Building Teams with a Growth Mindset (ft. Sachin Agrawal)

Ed (00:01)
Hey everyone, Ed here. Thanks for listening to digital voices. So glad to have you. I know you have a lot of choices. There's a lot of great content out there. I listened to a lot of it myself. You've chosen to spend a few minutes with me. Thank you. Make it worth your while because I have a great guest again, such an Agrawal CEO of e -visit. Welcome to Ed talks. wait, I just messed it up. I'm gonna start over Megan.

Sachin Agrawal (00:25)
Thanks.

Ed (00:29)
I do this other program. I know I have this other show called Ed talks and I just recorded this morning and So let me just start over

Megan (00:30)
Ed, you have too many shows.

Ed (00:39)
Should I start Megan or do we have another countdown? Okay, all right, three, two, one. Hey everyone, it's Ed here. Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. I wanna thank you for listening. I know you have a lot of choices in what you can listen to. I listen to a lot of great content out there and you've taken the time to be with me. Thank you. We'll make it worth your while because we'll always have great guests like my friend Sachin Agrawal, CEO of eVisit.

Megan (00:41)
You can go ahead and go. Yep.

Ed (01:07)
Sachin, welcome to Digital Voices.

Sachin Agrawal (01:10)
Thanks, I appreciate you having me. Always a pleasure to spend time with you.

Ed (01:13)
Yeah, it's gonna be great because you and I go back a ways we were talking about that, you know, basically, you know him's chime these different events over the years you kind of meet each other but never really spend a great deal amount of time together but lately because of e -visit I have spent some time with you getting to know you your team and the company a little bit better and what makes this particular episode also unique is I think your first brother combination I've had on digital voices because we had your brother

Sachin Agrawal (01:39)
Thank you.

Ed (01:41)
Shantanu Agrawal, the chief health officer for Elevance Health on previously. So welcome. And I know you're going to outshine your brother, right?

Sachin Agrawal (01:52)
That's not the objective. We're very proud of him and the family.

Ed (01:56)
Yeah, no, you have an amazing family. You're all overachievers. So songs on your playlist, that's the most important question we ask.

Sachin Agrawal (02:03)
Songs on my playlist. Wow. So my daughter is at the age where she's starting to dictate the playlist a little bit. She'll be four in a couple of months. And I was worried about that dynamic kind of emerging because I've heard horror stories about hearing Frozen and things on repeat. But I think she's an old soul. She really likes...

Ed (02:24)
Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (02:31)
Kind of like what I listened to growing up. She likes like Cat Stevens and we've recently, I've recently introduced her to U2. She likes them a lot. Toad the West Rocket. So she's got weird, weird taste. She doesn't realize that she's into these bands that her old man, you know, that they were either ahead of my time or like right in my time, but that's kind of what she's into. So that's what's on my playlist at the moment.

Ed (02:47)
Thank you.

Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (02:56)
And we have a little guy who's not even one yet. So no matter what you play for him, he's smiling.

Ed (03:01)
He's happy with whatever. Yeah, you know, I have what my oldest daughter's like that too She likes all the music that I liked as a teenager, you know So she's really into like 80s new wave and punk rock and it's kind of fun What about life message or mantra are there words that you live by?

Sachin Agrawal (03:17)
Somebody said this to me, I might butcher the words, but I try to live the spirit of it as often as I can, although I'm sure my wife will tell you that I could do a better job. But I heard this a number of years ago. He said, if you listen intently when somebody else is speaking to you, then you will be understood very well when you speak.

And I think, especially in this like digital world, lots of stimulus, et cetera, where things are coming at you constantly and you're putting things out in the world constantly. I try to get a little bit more kind of tunnel vision and focused on the person right in front of me. And I try to make a connection that way. Sometimes it works. Sometimes I'm not so effective, but I try to live my life that way.

Ed (04:00)
Yeah.

Yeah, I like that a lot. In fact, we have a digital voices playlist full of everyone's Songs on their playlist and we are also creating a digital voices sort of life message and mantra We'll be sure to add that one on there as well. So that's pretty cool Tell us a little bit about yourself like personal professional and you can go back as far as you want

Sachin Agrawal (04:33)
Yeah. So I'm, I grew up in the Midwest in Ohio, where I know you, you spent time. I think like a lot of kind of folks, folks of my age with Indian background, my, my parents came here as immigrants. They actually came here with my brother. So that's something that's quite different about us. He was four years old, was, was born in India when they came here. I was born a few years later, once they got settled in. So, thankfully he can never run for president. We were all, we're all over the moon about that.

Ed (04:58)
you

Sachin Agrawal (05:02)
But yeah, you know, I...

Grew up in a small town in Ohio, probably like a lot of people, when my parents came here, my dad was a medical doctor and a lot of residencies ended up happening in places where there was a high need but not necessarily the supply of domestic graduates. So you have a lot of kind of Indian American families that have settled into small towns because of, you know, that's where the need was. And so he did his residency in Northwest Ohio and.

thought that they would, you know, kind of get a start with private practice for a few years and they just left Ohio like a couple of years ago. So I was born there and raised there. And I've basically spent my entire life, it's kind of linear in certain ways, right? I spent my entire professional career working with hospitals and health systems on a lot of the kind of...

major topics, revenue cycle and network alignment and now focusing on digital transformation. So I kind of fell into this.

Almost as like a second career. My first career was in public health supporting hospitals and health systems around the world, particularly in South Africa and then came back to the US and I've been doing this ever since. Along the way I got married to a very overachieving wife. So there is a theme in terms of people I surround myself with in life.

Ed (06:25)
Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (06:27)
I mentioned we have a soon to be four year old daughter and a soon to be one year old son. So they're our focus. They're our nucleus and they keep us very grounded because usually at some course in the day you make some sort of mistake with them and you try to learn from it at that age.

Ed (06:44)
Right. Do you you and your brother live close to one another and close to your parents?

Sachin Agrawal (06:50)
We live close to each other now, so my family relocated from Nashville, Tennessee to Northern Virginia just a little over a month ago. And so that puts us within 20 minutes of my brother's. We've gotten to spend some more time with them, which has been a lot of fun. And then we've consolidated the Uggervall brothers here, so we're now making a play to get my parents maybe to move up north from Florida, where they thought that they would retire, but we have other plans for them.

Ed (07:19)
No, that's great. I know that's one thing I appreciate about sort of the Indian heritage, you know, it's very, very family oriented and, or, you know, like to be close to one another, which is, I think is great. You got your degree in nutrition. tell us a little bit more about that.

Sachin Agrawal (07:25)
we're filming.

I do.

I didn't know what I wanted to do. I think maybe like a lot of people that age. And so I got to a great university in Ohio, Case Western.

made, you know, kind of immediately fell into a great group of friends, brilliant people, and they kind of fell into two camps. Either they were engineers because it was a very strong technical school for engineering, or they were kind of pre -med or pre -dental or something. And I kind of had a sense that I wanted to get into more of the business of healthcare, but I didn't really know how to go about doing that.

And so I just started taking courses that were interesting to me and a lot of them had to do with nutrition, which at the time, I don't know if it still is, it was part of the school of nursing. And so I just kind of fell into that group as well. And it was a good kind of peer group. And I never knew what I was going to do with it. I thought if anything, it would be hopefully personally beneficial in my life, but I didn't have some master career path laid out.

Ed (08:34)
Yeah, well, no, it's true, though, it's a very practical degree. Unlike mine, I have a good bachelor's in psychology. So there's not too much practical at a bachelor level. But at least yours does. And yeah, it's like allied health for sure. You mentioned several roles that you've had internationally and, you know, stateside. What's been the most informative role that helps you today as a CEO?

Sachin Agrawal (08:57)
and I got, through a combination of some luck and perseverance, my first career experience outside of, as soon as I graduated KACE, so this is back in the early 2000s, I read about this company called Broadreach Healthcare that was founded by a couple ex.

US focused healthcare consultants and they were kind of taking a different, maybe you could say like more of a private sector oriented approach to global health issues. And this was during George W. Bush's administration when there was a lot of foreign aid being sent to Africa in particular, Asia to focus on HIV AIDS.

treatment, right, scaling up treatment around the world. And so I read about these guys in Time Magazine and I just said, I'm gonna be a nuisance until they return my phone call, which they did, or my email. They invited me to come out to Washington, D .C., where they were headquartered. And so...

My very first job out of college, I was obviously in my early 20s. I went to DC for almost a year and then I got sent to South Africa for a couple of years to support a huge PEPFAR contract that this company had won. And I had no idea what I was doing. I practically had no business experience. And the reason that was informative is because I think

I, it just created a lot of confidence in me that if I could, if I could kind of put my mind to something and dedicate myself to it, that I could, I could make impact and make value. I really was questioning whether I had anything to contribute when I first kind of got the assignment. And I do believe I contributed kind of something coming back and obviously learned a lot along the way. So that, that was, that was critical actually for that to have been a first experience and for me to have gone halfway around the world.

by myself, the way that my parents said when they came here. It just tested and built a lot of character for me.

Ed (11:01)
Yeah, this may be kind of a leading question given all of that, but is that something you would recommend to your kids or other individuals as well as they begin their careers really seek out sort of that international experience, like find out what's beyond the US?

Sachin Agrawal (11:16)
Yeah, I would, I specifically I would recommend an international experience, but maybe even even more so kind of broader than that. I would just recommend that people do something that makes them uncomfortable. You know, I think I think a lot of us, you know, kind of knock on wood, right, as, as we get as we get older and and

Ed (11:29)
Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (11:39)
you know, we go on our career paths and have wonderful careers. We tend to be surrounded by people who also have had wonderful careers and are raising kids, you know, maybe in certain ways that they mirror how we raise kids and things like that. So it becomes this kind of self -perpetuating bubble. In a lot of ways, there's great things that come out of that. But I think one of the things is...

the importance of being uncomfortable and getting out of that environment. That could mean internationally, I think that's more important than ever in this world, but it could also mean just putting yourself into a different environment within the US, we're a melting pot.

et cetera. And I'm the beneficiary of very hardworking immigrant parents. My kids are even more so the beneficiary as we kind of carry that forward. And I think it's even more important that they have experiences that put them outside of this Northern Virginia little wonderful bubble that we live in, in this little bubble that they're being raised in. Because there's not a whole lot that we can do to make them uncomfortable unless they put themselves out there.

Ed (12:30)
Yeah.

Yeah, that's that's sage advice. Look, I want to talk a little bit about your company e -visit and then come back to leadership. I love having CEOs on and learning things like you just shared with us. Share with our audience the e -visit story and the mission and vision.

Sachin Agrawal (12:56)
Yeah, so e -Visit was founded back in 2015. And we kind of have a very simple mission, right? Our mission is to simplify healthcare delivery for everyone everywhere. It's simple, it's audacious, right? It's kind of all encompassing. But I think the founders of the company who I've obviously gotten to know and still work with, the idea was that as...

health systems were starting to think about digital transformation right now. This is almost 10 years ago, right? So those words didn't necessarily equate in the same way, but as health systems were trying to figure out how, when they were at the inception of figuring out like what would happen that would be kind of digital first in terms of care.

This company was founded on the principle that health systems needed their own dedicated set of tooling and methods to go execute on that as opposed to kind of looking at outside kind of methods, right? So 2015, the only kind of types of companies that existed in virtual care.

were the teledocs and animals of the world that were kind of offering an alternative to your health system, right? A digital, you know, virtual first network and things like that. So when I first met the founders, they said, Hey, imagine such an, if you had like a legacy industry, like the taxi cab industry.

that had their own way of transforming digitally from the inside out when Uber and Lyft came along, what would the state of that industry be today if we kind of played that out? And I think that idea really resonated with me. There are a lot of things that came with that idea that resonated as well in terms of kind of our underlying business model and economics and things like that, which I think matter a lot in today's economic climate. But yeah, that was kind of the...

the spark, the idea that the founders had. And then I got involved in the business a couple years ago as part of carrying the mission forward on behalf of the founding team as we are just kind of maturing as an organization.

Ed (15:03)
Yeah, I like that a lot. So in, in self -disclosure, I, I was asked by e -visit to come and facilitate a workshop. And that's, that's how we got great more connected than we had been. And I got to hear firsthand stories of customer success, which was really quite exciting because I'm a big believer in virtual care and things of that nature. Can you share with our audience, maybe one or two customer success stories that customers have embraced e -visit and something that they did with it.

Sachin Agrawal (15:32)
Yeah, so as you can imagine, the company was going along kind of nicely, but perhaps somewhat predictably from 2015 till 2020. And then the world became a remarkably unpredictable place in 2020. And there was a lot of...

explosive growth in this part of the market and e -visit experience is part of it. I mean, I could list a hundred different things that customers are doing, but the one that really stands out to me, or I guess a couple that stand out to me, always have to do with kind of public health applications. Because the promise of virtual care from my perspective is to eliminate a lot of the traditional access barriers or to alleviate a lot of the traditional access barriers that we have in

in trying to seek healthcare, right, as a country and as a global economy. And so, you know, you've got a very prominent New York -based health system, you know, the largest public health system.

in the city that is leveraging our technology to enable people that otherwise wouldn't have access to care to just like scan a QR code and to be part of like a digital intake process into that health system. And they implemented that during COVID, but they've kept it going afterwards for a bunch of different public health use cases, you know, for vaccinations and other things. And I think that's really cool because that creates that kind of spark of a relationship

between somebody who didn't previously have a relationship with the healthcare system. It creates that first spark. Likewise in Chicago, kind of a similar DNA health system, the largest.

public health system in Chicago, they use a technology for people who are arriving in the country for the first time. They're oftentimes arriving in shelters and as part of their intake process, they're getting social security cards and other things as part of landing here. But now they have a whole health care workflow.

and they get connected to practitioners of this public health system virtually using our technology. And I think that's so cool, right? When I think about where my parents came from and the time that I spent in India and the time that they came from versus 2024, the fact that we could do these things kind of at our fingertips, those are some of the most gratifying things that we do at eVisit that I'm really proud of.

Ed (18:05)
Yeah, that's super. So there was big news. This happened after we scheduled our time together. So we're recording in July of 2024. There was big news that came out last month that eVisit acquired teleconsult from UPMC. What sort of color can you add to that acquisition?

Sachin Agrawal (18:17)
Mm -hmm.

Yeah, you know, so I think the first thing I'd say is that our business model is differentiated because it's very focused, right? So we exist for the benefit primarily of very large health systems, very large healthcare delivery systems, because they tend to have a lot of untapped infrastructure in place, right? Whether that's human capital or hardware or...

connectivity, whatever it may be, they tend to have that and they tend to have very complicated workflows that span across the continuum of care that are not kind of easy to solve for. And so that intersection of the two is where our business model comes together. We're not a competitive network. We don't offer our own hardware. We are truly an enabling platform for those types of organizations. And I think as this market has evolved, there just aren't a lot of

kind of dedicated business models out there and dedicated missions that are really kind of for health systems by health systems. And so as we started seeing our kind of post COVID momentum, which is really to kind of hardwire what we do into the way that health systems operate, you know, frankly, other health systems have have approached us and have said, hey, either we.

develop something that is ready to be taken to the next level, or we really believe in what you're doing and we want to invest behind that and we want to embed what you're doing into the way that we deliver care and things like that. And UPMC kind of represented all of that. They have a really cool enterprises division within UPMC that creates and incubates technology, especially when they see that that kind of technology hasn't been made available in the commercial market.

And then they also invest in companies and get involved in that success. And this particular asset was a very differentiated way of delivering stroke consultations and other specialty consultations that involved a lot of provider to provider communication, involved a lot of temporal pieces, right? Having to do those things within a certain...

kind of time standard or SLA in order to drive the best outcome. And when we saw it, we thought it was very complimentary to the work that we're already doing with health systems, very additive, some really cool things, obviously, that UPMC is doing because they're on the forefront of delivering care that we didn't see elsewhere. And we kind of all agreed that this would be a good partnership for e -Visit to commercialize that technology in a broader way.

Ed (20:58)
Yeah, makes total sense. I want to flip over to leadership now and ask you, Sujin, what is the one best piece of advice you would give for aspiring CEOs? Because you've been a CEO now a couple of different places.

Sachin Agrawal (21:03)
Yeah.

Yeah, this is my first CEO gig. I've been a CEO now for about a year and a half. So maybe my advice starts there.

the CEO job more than any other that I've had, but I would say any aspiring leader can turn this kind of philosophy that I'm about to say into their philosophy, which is you have a job to do, of course, right? And you have company goals and all sorts of things, right? All business terms that everybody's already heard, right? Those are obviously important things that we have to drive towards, but...

The job, the platform itself, whether you're a CEO, whether you're an aspiring CEO, whether you're a leader in other positions, it's a vehicle for personal growth. And if you treat it as that vehicle for personal growth, I think you'll get return tenfold for the crazy effort that you put in, right? Leadership comes with sacrifice and effort, but you'll get that return, not just kind of back.

into the business, but it'll just perpetuate along all aspects of your life.

for me to be able to now start drawing a line between this personal growth and the CEO role that I'm on and how it impacts parenting and how it impacts the spouse that I try to be, the friend that I try to be, the son and brother that I try to be and things like that. I think that's kind of the magic of the whole thing.

My particular life I've chosen business as that vehicle for personal growth, but anybody can be a leader in any situation. And if they treat that as an opportunity for personal growth, I think they're gonna get a lot out of it.

Ed (22:57)
You've clearly as a leader have had to build teams in order to accomplish the mission and vision of the organizations. What has been one of the most important criteria to you when you think about forming and developing teams?

Sachin Agrawal (23:11)
I think it, you know, people call it the growth mindset, but I think it's all about the fact that the.

the pie in the world is always getting bigger. It's not finite. It's not getting smaller. And I think if you embrace that philosophy and then you surround yourself with people who embrace that philosophy, the thing that ends up leaving the room is kind of ego and pretense. And the thing that remains is actually, I think, magical because you can build something together as a team that kind of makes you feel like an unstoppable force. And that happens day by day.

Ed (23:23)
Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (23:48)
day some days you take two steps backwards maybe instead of instead of you know a giant leap forward whatever it may be right it's never linear but I think that's the most important thing right it's it's

that kind of positive sum game mindset where you can do good for the world, you can do good for each other and for your families and for yourselves and things like that, but it's not some kind of shrinking pool of opportunity. And I've been in those environments, I'm sure you have as well. And I don't think that's kind of the...

I don't think that's the way the world is now. I do think the world is kind of exponentially multiplying in terms of opportunity. And that's the mindset we should have.

Ed (24:32)
Yeah. Yeah. I liked it a lot. What about inspiration? So where do you go? You know, cause things happen and some negative things can happen. You don't get the deal that you wanted or, you know, I think everyone kind of kind of relate to that. You know, it's not always a Rosie. where do you find inspiration? You know, it takes you the positive direction.

Sachin Agrawal (24:56)
You know, so I have a personal board of directors for and they exist for two primary reasons in my life. The first is to hold me accountable to, you know, a number of things that primarily have to do with personal growth and

have to do with things that are not necessarily, they don't show up on a business balance sheet. That's the primary reason. And the other reason is because sometimes if you've been around long enough, you will get kicked to your point. You'll get punched in the teeth at some point. And so you got to pick yourself up. And sometimes you just need that spark of inspiration from people who might know you, people who might know your tendencies.

when you get punched, you know, kind of how that shows up in your personality or how that manifests and they're able to help manage that and kind of bring you back and pick you up.

make you greater, right? And so I think those types of people are very important. It includes family members, close friends, other mentors that I've had in my life. And you need that, especially in this job, right? Talking about the CEO gig, because kind of any given day, it's not even like a...

over the course of a week or a month or something, any given day you could have a couple of great successes and a couple of great things that kind of kicked you. And so to have people in your life that can help you maintain perspective on all of it, I think it's very important.

Ed (26:28)
Yeah, that's, that's very well said. and I wish we had more time to unpack that, but that whole concept of a personal board, super, super, super, important. Hey, what would your, if your parents were on right now, what would they say about, you know, both you and your brother are, you know, you're very, outwardly focused in terms of helping others. you, you were obviously raised a certain way that made you both seek out opportunities to help others and you, you can feel the empathy and the kindness.

What would your parents say is like, how did that happen? How'd they do that?

Sachin Agrawal (26:59)
We've asked them a lot because now obviously we have the risk, my brother's further along than I have, than I am, but we both have the responsibility of raising citizens that we hope embody that. And I haven't gotten a clear answer on that. I think a lot of what we, a lot of the environments that kind of shape who we are.

I think so much of it is just unspoken or or non intentional. And my parents, especially who, you know, have a have a completely different culture that they were raised in in terms of language and how things are framed from a linguistic perspective, et cetera. It was it was less about what they were saying that that my brother and I I think we're paying attention to and just kind of more how they how they acted with people around them. And I'm sure.

Ed (27:32)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Sachin Agrawal (27:56)
through osmosis or whatever that got absorbed. But anytime we ask our parents for specific parenting advice, we get very nondescript answers back.

Ed (28:07)
You

Well, they clear they clearly did a great job and I'm sure you and your brother doing the same with your kids So wow, we covered a lot here and I wish we had more time especially on the whole concept of the personal brand think people should really pursue that and Find out more about that. We talked a lot about e -visit and I love the mission and vision It's just on this how simple it is, but yet grand you know how you're helping with public health in particular and eliminating barriers and

Sachin Agrawal (28:15)
See you next time.

Ed (28:39)
not just public health, but those were some of the examples that you were given that came out of the pandemic. And then in terms of your career. So you talked about taking risks, about being persistent. And my favorite is being uncomfortable. So covered a lot of content, a little bit of Kat Stevens, a little bit of you too. what did we miss or is there anything you want to double down on such? And I'll give you the last word.

Sachin Agrawal (28:58)
Thanks, Ed. I just want to, we didn't get a chance to talk about you very much or my perception of you, but I'd like to maybe just spend a minute on that if you don't mind. I think what you're doing is super interesting because healthcare delivery, especially in this country, especially kind of health system based healthcare delivery is

is facing a very difficult moment right now. And we know all the drivers, right, in terms of burnout and other pressures that are being placed on health systems. But I think more and more the kind of people like you who are taking a deep health system -based set of experiences and...

helping them transform kind of from the inside out, but by working with organizations that are coming from the outside in, it's really cool. And you don't really talk about yourself a whole lot, but I've seen it firsthand. You've talked about the work that you're doing with e -Visit, and we're excited to do more work with you. But that's a really important part, in my opinion, of this kind of for health systems, by health systems formula that we have at e -Visit. And so I just kind of want to thank you for that.

for that. You're a really trusted part of our ecosystem and we should do a whole session on that at some point.

Ed (30:21)
Yeah, no, that's very kind. Thank you so much. And Sachin, truly thank you for being a guest, super insightful and appreciate all that you do as a leader and helping to transform healthcare and helping a lot of different health systems around the U S and probably the globe as well. So thank you for being our guest.

Sachin Agrawal (30:38)
Thanks again for having me.

Ed (30:40)
Hey, that wraps up another edition of Digital Voices again. Thank you for listening.