Mike Garrett’s Evolution from career change to COVID to AI to the box behind door number three

Anthony Codispoti (00:01)
Welcome to another edition of the inspired stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Cotaspoti and today’s guest is Mike Garrett. He serves as the vice president of human resources at American healthcare. They specialize in short term rehabilitation and senior care.

and their goal is to offer a nurturing environment and expert services that help individuals recover and thrive. Now, Mike has been a key part of the organization since March of 2016, bringing years of human resources experience to help shape a positive workplace culture. Before joining American Health Care, he held roles as human resources manager at Roe Furniture and assistant manager

of Human Resources at Virginia Transformer Court. On top of his extensive background, Mike earned the SHRM Senior Certified Professional Certification in December 2018. This achievement underscores his commitment to continual learning and growth within his field. Under Mike’s leadership, American Health Care maintains a strong focus on supporting both its staff and its patients. I’m excited to learn more about how he tackles challenges and

drive success at every level. And before we get into that good stuff, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Ad Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. Imagine being able to give your employees free access to doctors, therapists, and prescription medications in a way that puts more money in your staff’s pockets and the company’s too.

As an example, one recent client with 450 employees boosted net profits over $412,000 a year. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible. If you want to find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the VP of HR at American Healthcare, Mike Garrett. Thanks for making the time to share your story today.

Mike Garrett (02:18)
Thank you, Anthony. Happy to be here.

Anthony Codispoti (02:20)
Okay, so Mike, you started your career in manufacturing at Roe Furniture. And when I say in manufacturing, I don’t just mean at a manufacturing company in HR. You were doing the manufacturing, you were on the factory floor. Can you walk us through how you first got started there and then how you eventually ascended into a leadership role in HR?

Mike Garrett (02:34)
Yes, sir.

was working at Burger King and ⁓ I was a night porter. worked, well before I was a night porter, you know, I worked the register, I drive through and then ⁓ I evolved into the night porter. I was working from 11 o’clock at night till about eight in the morning cleaning the restaurant. And I was at a Labor Day party and I had a bunch of friends there having a good time and I needed to leave to go to work. And ⁓

I was wondering why they weren’t leaving to go to work because you know, got to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep before you start on Monday morning. And they said, well, we get a holiday tomorrow, Labor Day. And I thought, well, how in the world do you do that? And he said, well, at Roe Furniture, you get paid holidays. Burger King didn’t provide that to me. So I needed to go work somewhere where I could get a paid holiday. I went to Roe Furniture. I applied.

I was hired on September 19th of 1983. Yes, I do. I was hired to be a cushion stuffer. So all these nice cushions that we sit on and back against, I could tell you how to stuff those. And then I eventually evolved into running the bandsaw where you cut these big foam, they call them buns of poly, which are just about as big as the rooms you and I are sitting in.

Anthony Codispoti (03:43)
You remember the date.

of poly, okay?

Mike Garrett (04:09)
buns

of poly and you would use mathematical equations to cut this huge bun of poly down to a five inch, six inch, seven and half inch cushion. It would be 21, 27 inches or you know, whatever the metrics of that cushion. Yeah, yeah. So I ran that bandsaw for a while and in 1985, the company wanted to do something called employee involvement.

Anthony Codispoti (04:28)
This is the stuffing that goes inside. Yeah.

Mike Garrett (04:39)
They wanted to have our folks to have a voice on the floor for how do we improve productivity, quality, and the employee experience. So they launched teams in every department, in the stuffing department, the upholstery department, the shipping department, every department across grow furniture had employee involvement. And the teams grew and grew and grew and they needed to have an employee involvement coordinator and they hired someone to do that.

and then they needed facilitators for every meeting. And I wasn’t ⁓ shy at the time. was doing singing telegrams. I was singing in a rock and roll band. And I said, sure, know, train me how to be a facilitator. And I learned how to define a problem, root causes, band aids, ⁓ possible solutions and follow up and go through all that. And then the

Anthony Codispoti (05:20)
Okay.

Mike Garrett (05:36)
teams continued to grow and they needed an employee involvement assistant. So I became the assistant EI coordinator. Eventually the EI coordinator left and I became the, I went from assistant to the ⁓ official EI coordinator. I was working with everybody in the factory and actually we had two factories. We had a frame factory that supplied the frames for upholstery. So there were two different companies I was working for at the time.

and I knew everybody and the HR manager at the time asked me if I’d be interested in learning a little bit about human resources because I ⁓ becoming more of or less ⁓

Anthony Codispoti (06:19)
I was going say you were kind of

already involved with some of that.

Mike Garrett (06:22)
I was an employee relations guy and I could talk about the language of the floor and what’s going to play well and what’s not going to play well as far as a new benefits program or a policy or a procedure. Then they brought me into the office, just a real basic thing about answering the telephone. And then this is what the files look like and this is the computer and this is, it was an HRIS system back in 1984.

89 at that point, which was a whole lot different than what we work with presently. But that’s how I got my foot in the door in HR.

Anthony Codispoti (06:55)
Probably all DOS based, huh?

It strikes me that this is one of those kind of classic I started in the mail room kinds of stories. I’m curious. Did you have any idea that a path like this might unfold when you started there or you’re just like, Hey, I’m tired of working nights and not getting paid holidays. I’m just going to go somewhere else.

Mike Garrett (07:21)
My job at the time was just a job to pay the bills. My passion was doing the singing telegrams and singing in a band. I was in a band called Spellbound, and we played just about every weekend. We played in the Roanoke area around Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia. So I really just had the job to pay the bills, insurance for my family.

And as more and more things became ⁓ apparent that this HR thing was working out, I shifted more toward my energy to HR instead of rock and roll. Because we weren’t ever going to write original music. We were a cover band. And it was just something to do. But it was fun.

Anthony Codispoti (08:11)
What kind of tunes were you covering?

Mike Garrett (08:14)
Well, we did Van Halen, Kiss, Motley Crue. ⁓ That was the heavier side and we would go back and do the Temptations, we’d do Smokey Robinson. Yeah. I’ve got sunshine on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outside, I got the month of May. Now you sing. I guess you. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti (08:24)
You guys had some range.

I was gonna…

no.

That’ll ruin the show. I was going to ask if you’d be willing and I thought that would be a little awkward. So I’m glad you just jumped in with it. What?

Mike Garrett (08:44)
Nah, name

that, you know, I may not do it well, but I’ll give it a shot.

Anthony Codispoti (08:49)
What ⁓ were the singing telegrams like?

Mike Garrett (08:53)
Well, it was where you would go to ⁓ a restaurant or a home and you would dress up like a character. ⁓ For a kid’s party, you would dress up like a superhero or a clown. For ⁓ a woman’s birthday, you may dress up like Tarzan or a Chippendale.

Anthony Codispoti (09:16)
You

Mike Garrett (09:16)
and

you would go to the restaurant and you know, you are my sunshine, my only sunshine and do that kind of a thing and pin a sash across them, give balloons and you know, you’re in and out in 20 minutes.

Anthony Codispoti (09:29)
that sounds like a lot of fun. ⁓ But before we get back to business, Sammy Hagar or David Lee Roth?

Mike Garrett (09:31)
⁓ It was.

Well, it depends on you. I’m a David Lee Roth guy. ⁓ Back to the beginning, he was the original guy. Sammy Hagar today probably is better quality than David Lee Roth. But coincidentally, my daughter and I are going to see David Lee Roth on August the 6th in Bristol on his present tour. So I like both.

Anthony Codispoti (10:07)
So he’s touring. He’s got his own gig, his own band. Does he go by the, like, is he the headline name, David Lee Roth?

Mike Garrett (10:09)
Yeah. Yeah, you can go to YouTube.

He is.

Anthony Codispoti (10:17)
⁓ Okay, so let’s see, you worked in HR at Rowe Furniture for 17 years. And, you know, after 17 years in a company that kind of, you know, ⁓ brought you up through the ranks and, you know, kind of allowed you to advance your career, there had to be like a lot of comfort there, you know, like, ⁓ you just, you feel some stability. Was it a hard decision to move into

a completely different industry move away from the company that you had known for so long.

Mike Garrett (10:52)
Yeah, it was tremendously difficult. You know, one of the bits of adversity I had was around 1996. And employee involvement had taken me off of the factory floor and it had gotten me into human resources. But it wasn’t a full-time human resources gig. I was really more or less the EI employee involvement guy. Management had changed and evolved and the people that had brought me into EI

weren’t necessarily proponents of EI. My gig was going to go away. So I looked outside of the company and I went to Virginia Transformer, was hired as an employee relations specialist. After I was there for a short period of time, they promoted me up to the assistant HR manager. So I was there from 96 to 98, but I got a call from Ro again in November of 98. Management had evolved again.

And they said, look, we want to reinstall employee involvement. And you were the guy, you were the expert. But this time we don’t want to just do it for these two facilities. We want to do it for all four of the facilities. So we had two in Virginia, two in Missouri. We want to bring you back not as the employee involvement coordinator, but the employee involvement manager. And you would have a corporate job and you would travel out to Missouri probably every other week, once a month, however you need to.

and you would work on employee involvement plans out there. So I left Virginia Transform and went back to Roe. Just like you said, I was comfortable, felt good about it. And I stayed with Roe until 2016. My ⁓ aunt passed away in January of 2016, and I was at the visitation. And one of the people at the visitation was my cousin’s husband.

who happened to be the chief operating officer here at American Health Care, who I had known for years, and I would see him at family gatherings. And we would always talk about business. And I would say, you know, how’s life in the nursing home business? And he would ask me, how’s life in manufacturing and furniture? And we would, you know, share stories. And at the visitation, he pulled me off to the side and he says, hey, look, we’ve got an opening in human resources for a director of HR.

Do know anybody? And Anthony, just, I didn’t know he was talking about me, honestly. I just said, I’ll think about it, you know, cause this was an odd ⁓ place to be approached. So I didn’t think very much about it. The next day we were at ⁓ his home after the funeral. Pulled me off to the side again, you know, talked about this yesterday. Do you think any more about it?

Anthony Codispoti (13:26)
You

Sure.

Mike Garrett (13:49)
No, I really haven’t. So two days later was a Friday and I happened to have a pickup truck and we were going to my aunt’s place where she had lived and unloading all of her personal items in the truck. And finally, during that time, he just pulled me off to the side and he says, I’m asking about you. And I said, what do mean asking about me? says, would you be interested? I said, no, I’ve been doing manufacturing for

Anthony Codispoti (14:08)
Hahaha

Mike Garrett (14:18)
for decades. I don’t know anything at all about healthcare. I’m flattered. But, but no, no, thanks. He said, well, look, if anything changes, this is the guy and you gave me a business card. This is the guy to send your resume to. Let him know or let me know and we’ll see where we go. All right. Appreciate it. Thanks. So I was at Planet Fitness on a Sunday working out and I started to think, you know, you know, you only get so many

⁓ doors of opportunity in your lifetime. And I’m wondering, is this a door that’s about to open for me? And I’m never going to know unless I submit this resume. I thought it’s not going to cost me anything. So I texted and I told him, I yeah, I think I’m going to do it. So I did. I submitted the resume and about a week later, I had a phone interview. A week after that, it was at their office. And about a week after that, I had a job offer.

Anthony Codispoti (15:17)
Wow. And how did these two companies, Roe and American Health Care, compare in size in terms of employee headcount?

Mike Garrett (15:26)
Roe had about 850 people at the corporate office I was working at in Elliston, Virginia. And Virginia Health, excuse me, American Health Care has over 2,000 employees.

Anthony Codispoti (15:43)
Okay.

Mike Garrett (15:43)
all across the state of Virginia.

Anthony Codispoti (15:46)
Okay, and this was a step up in terms of responsibility, because this was a director position. You’re head of the department now.

Mike Garrett (15:53)
I’d be going from a manager to a director. Yes, sir.

Anthony Codispoti (15:57)
Okay, so let’s talk, you know, I kind of touched on it in the intro, but tell us in your own words and more specifically about the services that you offer there at American Health Care.

Mike Garrett (16:08)
We do long-term care in rehab. So if a person happens to ⁓ have an accident, they can go into therapy and we’ll help them get back to a healthy spot in their lives. And then we have folks that live in the nursing home. It’s their actual home. So we do ⁓ nursing, we do rehab, and we offer, our motto is our family exists to care for yours. So we offer a home for no matter who’s with us.

Anthony Codispoti (16:40)
Okay. And how many different facilities are we talking about?

Mike Garrett (16:43)
16.

Anthony Codispoti (16:45)
all across the state of Virginia. What sets you guys apart from other facilities in the state?

Mike Garrett (16:47)
Yes.

Anthony Codispoti (16:54)
How are you guys different?

Mike Garrett (16:57)
We have divided up into sections. In the northern part of the state, there’s Leesburg, Front Royal, King George, southwestern part of the state, Clintwood, Big Stone Gap, Grundy, Wise. On the one hand, it’s a nursing home, a long-term care facility where you’re going to nurses, CNAs, people in the kitchen.

But depending on the facility and in the part of the state you’re in, you’re going to have a different vibe. So when you go to the Southwest as an example, if you’re there for a lunch, you’ll probably have a prayer before you eat. When you’re in some of the other facilities, you may or may not have a prayer. But if you do have a prayer, it may be a prayer that’s in a different language.

because we have people in, as an example, in Leesburg, we have a lot of different cultures there. I guess our overriding thing, going back to our family exists to care for yours, is I know from where I’m at, I’m here in Roanoke, and we call it the Resource Center, and I worked for a really great guy, our president, Tommy East, and I know the decisions that come across his desk, and I know what he…

ask me, asks of me as far as, you know, if we’re talking about a person’s career, what are we going to do with that person? Decisions aren’t made very, very quickly. We think about things. Let’s sleep on this. Are we evolving, are we involving the key people in all of these things? Because we want to make sure that we’re doing it right for a number of reasons. There’s legal reasons, compliance.

And then there’s just, we doing it right? This person has worked for our company for a long period of time. You everybody goes through ups and downs. They may have made a mistake. Do we give a second chance? Do we not? Thinking about if this was your son or your cousin or your nephew or your wife, how would you treat them in a similar circumstance? That’s how we manage the business.

Anthony Codispoti (19:19)
And like what you just said there, I didn’t realize that that was kind of a tagline. Our family exists to care for yours. And then what you just described there, I mean, very much, you know, kind of embodies that, you know, hey, if this was your son and this was your daughter, you know, close relation of yours, like how would you handle it? How would you want them to be treated?

Mike Garrett (19:40)
That’s exactly what we do. You’ve got a template, you’ve got your handbook, you’ve got your code of conduct, your policies and the procedures, then you’ve got the person. How long have they worked for the company? What are their strengths and weaknesses? You want to try to be equal, but you can’t really be equal, but you can always be fair.

Anthony Codispoti (20:02)
Yeah. And that’s when, you know, you really have to take the human element into account and yeah, here’s the rule book. Okay. But you know, let’s be human beings here and actually look at the person and actually look at the situation and evaluate it. Like, you know, we would want to be treated sort of golden rule kind of a thing. And I think it’s important to point out that of all your facilities, all but one of them is under the heritage hall name. And in fact, ⁓ the website people can find you at is heritage.

Am I right Mike? That’s yeah, heritage-hall.org. ⁓ So you have all but one of the facilities under the Heritage Hall name and then what’s the other facilities?

Mike Garrett (20:36)
Yeah, that’s correct.

South Roanoke Nursing Home.

Anthony Codispoti (20:47)
Okay, and can that be found on the same website? Or does it have its own? Okay. So I’m curious, you mentioned your hesitation about moving from manufacturing into healthcare. Initially, like, no, I don’t have any idea. As you made that transition, what was the biggest difference that you noticed as it pertains to HR leadership?

Mike Garrett (20:50)
It can.

It would be the laws, the rules, the regulation, as an example. In manufacturing, you don’t have to really deal with abuse and neglect. Now, you do have to deal with harassment. You have to, you know, follow the rules there. But in a nursing home, if I were to ⁓ say a curse word to a resident, raise my voice, do anything physical, that’s abusive.

That’s something that you really have to be able to train people because it’s hard in this line of work. It isn’t just the medical part where you’re taking care of a person who is ill. There’s emotional things that we’re talking about as well. So our people have to be skilled in handling the residents’ emotions and their own emotions because sometimes residents, they can’t control

what they’re going through in their lives. And if somebody were to yell at you or even to curse you, it’s difficult to have that restraint sometimes to say, you said that to me, I’m going to say that to you. We can’t do this in our line of work and our folks are just really gifted as far as having to do that on a daily basis to show that restraint.

Anthony Codispoti (22:35)
Yeah, say more about what it takes to be a caregiver in this kind of position. I mean, you’ve talked about sort of the restraint is one element, paint more of a picture for us.

Mike Garrett (22:46)
Well, you may have a resident that, and first of all, the residents are our customers on the one hand, but on the other hand, it could be a person that’s become a friend of yours and you may go in and you may be offering personal care. You may be helping them to brush their hair. You may be helping them to find the outfit they’re going to wear for the day. And then you’re going to shift into another part where you’re going to talk about taking their temperature to.

getting in an IV, dispensing meds, then you’re gonna get into another part where they’re tearful, especially during COVID. They couldn’t see their families because they were in the nursing home and the families may be on the other side of the window there. they’re having an emotional reaction to why won’t you let me out? Why won’t you let them in? And having to be able to support those residents emotionally was another key skill.

that our folks had to have.

Anthony Codispoti (23:48)
Say more about COVID, because this was a hard time for everybody. ⁓ But from everyone I’ve talked to in all different kinds of lines of work and everything that I’ve read, my suspicion is that your environment was the most challenging for some of the reasons that you just touched on. You have people who are at their most vulnerable emotionally and physically. And when you’re in that stage, you want contact with the people that are familiar.

are loved and bring you comfort. And it was sort of like bringing down this iron curtain that separated people from the outside world. Say more about what that was like for you and your team members to kind of manage through.

Mike Garrett (24:33)
This is an N95 mask.

Now, if I were to talk to you wearing this, my communication with you is going to be affected.

My bread and butter is being able to listen to you and then you listen to me if you’re an employee of ours. One of the toughest decisions I had to make personally was in May of 2020. This was right at the very, very beginning of COVID. I think it was March actually when the country shut down and there was all of these

horrible things that were taking place. People kept getting sick and people kept passing away. And we have one of our nursing homes on the Eastern Shore that was having a really, really tough time. And I believe the Eastern Shore area itself, 60 to 70 % of the people there had COVID and that part of ⁓ the Eastern Shore. Well, that’s where our nursing home was.

The management of that nursing home was being really, really overwhelmed. And they reached out and they said, we need some help. Can you come help talk to our people? And I got a call from the president, Tommy East. And he said, Mike, they want you to go there and bring a fellow that works with me named Dickie Linkus. He says, you don’t have to go. I know this is a big decision, but they’ve asked for your help and they…

need your help, but I understand if you don’t want to do it. You know, in Anthony, at the time, there were no vaccines. The protection was the goggles and the N95 and the mask. I thought, man, this could be a death sentence for me. But, you know, I’m the vice president of human resources. I’m not worth my salt. If I’m not able to go

but I expect you as an employee of the company to be there and to work. So I said, sure, I’ll do it. And ⁓ I reached out to Dickie, no problem at all. the hardest thing was telling her families, calling my wife and saying that I’m leaving tonight to go here because what Tommy said, what I said to Tommy was I said, yeah, I’ll do it up. I’ll pack up and we’ll leave first thing in the morning.

He said, no, need you to be there first thing in the morning. And this was about two o’clock in the afternoon. I think we had had the conversation, which meant that I’d have to go home, see the family, pack up, get there maybe about midnight and stay there. I think we stayed there seven or eight days. So we got there and the very first thing that happened was, you know, they

gave us the lay of the land. Here’s the mask, here are the goggles, this is what you can do, what you can’t do. And then it’s like, go to work. Well, what do you need me to do? Well, we had people that were working that were, they were scared. But there were two types of, I guess maybe three types of people. There were people, our employees that had not gotten sick. We had some of our employees who were sick.

and they had the symptoms. And then we had some of our employees who were positive, but they really didn’t have the symptoms and they weren’t sick. That group of people really didn’t want to work because the other groups of people weren’t working. And if you didn’t have the help, it made your job more difficult. So they said, look, we need you to talk to this person and this person and this, because they want to go home.

I how do I do that? Because I went out on the unit to find them and everybody’s got their gowns and their masks and it’s like talking to somebody in a radiation suit. I figured I can’t do this. And what we were able to do was I said, look, let’s meet outside because there was a picnic table, a break area outside. And I knew we could talk six feet apart. So they went outside.

I went outside, we took our gear off, we both became human again. And I just said, talk to me, tell me what’s going on. And I did a lot of listening. And then I requested, you know, can you listen to me? ⁓ These folks have no one else, it’s you, it’s me. It’s all of us here. If we abandon them, what are they gonna do? This is our family, our family just to care for yours. And I know.

I know you’re scared, but we need you. You were uniquely qualified to help us through this time. Please do it for us. And that’s what you did each and every time. And thank God we made it through.

Anthony Codispoti (29:49)
most people responded in a positive way to that message.

Mike Garrett (29:53)
Many did, some people didn’t. ⁓ We’ve had some people that said this, not for me, not my line of work, and they left. But we had a lot of people that did. We had a lot of our people that worked in different parts of the state that had descended on this facility to help because this part of the state had really been decimated with COVID.

Anthony Codispoti (30:17)
How did you find the

words in those moments to talk to those people? How did the words come to you?

Mike Garrett (30:23)
is listened. If they said they were scared, you acknowledge you’re scared. I’m scared too. ⁓ I’d rather be anywhere else than here, but I’ve got to be here. It’s my mission. And you got into this to be a CNA or a nurse or work in the kitchen or sweep the floor for whatever reason. You’re here. ⁓ If you leave here,

No matter where you go work, you’re going to have COVID there too. You’ve already established relationships with the residents, with the people that you work with. You know what you do. You’re good at your job. I need you to get back in there and get to work. And you can do it. And you will do it. And that worked. Sometimes, sometimes it didn’t.

Anthony Codispoti (31:14)
Have you always been a good communicator, The experiences along the way where you feel like they kind of shaped you and your ability to deliver difficult messages?

Mike Garrett (31:27)
I guess Anthony goes back to the band. If you’re playing music, you may have a set list. All right. For the first hour, we’re going to play this and this and this. We’re going to do a slow song. We’re going to do this and this and this. Going to do a slow song. But when you come out and you read the crowd, if you’ve got a crowd that’s on fire and they don’t want a slow song, you look back at the guys and you say, we’re going to do this. Let’s do Mony Mony, Billy Idol, Go!

And you go to it, you read the crowd, you see what the room, the energy of the room is. So guess it started there.

Anthony Codispoti (32:02)
That’s really cool. I love that. You know, there at American Health Care, you guys really emphasize a nurturing environment and you focus a lot on the expert care. When you’re going through kind of the interview process, the recruiting process, how do you find and identify the right talent? And then once you’ve got them on board, how do you develop them and retain them? What’s kind of your secret sauce to both recruiting and retention?

Mike Garrett (32:33)
It’s easier if you’re talking to someone who’s worked in long-term care before, that’s worked in a nursing home, because they aren’t going to be shocked when there’s somebody walking around and their gown is open, as an example. They won’t be shocked, and they understand this is what we do. This is the environment. We’re going to help people out. If Mr. Jones, we need to help him.

tuck his shirt in or his hair is messed up or, you you go into all sorts of other examples. That’s easier when you have someone that maybe has worked at a convenience store or even manufacturing and they’ve never done long term care. They need to be exposed and say, look, you’re going to be dealing with a lot of unpleasant things. You’re dealing with people during the most vulnerable time in their lives.

It’s got to be more than a paycheck to you. You have to be able to commit that you’re going to help folks out when it’s tough, and you’re going to ask for help when it’s tough, tough, and you’re going to offer help when it’s tough. ⁓ no matter what job you’re in now, retention is really, really difficult. So you give people an opportunity based on what you get in the interview.

and hopefully they’re going to deliver for you when they are on the floor.

Anthony Codispoti (34:05)
I’d like to hear about any unique programs or training initiatives that you’ve championed as a way to help those people kind of acclimate your new hires and what impact that’s had.

Mike Garrett (34:18)
Well, you know, the way we’re set up, Anthony, we’re called the resource center. So sometimes people refer to us as the corporate office, but we’re the resource center. So there’s some things we’ll do where they’re non-negotiable. You’ve got to be able to follow the Department of Labor’s rules. You have to be able to follow the handbook. You know, all of these things are something that handle

that’s global for all of our facilities. But something that works in Tassel, Virginia, may not work in Dilwyn, Virginia. Something that works in Blacksburg, Virginia, may not necessarily work in Lexington, Virginia. So each of the facilities is different, and each of them may have their own, ⁓ well, they do, they have their own culture and they have their own way of doing things. for my role, we offer a lot of suggestions about

what you can do and what you can’t do. And what tends to be pretty successful is when you do a pilot in one of the facilities and it’s successful, and then they ask you, tell me how you did that. Give me more and more and more. One of the things we did do that was global was on demand pay. And it was around 2021. And we started looking at this and there was a company called DailyPay we started working with.

And I had seen, I think at one of my SHRM conferences, people speaking about on-demand pay and this is the future and you need to get onto this or you’re to be left behind. Because we live in a society right now where if I wanted to, I could be really rude and watch a movie on this phone right now if I wanted to. I could go to chat GBT and ask it any number of questions about how to fix my gutter at home that

that’s broken right now. I can do that because I had the expectation that those answers are going to be right there for me. So people now have the expectation. I just worked eight hours. Why can’t I be paid for the time I worked? So this company, Daily Pay, worked with us and it really took a while to get into ⁓ maybe not the culture of our people because I knew our people would want it, but it was tough.

for our management because you have to literally expose your payroll to an outside company. And they come in and they get under the hood and they wire everything from American healthcare to daily pay and they plug it in. And then this gives us, it’s a mechanism for our folks. It’s really to have a new bank. Daily pay operates as a bank for them. So if I worked eight hours right after my shift, I could go on and ⁓

pay a small fee and be paid a percentage of those hours I had just worked. And we did that back in 2014.

Anthony Codispoti (37:17)
And then when does daily

pay pull the money from you guys? Is it also on a daily basis or are they floating that in between?

Mike Garrett (37:27)
I can’t answer that specifically because there’s two different things. We have one for salary people and we have one for hourly people. The deposits are made like you would on a regular basis to your employee’s bank. Daily pay is really floating the money to these folks. So we’re just paying the bank, the employee’s bank like we normally would. And the employee works with daily pay as far as borrowing against

the expected earnings.

Anthony Codispoti (37:57)
Interesting.

What percentage of your employees would you guess are taking advantage of the daily pay service? Holy cow.

Mike Garrett (38:07)
50%. It’s, make sure I got my stats correct. I think it’s usually on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, people will withdraw, I think it’s about an average of $130 each time. And they use it for gas, they use it for bills, they use it for clothing. It’s just the way people are adapting and evolving with, you know, how they get paid.

And it’s offering a lot of options. You one of the reasons we looked at this is we knew people were going to these loan companies and paying as much as 300%. And they would have their car title and put up with that. my God, that’s horrible. We had situations where people said, I can’t come to work tomorrow because I don’t have enough money for gas. So we started to think this through a little bit and what daily pay does now.

is if you need money for gas, can go to the app and you can advance yourself whatever you need. And it’s worked for us.

Anthony Codispoti (39:12)
It’s been obviously well received by your employee base since such a large number of them have taken advantage of it.

Mike Garrett (39:17)
It is, and ⁓ it’s a recruiting tool too. Because one of the things we like to do is we have something called a callback list. And if there’s somebody that worked for us, I don’t know, three months ago, six months ago, a year ago, three years ago, and we’d love to have them back, we’ll text them, we’ll call them and say, hey, would you be interested in coming back? And ⁓ it could be some sort of…

different circumstances, we have new management now or we have new benefits. Because what I know Anthony in people’s lives, people like choices. So I may be happy at my present company, but if somebody else calls and they say, look, we really miss you. The training wouldn’t be very, very long. You would understand what to do. You understand our culture. Why don’t you come in and just work PR in.

Why don’t you give us a shift once a week? Just, you know, put your toes in the water and see what you think about, you know, the company since you left. And you can earn some extra money for a vacation or Christmas. And if you really like it, maybe you go from PRN to part-time. And if it’s working out for you, come back to us full-time.

Anthony Codispoti (40:36)
Now that’s pretty cool. Something else interesting I want to dive into with you, Mike, is I know that you implemented an innovative approach to job recruiting that really reduced costs and improved the applicant quality. Can you walk me through how you discovered this solution and what made it so effective?

Mike Garrett (40:56)
It was just, it was dumb luck to be honest, Anthony. you know, the, thing that probably takes most of my time is sorting through emails, sorting through emails and every now and then there’s a golden nugget in the email. And I guess it just depends on what I’m looking for or what you’re looking for and how it’s written. But there was one particular day I saw this email and they ask, are you frustrated with the amount of money you’re spending on your job?

posting platform. And they hit me at a time where I had just had a bill. I think we were spending about $10,000 a month, which was terribly frustrating. But it’s what it cost. And this job posting platform had consultants that would work with us. And they’d say, hey, we got something brand new. We’re going to do this and that. But it wound up costing more money and you had less exposure, less postings.

I thought, man, there’s got to be something, there’s got to be an answer out there. And we discovered this company called Pathways out of Phoenix, Arizona. And their superpower was they understood the algorithm. That was one of the things they understood. But they also understood how you put it out there to make a job attractive to an applicant. Traditionally, you know, I’ve been doing this for decades.

Anthony Codispoti (42:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Garrett (42:22)
And back in the day, you you had your job description that you would make into a job posting and it goes into the Sunday paper. And it’s in the Sunday paper for, you know, for whatever period of time and you have applicants, that’s how you do it. What we were taught to do was to take the job description, but maybe focus a little bit more on the empathetic part of the job and why we need

people at this facility that’s located in the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains and that this is a calling for you. This is something where you’re helping other humans. You’re not building widgets. This is what the job would be. We’d love to have you come by so we could talk to you. So the wording wasn’t as hard and cold and sterile. The wording was more warmth. And then there’s these

Anthony Codispoti (43:13)
Hmm.

Mike Garrett (43:18)
Ways to look at the algorithm as far as when you post the job, when you take the job down, when you spend sponsorship money, when you don’t spend sponsorship money. They walked us through all of these different techniques and we went from, I don’t know, 10,000 a month to maybe 1,500 a month on job sponsorship.

Anthony Codispoti (43:38)
my gosh.

That’s dramatic.

Mike Garrett (43:43)
Yes. And we.

Anthony Codispoti (43:45)
What was their

fee like?

Mike Garrett (43:47)
They had, I think it was 400, no, I take it back. They got a percentage, I think 30, maybe off in the numbers, but it seemed like it was about 30 % of whatever savings we were spending on the job platform before. We still came out way ahead and we were able to target better applicants as well.

Anthony Codispoti (43:58)
Okay.

Yeah.

Do you have any stats on that part of it, like the improvement in the quality of the applicants? I don’t know. It’s probably harder to measure. Like, number of people that you interview that you hire versus maybe how long they stayed or anything like that.

Mike Garrett (44:25)
I don’t have all those stats with me, but.

Anthony Codispoti (44:27)
Okay, but you do

know that just from experience, from having gone through it, you were getting better quality applicants using this approach.

Mike Garrett (44:35)
We were so much so that we decided to pursue another layer with this company Pathways where we did it for a year and then we talked about, how do we grow our people more? How do we help them to be better? Because we were purchasing a service, but what we wanted to do now was transfer this line of thinking to our 16 different facilities so they understood how to use the algorithm.

how to do the job postings in a different way. So that’s where it shifted and it became, instead of just one company doing this for us, you now have 16 people and it took us about six months to do the training and we still have to monitor and work with ⁓ new things as things are evolving, as the algorithm evolves. But we gave that training to our folks so that we have it now inside.

Anthony Codispoti (45:31)
You know, I always love advice that once you hear it, it’s sort of like, duh, like common sense. ⁓ But you just needed somebody to point it out to you. And like this group Pathways that you’re working with, they’re telling you, you know, how to write job descriptions that are not so kind of cold and sterile. And you’re really appealing to the heart and the human element. mean, yeah, once you hear that, you’re like, of course, like, why weren’t we doing that all along?

⁓ And that makes a lot of sense why you would be getting much higher quality applicants.

Mike Garrett (46:02)
Yeah, and that’s exactly what we did. We just listened to somebody else that had a different perspective and it’s worked out for us.

Anthony Codispoti (46:12)
What’s a big obstacle that you face while streamlining HR processes across multiple facilities? And how did you kind of work through that?

Mike Garrett (46:23)
Well, we’re not, once again, we’re not quote unquote the corporate office, we’re the resource center. And each of our facilities has an administrator who’s very good at what they do. And if I offer them an idea, then they may or may not take it. And I’ll give you one where I’ve had to adapt and evolve. I thought I had ⁓ a great idea. had been in McDonald’s going through McDonald’s.

And I was sitting in drive-thru waiting for my large mocha frappe that I love. And I saw in the back, they had this, it was a stop sign that said, no quit, no quit policy. And I looked at it and I took my phone out and I took a picture. And what it said was, you you can’t quit. We have a no quit policy here. You need to talk to your supervisor or somebody in HR before you can quit. thought, ⁓ that’s kind of, kind of clever.

So decided I was going to do that here. And I had spoken to somebody in operations and one of the regionals and asked her opinion. And she said, yeah, let’s give it a shot. So I sent it out to all 16 facilities and I spoke about it and I said, we’re going to do this no quit. And this is how it works. And boom, bada boom. And I didn’t get any feedback for a week or two. And I thought, well, I’m going to resend the email. Maybe something got misconstrued.

I re-sent the email, still nothing. And I finally wound up, I was in an operations meeting and I said, hey, let’s talk about this. What are you hearing? And they said, well, it’s created some problems. So what, why? Well, it came across a little bit strong. And then people are asking, how can you just implement a policy without going through the policy and the procedure committee? And we’re…

Anthony Codispoti (47:55)
crickets.

Mike Garrett (48:20)
and at will state, how can you can’t prevent people from quitting? What are you doing here? You know, you’re you’re making people uncomfortable. And I ⁓ that’s that’s what we want to know. The intent was just just let’s let’s talk about it. So after we talked about it a little bit, that’s evolved into something. Let’s talk before you walk. Because it really, you know, Anthony, it’s not about me convincing you to stay.

Anthony Codispoti (48:32)
That wasn’t the intent.

Mike Garrett (48:50)
It’s about giving you the opportunity to make the choice. But hopefully you see that I cared enough about you to listen and talk to you about how valuable you are. And are you sure you want to leave? And I really don’t want to lose you. But if you do decide to go, text me after you’re there for a week and let me know how you’re doing, because you may want to come back and let’s talk it through a little bit. So I thought I had the great idea.

that everybody could use. once again, I guess I’m comfortable that there was the pushback where folks said, look, it’s not working. You need to change it. I can’t give you any results right now because literally this is a fresh initiative. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti (49:34)
This is still pretty fresh. Okay.

I’ll be interested to hear how this plays out because I understand your intent. And then I can also hear how the message was received on the other side. And so it’d be interesting to see if you can kind of smooth that out and help people understand, you know, where you’re going with this, or if it is something that you’re just going to have to completely pull back on. Time will tell. As you look forward,

What kind of emerging trends, whether it’s in senior care or human resources or a combination of the two, that you think are going to help shape the future of American health care?

Mike Garrett (50:11)
it’s going to be artificial intelligence.

Anthony Codispoti (50:14)
Okay.

Mike Garrett (50:15)
⁓ I was in San Diego ⁓ at the SHRM conference and I think the guy’s name was Alan Whitaker, who is a head of AI for Bamboo, Bamboo HR. And a brilliant guy talking about artificial intelligence and how you can use it within your company. And one of the questions that came up was, is AI going to take my job? And he said, no, it’s not going to take your job.

but somebody else that understands AI better than you two may take your job. And I thought, wow, that’s pretty profound. So I thought, you know, in my role here, I need to be a leader in understanding how this whole thing works. And I need to make sure our people understand how this whole thing works because since I came back, you know, informally, I’m asking folks, do you use AI for anything at all? And some people said, no, it scares me.

user for anything. And then there’s some people that really are into it. They could be either using Claude or chat, GBT or Gemini or Copilot. And what we’re actually doing in August is we’re having an HR payroll conference here in Roanoke. And I’m going to be talking about an introduction to artificial intelligence. And I’m going to work them through some exercises, you know, something really basic.

where you’ve got a job description and you have a resume. How do you use AI to find out if that applicant is good for our company by using AI? How can it save some time? How you can take a spreadsheet that you’ve created with maybe one graph and then you’ve got 16 sets of numbers here. How can you attach both of those spreadsheets and ask AI to help you duplicate this with a graph for these 16, whereas it may have taken me four hours

In the past, I can do this now and it’s here.

Anthony Codispoti (52:15)
And you’re going to present this. How did you get up to speed on it?

Mike Garrett (52:21)
Just by, you know, the best thing you can do with AI is to use it for personal things first. So, you know, like I mentioned earlier, I’ve got a gutter that’s broken on my house and I’m going through, you know, well, seems like it’s easy enough. You put this piece in and you put a screw and there’s glue. Well, that didn’t work for me. So I type in, what are my alternatives? What should I do? And I wound up, you hire a handyman.

Anthony Codispoti (52:49)
Ha

Mike Garrett (52:50)
But it’s little things like that, whether it’s a toilet repair or it’s a gutter or you’re trying to train your dog or you’re going to go on a vacation. What AI is doing is it’s putting its arms around everything that Google has had in the past. It’s right there for you.

Anthony Codispoti (53:16)
You know, I love the message that you shared from that ⁓ bamboo HR exec. AI isn’t going to take your job, but somebody who understands AI well. And this was probably two or three years ago, kind of when the, what was it? Chat GPT three point something or other came out. It was sort of the first time most of the public kind of knew about it. One of my old employees, a copywriter, a creative person that had worked with me, she contacted me just all in a panic about how.

you know, this was the end of the world, end of her career. She was really nervous about it. And I kind of had a similar conversation, you know, that had the same kind of message that the bamboo HR executive said, Hey, listen, it’s not going away. Like hiding from this, putting your head in the sand and hoping that it doesn’t come into your part of the world or you know, that it won’t become what everybody thinks it’s going to become or that somehow you’ll be immune to it. That’s not going to work. You know, that that’s the wrong way to approach it.

Instead, jump in two feet, turn this thing, like understand how it works. And she went away for about three or four weeks, didn’t hear from her. And then she came back. She was so excited, Mike. She was like, I know how this is going to help me do my job so much better. I’m going to be able to do so many more things off of these different services, tie things together. And it was just, it was kind of that, ⁓ that mindset shift that she needed. And it’s the same kind of message that seems like.

you’re gonna be delivering here in that upcoming meeting.

Mike Garrett (54:47)
That’s exactly right. know, and some of the people I’ve spoken to feel like it’s cheating. And I’m explaining to them as a look, if AI didn’t exist, and I asked you to put together a presentation on public speaking. In the past, you would have gone searched a number of different websites. You would have gotten your content from there. You would have maybe taken some images and copied and pasted and put them into a PowerPoint presentation. This is no different. You’re not cheating at all.

All of the information has just been bundled together for you. Because you’re really doing the work. You have to write the question in the way that AI is going to respond positively to you to give you what you want. That’s where you adapt and evolve. Your new way of creating is how do I work with this partner to ask what I need and make sure that I get what I’m requesting.

Anthony Codispoti (55:42)
And then in my experience, don’t just copy and paste the results, right? The AI is going to give it to you and maybe 80 % of it is what you need. You know, maybe you need to put it in your voice. Maybe, you know, there’s some kind of an edit that needs to be made. And so I like how you put that work with it as a part.

Mike Garrett (56:00)
You can’t take it 100%. You have to trust it to a degree, but you have to verify that the information that it’s providing to you is accurate. So you take it, you use it after you’ve made sure that you’re comfortable with it, and you move forward. And it’s not a perfect process. You’re going to make mistakes, but that’s how you learn.

Anthony Codispoti (56:26)
All right, Mike, now time for my favorite question. I would like to hear about a serious challenge that you’ve overcome, whether it’s personal or professional or if the two intertwined, how did you get through it and what did you learn?

Mike Garrett (56:41)
And in 2000, I was working as the employee involvement manager for Roe Furniture. And at that time, the once again, employee involvement with Roe Furniture had gotten to the point where it was really, really hot and then it would go down. Then it got hot again and would go down. And this is one of those phases where it wasn’t really working like we needed it to.

And my job was possibly on the line, but I had an opportunity. And that opportunity was to go out to Missouri and instead of being the employee involvement guy, you would become the human resources manager in Poplar Bluff, Missouri. So the good and the bad, the good promoted to the HR manager instead of EI. But I’d have to uproot my family and move 12 hours away.

to a place that I’d visited a number of times, but my wife had not ever lived there or visited and my kids hadn’t. And we had a lot of soul searching. So what we did is we decided I was gonna accept the job. And I went out, think February of, it was, I think it was around December of 2000 I found this out. And I went out in February of 2001.

And they put me up in a little apartment and they allowed me, they’re very nice to allow my kids to work through school in May. And then they were going to relocate in May. So every ⁓ other weekend, I would drive back home, make that 12 hour drive to be with the family. And then I’d go back to work, you know, and they were really accommodating. I would leave like on a Thursday afternoon from Missouri, probably drive to Nashville.

spend the night and I’d get back to Roanoke about noon on Friday. And then Sunday morning I would leave and get ⁓ back to Missouri Sunday night.

Anthony Codispoti (58:52)
Wow. And that went on from, what did you say, December or February to May?

Mike Garrett (58:56)
on from February

until about June of that year when

Anthony Codispoti (59:00)
And

at that point you were able to get your family moved over with you.

Mike Garrett (59:04)
Yeah. And I had a tough time really adjusting to the culture of that facility because when I was in Roanoke at the corporate office, you’d go out to lunch, you’d have an hour lunch. We even had a facility, a fitness center in our facility. And I thought, well, that’s, you know, that’s what you do at work. Well, in the Poplar Bluff plant, they didn’t have all of those bells and whistles. Now they had a

⁓ a gym that was about 10 minutes down the road you could go to. And I did that during lunch, but then I noticed I really wasn’t fitting in. And what my problem was, was everybody else was taking a 30 minute lunch. And I’m the new guy showing up and I’m taking an hour and I wasn’t sitting at the table with all the other managers. And I needed to adapt and evolve. So.

That was the toughest part because I wasn’t accepted until I made the change. And I remember one day I showed up and I sat at the table with them for lunch and they’re looking at me like, what are you doing here? I said, look, I’m part of the team. And they accepted me because I recognized I was in the wrong and I wasn’t going to be accepted and I wasn’t going to be effective until I understood life in that facility.

Anthony Codispoti (1:00:07)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Did somebody bring it to your attention or were you aware enough to realize that, ⁓ I’m sort of sticking out like a sore thumb here?

Mike Garrett (1:00:40)
A little bit of both. I would find out if a meeting was set for 1230 instead of one o’clock, right in the middle of when I was going to have my workout, right when their lunch was ending, of hinting, you need to be here.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:00)
and you took the message. What was it like for your family making that transition? I mean, they’re without husband, they’re without dad most of the time during the week, and now they’re relocating to another part of the country where they don’t know people. That’s a hard transition.

Mike Garrett (1:01:13)
Yeah, it was tough.

It was. ⁓ The good part is we met some of the best people we’ve ever met in our lives out in Missouri. Just fantastic folks. Really, really enjoyed those relationships that we were able to put together when we were there with them.

Anthony Codispoti (1:01:32)
How did you meet those folks? Was it through work? Was it through a social club?

Mike Garrett (1:01:37)
⁓ Part of it was just neighbors and part of it was, and the neighbors went to a church and then the church ⁓ welcomed us and we got involved in that church and ⁓ co-workers, know, just all of that, you know, come on over for, we’re having a fish fry. And that’s what you do, you know, and you introduce your family to other, ⁓ either work family or church family or neighbors and

you start your new life.

Anthony Codispoti (1:02:08)
Mike, what’s your superpower?

Mike Garrett (1:02:13)
Well, if you see behind me, I’ve got Batman up there.

And I’ve always been a Batman fan. I enjoyed the comics from, you know, when I was a kid. And I enjoyed the movies. ⁓ And then it kind of dawned on me, one of the things that’s helped me in my career was not being Batman. I can’t be Batman. But you know, Batman’s got that yellow belt around him that he wears. It’s his utility belt.

And if he’s going to go into a situation with Catwoman or the Joker or the Penguin, he knows which of those weapons to take out of the utility belt to deal with the situation. So one of the, guess, my superpower is the ability to adapt, evolve and strategize. So when I work with an administrator as an example, and they have

a where they’re about to terminate an employee. And this can be a sloppy termination, we’ll say, because they haven’t necessarily documented everything and all the T’s aren’t crossed and the I’s aren’t dotted. But they want the person terminated. And it’s a tough one because I can push to a degree and then they’re going to push back. But looking at the utility belt thing,

You know, one of the things we could do is roll the dice. Let’s see if we can terminate them without them getting upset. I don’t really like that idea. But what if you did this? They’ve got X amount of PTO. What if we said, look, we’ll pay you your PTO for a voluntary resignation. ⁓ We’ll give you a neutral reference. Nobody wants an involuntary termination on your record. If you’re going to go.

or work somewhere else, you want to be able to explain why you left that company. And you can look your new hiring manager in the eye and say, look, the drive was too long, or I just wanted something new. I needed a change. So just trying to give our managers choices of how they deal with difficult situations, I think, is my superpower.

Anthony Codispoti (1:04:34)
different

options in that utility belt. How about a resource that you might recommend to our listeners? A book, a podcast, a course, something that’s been really helpful for you in your career.

Mike Garrett (1:04:49)
I guess, Anthony, I go back to the seven habits with Stephen Covey. You know, I can’t quote everything, but I remember parts of it. And parts of it would be to sharpen the saw, as an example. You want to make sure that, you know, you want to get there, but you don’t have time to stop and get gas. But if you don’t stop to get gas, you’re going to run out of gas. If you’re not physically healthy,

you’re going to get in a situation where you can’t do your job to the best of your ability. So try to stay in shape. ⁓ The part about ⁓ listening and understanding others before trying to be understood, that’s really helped me a lot. if I’m a person in the middle, if I’m a mediator and Anthony’s on one side and there’s somebody else on the other, ⁓

I need to be able to make sure that you feel like I’m a neutral party and I let you speak and then I contribute and let them speak and they contribute. But if it’s Anthony and Mike, I want Anthony to go first because I know in your mind, if I’m going first, it’s just la la la la la la, because you’re waiting for me to stop so you can get what you want to say in. So if I just listen and I say, all right,

if I’m the sponge, tell me what’s going on. And I take the time to respect you and write down and write down and write down and ask if there’s anything else we need to cover. Then if I go, then I can say, well, first, let’s address the things that you brought up. And we go through those things. And then I’m able to introduce my side of the story.

Anthony Codispoti (1:06:43)
I like that a lot. And Stephen Covey is a good one. If you know, it’s a classic. And if folks haven’t had a chance to absorb that in some format, ⁓ ebook, audiobook, it’s it’s a really good one. A lot of great foundational things in there. How about some daily habits, Mike, either that help you get your day started, keep you centered, keep you on track.

Mike Garrett (1:07:08)
Well, it’s the old to-do list. ⁓ I usually work some time on the weekend. ⁓ I don’t live too terribly far away. ⁓ There’s a car wash nearby I go to that goes to a gym that’s not too far away. So it’s kind of convenient. So I’m not going to spend, you know, all day on Saturday and Sunday here, but it’s a chance where the phone isn’t ringing and I’m not getting the text or the emails and I can…

take time to look at, all right, what did I not get done last week that I need to carry over? And I create a brand new sheet like this for my marching orders. And then I also send something to our COO and CEO. And I call it the HR overview for the week ending X. So this one will be the weekend in July 25th. And

I’ve got my journal where I take all of my notes from what took place during the week and then I put it in the computer. going back, you know, years now, if I have a situation that took place in 2020 during COVID, I can go and I can search a name or I can search a subject and it’s a diary of everything that’s taken place in the past. So that’s how I do it.

Anthony Codispoti (1:08:34)
How are you logging that in the computer, like individual Word documents?

Mike Garrett (1:08:38)
It’s an email. I send an email to Brad and Tommy, COO and CEO, send them an email every, usually goes out on Saturday or Sunday. And I’ve just got, you know, this big string of sent emails.

Anthony Codispoti (1:08:53)
I like that. An interesting strategy. I’ve just got one more question for you, Mike. Before I ask it, I want to do two things. First of all, for everybody listening, I want you to pause just for a second, go to your favorite podcast app that you’re listening on now, hit the like or follow button so you continue to get more great interviews like we’ve had today with Mike Garrett from American Health Care. Mike, also want to let people know the best way either to get in touch with you directly, to follow your story or that of American Health Care. What would that be?

Mike Garrett (1:09:23)
For American healthcare, would be the website, heritage-hall.org. For me, honestly, Anthony, I try to fly under the radar. Really, I was conflicted about doing this podcast with you today because I thought I just don’t need to be out there. And if you look at my LinkedIn, there’s not a lot there. It’s pretty plain. But I did it because I figure I need to have a LinkedIn. But I’m…

Even if you looked at my personal Facebook page, I’ve got pictures of me and my wife and my family, my dogs. You’re not going to see a lot of political commentary or very much of… It’s pretty vanilla. I I fly under the radar predominantly.

Anthony Codispoti (1:10:07)
Well, I’m for one ⁓ really honored and thankful that you agreed to spend time with us here today and share your story. that a lot of people are going to get benefit from it. So last question for you, Mike, you and I reconnect a year from now and you’re so excited. You’re celebrating something big. What’s that thing that you’re celebrating one year from

Mike Garrett (1:10:27)
It’s the people in our facilities that have embraced artificial intelligence, ⁓ the job posting technology, and it’s made their jobs so easy that they’re able to spend time on the floor talking to our people, into our residents, where they’re getting the face-to-face time. And they’re not behind the desk. They’re not anchored to having to do the reports like they have to do right now. They’re able…

to work smarter, not harder. And they’re using the best skill they have, is themselves, their personalities, their listening skills, using, I saw Jason Sudeikis in San Diego at the Shurm. And one of the things he talked about was having big ears. And he was talking about this in relationship to Ted Lasso and how he does this show.

and the different people on the show and, you know, maybe he discovers one of the actors used to be a musician or they used to be a cook or they used to be, you know, whatever in their previous lives. And he listens to that. And then as they’re creating episodes going forward, if somebody had played guitar in a band previously, they work it into an episode where they get to play guitar or they get to cook. That’s what I want our folks to be able to do is use their big ears.

and remember a person’s work anniversary or their birth date or their child’s graduating from school or their child had a softball game last night. All of these different things because that’s how you create the real connection and you create better relationships.

Anthony Codispoti (1:12:14)
Mike Garrett from American Healthcare, I wanna be the first to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. It’s been a pleasure, I really appreciate it.

Mike Garrett (1:12:22)
You’re welcome. Thank you, Anthony.

Anthony Codispoti (1:12:24)
Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today.