it for a couple years, and did it for six and a half, mainly focused in healthcare, mainly focused within the provider space, in healthcare and within provider, worked for them for six and a half years, and then went into industry, worked at a very large health system called Tenant Healthcare, and then Tenant wanted me to move to Dallas to create an internal spin-off, but my wife was seven months pregnant and, for family reasons, I thought I needed to look around Atlanta and join Piedmont Healthcare, which is an incredible, tradition-rich, quality-focused organization based here in Atlanta, and the health system grew from four hospitals at the time into about 500 employee physicians to, when I left, 11 hospitals and over 1,000 physicians, and during that time we improved net revenue by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Brian Unell: 4:27

And the two things I'm most proud of, though, are the folks that actually worked at the hospitals that became part of our team as part of that transformation effort, who do the registration work, all of their employee engagement scores were higher than the hospitals that they worked at, and we were able to reduce our turnover rate to under 10% the last two years I was there. So the industry average again was between 20 and 25, which is where we were at, but the last two years was under 10. Those are the things I'm most proud of, because that makes just a difference in people's lives.

Kyla Cofer: 4:52

That's pretty significant. Was there one or two things that you can kind of pinpoint that really helped make that leap?

Brian Unell: 4:57

It was really all about hiring the right people and with the right intention and focus, and I believe if you put all of your time, energy and effort in making sure the resources on the front lines have the tools and knowledge to be able to do their jobs and the support, they will make your life as a leader much, much easier. Right, and it doesn't mean that the leaders aren't needed by any stretch of imagination. It just changes what they focus on.

Kyla Cofer: 5:19

Absolutely so. You've spent most of your career in financial roles and in healthcare, right? Yes, so tell me what you're doing now.

Brian Unell: 5:27

So I decided to leave my job in late 2019. And my last day was February 7th of 2020. I just needed to change. I needed to do something.

Kyla Cofer: 5:38

Everybody knows what that date means.

Brian Unell: 5:39

Right, and so I had a whole bunch of things I was looking at and everyone who had done some sort of midlife career change and I'd said you know, it seemed like a midlife crisis, but it was really a midlife thoughtful, contemplative, deliberate decision and I was planning to take a little time to figure out what was next. Fortunately, or unfortunately, due to COVID, I was given the gift of time and was able to write a book on leadership, which was a pipe dream that I had for about a decade.

Kyla Cofer: 6:06

What's the title of your book?

Brian Unell: 6:07

It's called Everyday Leadership. It's really focused on how you can make a difference in people's lives or you will make a difference in people's lives, regardless of your role or your title and we get to more of the book in a minute. But I'm currently the CEO of a patient financial engagement company that is revolutionizing the way patient billing is done.

Kyla Cofer: 6:26

Awesome, okay, tell me more about that, because I'm just curious.

Brian Unell: 6:29

Yeah, so everybody is a healthcare experience and everybody gets a healthcare bill, and it typically comes out on paper these days and it typically comes out once a month, and we have found a way to make it easier for people to view and pay their bills by sending them digital communications and to essentially turn the patients or the guarantors into the employees, just like all the airlines have and all the hotel companies have and other industries have, to be able to get you to buy their products without actually having to use labor to sell it to you, and we've been able to increase revenue and decrease cost.

Kyla Cofer: 7:05

Wow, that's amazing, fantastic. Well, you've been working hard, Brian.

Brian Unell: 7:10

We have. It's fun, it's a startup and it's something I've never done before and I'm getting an opportunity to build a culture with a company. I believe organizations take on the characteristics of their leader and actually just this week rolled out a new set of purpose statement and commitment statement which is different than a sort of historical way of looking at mission and vision. So we have a purpose and a commitment that we make to our customers and to our people and a set of values that we live by, and it's exciting to be able to attract quality talent to be able to make a difference.

Kyla Cofer: 7:41

So tell me a little bit more about that. So you have, in the past, changed company culture and now you're focused on building company culture. So tell me about some of those differences between when you had to completely change it versus starting from scratch, and how you're going about that. Maybe some advice that you would have on where is the best place to start and really making sure that you get it right from the start.

Brian Unell: 7:59

Yeah, prior to becoming the CEO of a startup, I would call myself an entrepreneur, someone who went into large companies as a change agent to be able to just make a difference, and either I was young or naive or just didn't care, or some combination is. I always felt that I was asked to be part of an organization, to speak my mind, so to speak, right, and I was asked to come to a meeting. I would tell people what I thought, and I had numerous bosses over the years tell me that I see things before other people see them, and that was a gift that I had and I needed to be able to leverage it and cherish it. But over time I realized that some organizations or some cultures or some leaders don't always want you to say what you're thinking and had to balance and try to figure that out. And so those large organizations, specifically healthcare providers, are designed not to change. They are really so steadfast in the way that they've done business for all these years.

Brian Unell: 8:53

And it's a really interesting realization that I had a few years ago when I was actually writing the book that I had not fully comprehended when I was actually in graduate school and I was up in the MBA program or in the MBA program in the business school, taking all these business classes where you're talking about organizational behavior and concepts such as servant leadership in ways that leaders were managing in the late 90s and beginning in the 2000s, so to speak.

Brian Unell: 9:19

And then I went down to the medical school area to be able to take my health administration classes and all the concepts around leadership were command and control 1970s and 80s style leadership that we are training you to be able to go toe to toe with the physicians, essentially. And it never really hit me at the time, but the dichotomy was so just clear and it's really still prevalent across the health industry today. There are very few organizations out there that have true what I would call servant leadership mentality, unfortunately, and I believe that that's one of the reasons why there was so much nurse turnover and burnout during the pandemic.

Kyla Cofer: 9:59

Burnout you have some experience with burnout.

Brian Unell: 10:02

I do have some experience with burnout, unfortunately, fortunately, depending on how you want to look at it.

Kyla Cofer: 10:08

Yeah, so you kind of went through that right before the pandemic and kind of been in a journey and learning that. So you have some really empathy for what these people are going through with our nurses.

Brian Unell: 10:19

Absolutely. I mean culture is everything in an organization right? It is the absolute one thing. When stuff hits the fan or hits the wall, depending on how you want to say it it's how the organization operates. And these organizations are terrific at providing great quality care. Don't get me wrong, they are fantastic at it, but they are so cost focused that it really impacts their ability to deliver what I would call servant leadership mentality, and they want to try to prevent errors.

Brian Unell: 10:49

The largest medical record system in the world is something called Epic and they are, like I said, most countries now across the world and specifically over 300 million people, I think, in the US at this point in time. One of the things the CIO saw quoted about Epic was it won't make you extraordinary, it won't make you extraordinarily good and it won't make you extraordinarily bad. They try to keep it that way to some degree because they want to try to eliminate as much variation as possible, because variation causes risk, etc. But it also keeps people from being able to go above and beyond and it keeps people from being able to identify things in a way that they may not otherwise, because they just become robotic in the process. And again, I'm not speaking generically, there are wonderful folks out there and wonderful organizations, but the more and more that I've been able to step back and get out of that frying pan, I've just realized that culture is everything.

Kyla Cofer: 11:41

Well, I agree, it's something that we really discuss a lot here on the Leadership School Podcast. We talk a lot about personal development, emotional intelligence, leading people first. All of that really talks about the company culture and corporate culture and just family culture, society. I mean, when you are intentional about what kind of culture that you're creating, then everything else flows from that and you know when you walk into a place what kind of culture they value. You know, we were on the phone with the customer service for a utility company earlier this afternoon and they have given us the run around for an entire year.

Kyla Cofer: 12:15

A year we have struggled with the customer service on this company and we had actually canceled the service. We are just trying to like get everything sorted out and it's just you can tell from one conversation with a customer service rep what kind of culture they have in that company because the customer service is so bad. But when I call customer service with like some data and soft databases and softwares that I use and I get such positive, immediate, great responses. Those are places that you're like I kind of want to work there because their customer service is so great. So even like the basic level of culture trickles down to every level of the company.

Brian Unell: 12:51

I mean. Think about the fast food restaurant chains and how the average Chick-fil-A does twice as much revenue as the average McDonald's, right? Yes, maybe the food's better, maybe it's more expensive, but people go to Chick-fil-A not just because of the food but because of the culture, right?

Kyla Cofer: 13:05

Because they know it's going to be, they're going to feel safe and they're not going to be scared to walk through it, Absolutely, Absolutely. Hey, Brian, in your book let's talk about your book for a second because in your book you mentioned that you believe that everybody can be a leader. Maybe you can talk to us a little bit about that.

Brian Unell: 13:18

Yeah, I'll just give a simple example at home, because you mentioned home earlier, and I believe parents set the culture for their families right. That one day my son he was probably 12 at the time and our daughter is 9.5 years younger he was upset about something and I don't remember exactly what it was, but he was upset or whatever and my daughter just came up to him, gave him a hug around his leg and just started petting his leg right and it immediately just changed his demeanor. And it sounds silly, but that was demonstration of leadership. She knew somebody needed something. And even you know we are innately, as humans, being able to be able to provide empathy, at least the females in my life are not sure about the males, but the females are and just that moment of you know completely changed the entire situation. And my wife describes it.

Brian Unell: 14:08

If you go to Costco and you're in the return line, right, and you think about this, whether you're the senior VP who's coming to visit the store for the day, the store manager, the person behind the return counter or a customer, you can make or ruin dozens of people's day just by your communication and your mindset, which is what my book is about, right, if you just think about that, just think about the interactions that you can have when you walk into the doctor's office and they don't even look at you and they say please take a seat. And then they say next, or they call your name when you have to write it down on the list, and you walk up and they're still looking down at their computer. What kind of impression does that give to you as a customer or as a patient, right?

Kyla Cofer: 14:51

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Kyla Cofer: 15:15

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Kyla Cofer: 16:32

Yes, you just said that you can make or ruin someone's day by your communication and your mindset. I'm following you on both of those, but I'm curious if you could explain a little bit more about what you mean by the word mindset here, because we can know about communication I could communicate with you in gruff voice or kind voice or how the words make a difference. Right, and not just the words but the energy behind it. What do you mean when you're saying mindset?

Brian Unell: 16:55

Yes, I'll take it from two angles. One is, at a big level is just how you think in your openness to new things, which is tied to the second item, which is a theory by Carol Dweck called a growth mindset. I don't know if you've heard of Carol Dweck.

Brian Unell: 17:12

I learned of Carol Dweck when my son came home in third or fourth grade with a flyer basically they had completed it and it was read and it said don't be a fixed Freddy. And so I started talking to him about what a fixed Freddy was. And a fixed Freddy is somebody you experience or expresses a certain set of characteristics associated with a fixed mindset that I can't do something, or this is too hard for me, or I can't be friends with that person in class, or something along those lines, where you have already predetermined with the outcome before you even started the task because your mindset is set that way. And Carol talks about the concept of a growth mindset and the ability to look at situations and opportunities and people and conversations in a different way, and that in itself, to me, is the single biggest thing that you can do is to try to learn something new every day, versus going into with a preconceived notion.

Kyla Cofer: 18:07

What's interesting to me, though, is the way that you're applying the word mindset to the way that we can influence somebody else, so not just in the way they're communicating, but the way that our internal intentions are set. I look at it as the way that we've set our mind yeah, having a curiosity mindset, a growth mindset, a learning mindset. All of these, then filter through the way that we communicate, and then that, in turn, is what the culture or the energy that we bring to somebody else Absolutely so. If I go in with a I'm here to learn and be curious about you, then that's going to affect the way that you respond to my conversation.

Ad: 18:46

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Kyla Cofer: 18:47

Is that? Was that what you're meaning when you say the word mindset?

Brian Unell: 18:49

I think in some ways it's sort of in the eye of the beholder. Some degree right, but absolutely right. It's being having openness for lack of better phrase instead of closed. You know, I've occasionally, if you work in a large organization, people call you about some employee on part of your organization and they had some interaction with someone on their team, etc. And I used to be defensive about my team. Always right, you're always going to be defensive of your team. Or I would be the other way around, like, well, that person's caused problems in the past, so I'm sure they caused the problem again this time, and that even those simple sort of preconceived notions can lead to bad outcomes. Or I talked about an example I actually have written.

Brian Unell: 19:31

When I wrote the book, I ended up writing over 50 chapters and 100,000 words, and 15,000 words is a case study. And it's a case study on this huge decision that we had to make as an organization around a new vendor for something and the process that we put through, etc. And what I realized through that whole process is the process was designed to get the outcome based upon how we set it up. Right the process, the decision was actually going to be made, or the outcome of the or the recommended decision was made based on the way the process was set up, and so I had to take a step back at the end of the process and realized the entire process, it wasn't flawed, it was actually done perfectly. It just led to an outcome that was already known like. We went through this giant RFP and dozens of vendors and dozens of meetings, and it led to the same outcome every time because of the way that we set up the process right.

Brian Unell: 20:30

We asked, we had people who were part of the team from various parts of the organization who gave their input on what questions they wanted to ask and what was important to them, so it immediately ruled out any potential other option.

Brian Unell: 20:41

They were so fixated on what they thought that they wanted as opposed to what result that they wanted to try to get out of it. And that's what I talk about openness and mindset. And it was the one time in my career where I overruled my team and I went with the vendor that they tried to rule out at the beginning of the process because they didn't like the RFP response, and then, after the oral presentation, I made them come in and just give orals because I wanted the team to hear something different than everybody else, and I had no intention of selecting them, I just wanted the team to hear something different and they rated dead last out of everybody. And I started having conversations with the team and I realized that it wasn't that they didn't like the vendor. They just didn't think that the way the vendor operated was gonna get us the results that we needed.

Kyla Cofer: 21:32

It's fascinating Well that's just like proof there to me and you know we've seen this kind of proof in so many different ways but it's just proof of how our emotions and the way we feel affect facts and affect our thoughts. So all of those things work together and when we're thinking about something, our emotions play into the way that thought processes and appears itself to us. So if we're already feeling uncomfortable, we're feeling disrespected, we're feeling bored, we're feeling like we are not, our opinions aren't valid or being heard, that no matter how good something is, on the other end we're gonna automatically think that it's not right and it's not gonna work for us. And we're gonna tell ourselves that it's true. That goes back to that mindset, right? So we're gonna tell ourselves that that's true because our brains are gonna create that anyways, that end result, because of the way that we feel.

Brian Unell: 22:24

I believe that when we are almost everyone out there that I know has more to do in a day than they have time to do it and in those instances you typically go back to what you know and what you like to do, and what that means is is you find comfort in hearing things that support your opinions, right?

Brian Unell: 22:44

It's why people who have certain views watch MSNBC and others who have certain views watch Fox News. It's that reassurance that they have been craving, because their lives and it's just something that they're looking for that's stable, right, they don't wanna feel challenged. And me, in the mornings, when I'm exercising five, six in the morning, I'll watch all the channels because I'd like to understand what the different views are out there, and then I shut it off and watch something sports related. But it's just really interesting. But the cool part about that decision where I went against what my team's recommendation was the one time one of my director ports walked to my office the next day and she looked at me and said you know we disagree with this, and I said yes, and she said we'll support it 100% and turned around and walked out. And they did, and it was at that moment in time I knew the culture held.

Kyla Cofer: 23:40

Wow, because you had already built that culture of respect and being able to trust each other.

Brian Unell: 23:45

Yep, and it wasn't something I did all the time. It wasn't. They didn't agree with it, but they supported it 100% and they made it work and it brought in millions of dollars to the business.

Kyla Cofer: 23:57

Wow, those decisions can be really challenging when you know that you're having to push back against someone else, but you know that's the right decision, and when you're up against a team, but they have your team come alongside you and support your anyways. Let me ask this did you lose any employees? Did anybody? Was anybody like I just can't, I can't.

Brian Unell: 24:13

No.

Kyla Cofer: 24:14

That's amazing.

Brian Unell: 24:15

And it was a painful process because the vendor was new into the space to some degree. They'd not done it. We had to teach them. We had to educate them and the team did an incredible job. I mean, they really did. They stepped up. They not once did they ever come back and complain to me and say we should have done something different.

Kyla Cofer: 24:31

Isn't that kind of fun, though, that sometimes, when we are working towards a common goal and we have the struggle that we actually accomplish more, that we go farther and we grow closer together.

Brian Unell: 24:43

Yeah, it's so true and if you would have just done. It's sort of like one of the philosophies is I was putting these values together, for the new company that I'm working with now is, I said, correct is greater than fast plus easy. Right, it's one of the values we have, because the founder and myself both are trying to build a business. Right, it's easy to some degree to go out and raise money and hype and all those things, but when you actually want to build a business, it's fun, it's a lot more rewarding than just trying to go out and raise money, so to speak, and get all the hype and branding and marketing. We actually have a product that works and our clients love it, their patients love it and it's been great.

Kyla Cofer: 25:25

Wow. Well, Brian, can you maybe summarize for me? You've mentioned it a few times, but you said you believe that everybody can be a leader. I mean, I guess we didn't really talk about should everybody be a leader? That's probably a discussion for another day, but I'm just wondering if you could just sum up for me. What does the word leadership and what does the act of leadership mean to you?

Brian Unell: 25:45

It's funny you mentioned that. One of the things I do when I do my keynote is I talk about and ask the group well, what is leadership? Right? You get these different things, helping people achieve goals, or getting alignment among a team, and essentially they're all subjective. There's no objective, real view of leadership, so I basically then, basically, I tell everyone I said well, leadership is like pornography, because the Supreme Court Justice Potter, said we're not pornography, because I know it when I see it, and that's really what leadership is at the end of the day. People know it when they see it, and sometimes it's good leadership and sometimes it's bad, but they definitely know it when they see it.

Brian Unell: 26:26

And I think, though, it goes beyond that, and that's what my book tries to do, which is different than everything else that's out there, because all these previous books on leadership put leadership on a pedestal. I believe that you have to have a role or a title, or you're born with it, or you have these certain characteristics that make you a leader, but, in reality, we all have it inside of us. We really do, I believe, to make a difference, and whether it's helping somebody cross the street or carrying out somebody's groceries from the grocery store, the little acts of kindness in some ways just can make a huge difference in somebody's day, week, month, life, year, right, I mean it's just, and that's what it's about to me. It's not these big things that everybody wants to put up there. It's really about trying to make the small differences every day to make the world and each other's lives better.

Kyla Cofer: 27:14

If you were to give yourself, your 30-year-old self, a piece of advice, what would you want your 30-year-old self to know?

Brian Unell: 27:21

Can I cuss?

Kyla Cofer: 27:22

No.

Brian Unell: 27:23

Slow, the blank down, slow down.

Kyla Cofer: 27:26

Slow down.

Brian Unell: 27:26

Slow down. It's the number one thing I would give my 30-year-old self. I was just going doing fast as I possibly could. Again, not because I was interested in speed by any stretch of the imagination. It was just I thought doing more faster would allow me to achieve more, and it did, until I got to a spot where I realized that there's a lot more to life, so much more to life.

Kyla Cofer: 27:56

You know, I think the pandemic is challenging and tough, as it was really gave us all that perspective that we have to enjoy the life that we're living now in a way that helps us to remember that all we have is this exact moment.

Brian Unell: 28:14

Yeah, I agree with you a hundred percent. Talk about, maybe it's wisdom, I don't know. I'm not saying I have it by any stretch of imagination, but I definitely have more wise than I was in my 20s or 30s. But I probably would have not had as much fun either in certain aspects in our 20s and 30s. But I'm still cautious, in general conservative, how I operate on a day-to-day basis. I'm not a big risk taker in general. I still would slow down because in relationships are what matter. I mean, it's, at the end of the day, it's about the impact that you have on others. And that gets back to the theory that I have that everybody can make a difference in everyone's lives. And fortunately I don't have too many regrets, I don't have to go back, and there's a couple of situations in my life I wish I would have handled differently. I think we all have those and for the most part I have amended where possible those situations. But relationships are the most important thing.

Kyla Cofer: 29:14

Well, I think we kind of wrapped up everything, so I just really wanted to say thanks so much for joining me on the podcast and for sharing your wisdom and your experience with us. I'm just really really grateful for your time.

Brian Unell: 29:25

I'm grateful for the opportunity. Hopefully you got what you needed.

Kyla Cofer: 29:30

So I started this podcast because I wanted to learn and grow in my leadership journey and I have been so incredibly inspired by the guests and the conversations. So once the interview ends, I actually keep the conversation going because I have found that sometimes the richest part of the conversation is when we feel like the interview is over and we can just kind of have a relaxed, more casual conversation. Also, if you've noticed, if you've been following this podcast for some time, I used to ask every guest two questions what does integrity mean to them and what does balance look like to them? Well, I haven't stopped asking those questions. We're just putting those over on our Patreon page. So go check it out at patreoncom and for $6.50 a month you can support this podcast.

Kyla Cofer: 30:17

It takes a lot to produce every single episode and, honestly, I can use a little bit of support. So anything that you're able to contribute would really mean a lot to me and would able to help me to continue to bring these high caliber guests in to have conversations on what does it look like to be an extraordinary leader and how do we practically do that. So those conversations are continuing over at patreoncom slash leadership school, where I'm asking guests some extra questions, some bonus questions. You'll get some bonus content over there, so be sure to go check it out. Thanks so much for your support and thanks so much for subscribing, listening and sharing this podcast. It really does mean a lot and I'm so honored to show up here in your podcast feed. Hey, thank you so much for listening. If you've liked what you heard and you want some more tools and resources to help you on your journey, go check out kylacofer. com/ free stuff.