The Healthy Enterprise

In this episode of The Healthy Enterprise, Bret Larsen — serial entrepreneur and CEO of Chief — shares his journey from launching his first startup in college to leading multiple high-growth B2B software companies, including the telemedicine platform E-Visit. He reflects on the lessons learned from scaling businesses, navigating the challenges of the pandemic, and transitioning from founder to CEO. Bret discusses the vision behind Chief, a predictive operations platform designed to empower sales leaders, and offers candid insights on mentorship, resilience, and the personal side of entrepreneurship.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Brett Larson and His Journey
03:03 The Birth of E-Visit and Telemedicine Innovations
06:00 The Launch of Chief: A Predictive Operations Platform
08:54 The Entrepreneurial Drive: Origins and Influences
11:50 Navigating Challenges in Healthcare Innovation
15:00 Growth During the Pandemic: A Turning Point
18:09 Managing Rapid Growth and New Responsibilities
20:51 Personal Growth and Leadership Development
24:12 The Importance of Mentorship and Skill Evolution
30:47 Unlocking Growth: The Role of Founders' Personal Lives
35:50 Navigating Identity: The Founder vs. CEO Dilemma
41:34 The Evolution of Chief: From Vision to Execution
46:50 Building Chief: Insights from Market Research
52:47 The Unique Value Proposition of Chief
56:38 Passion and Pain: The Reality of Building Businesses

Guest Information:
  • Guest's Name:Bret Larsen 
  • Guest's Title/Position:   Founder & CEO
  • Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bretalarsen/
  • Company / Affiliation: Chief  https://www.getchief.com/
  • Guest's Bio: Bret Larsen is the Founder and CEO of Chief, a sales performance management platform built to help modern sales teams turn complexity into clarity and make growth inevitable. A 3x founder and seasoned CEO, Bret has built multiple high-growth B2B software companies recognized by Inc. 5000, Deloitte Fast 500, Forrester, and Gartner. Named a Titan 100 CEO, Top 50 CEO in Healthcare Technology, and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, he’s known for building high-performing teams and market-defining products. Backed by investors including Goldman Sachs and Kickstart Seed Fund, Bret also advises startups and serves on boards across technology, healthcare, and education.

Takeaways:
  • Brett Larson is a three-time founder and CEO with a strong background in B2B software.
  • His first company was a small e-commerce business started during his undergraduate studies.
  • Brett's journey in healthcare began with E-Visit, a telemedicine platform that gained traction during the pandemic.
  • The idea for Chief, his latest venture, was inspired by the need for predictive operations in businesses.
  • Brett's entrepreneurial drive is influenced by his family background and early experiences in business.
  • Healthcare is often slow to adopt technology due to the risks involved, but there are opportunities for innovation.
  • The pandemic created a significant growth opportunity for E-Visit, leading to a 1200% increase in team size.
  • Navigating rapid growth requires a shift in leadership skills and adaptability.
  • Brett highlights the importance of mentorship and executive coaching in his development as a leader.
  • The role of a CEO can be lonely, and perception plays a crucial role in leadership. 
  • You cannot increase burn for six months post-investment without proving ROI.
  • Founders' personal lives significantly impact business success.
  • Hiring talented individuals can be intimidating but is essential for growth.
  • Articulating a clear vision is crucial for leadership.
  • Goldman Sachs provides unparalleled support for startups.
  • Recognizing feelings of languishing can lead to renewed purpose.
  • Unlocking operational data is key to business success.
  • The ideal customer for Chief is a VP of Sales or CRO.
  • Pain tolerance is directly correlated to impact in business.
  • Passion for the problem drives resilience in entrepreneurship.

Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Guest
Bret Larsen
Bret Larsen is the Founder and CEO of Chief, a sales performance management platform built to help modern sales teams turn complexity into clarity and make growth inevitable. A 3x founder and seasoned CEO, Bret has built multiple high-growth B2B software companies recognized by Inc. 5000, Deloitte Fast 500, Forrester, and Gartner. Named a Titan 100 CEO, Top 50 CEO in Healthcare Technology, and Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, he’s known for building high-performing teams and market-defining products. Backed by investors including Goldman Sachs and Kickstart Seed Fund, Bret also advises startups and serves on boards across technology, healthcare, and education.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Growth Partners, a strategic consultancy that helps businesses scale sustainably and profitably. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, she combines analytical rigor with creative execution to drive measurable results. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has generated over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in client revenue, guiding organizations through large-scale integrations, business transformations, and organizational change initiatives. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt, Meghna’s superpower lies in strategic marketing and growth consulting, helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong, trusted partnerships.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Join host Heath Fletcher on The Healthy Enterprise as he explores how healthcare leaders and innovators are transforming the industry from the inside out. Whether you’re a provider, tech entrepreneur, marketing strategist, or industry executive, these conversations deliver actionable strategies, innovative solutions, and human-centered insights to help you grow, lead, and make a lasting impact.

Created and produced by Bullzeye Growth Partners — let’s make something great together.

Heath Fletcher:

Hey there, everybody. Welcome to the Healthy Enterprise Podcast. Thank you for joining me again if this is your return visit. And if it's your first time, welcome. I hope you enjoy this episode.

Heath Fletcher:

Today, I'm gonna be talking to Brett Larson. This guy is a three time founder and CEO with a serious track record in building b to b software companies. His ventures have been backed by the likes of Goldman Sachs and not to mention consistent spots in the Inc. Five thousand and Deloitte Fast 500. He's a two time Ernst and Young entrepreneur of the year finalist, a Titan CEO, and one of the top 50 CEOs in health care tech.

Heath Fletcher:

Should I go on? On top of that, he's one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, and he's gonna share his entrepreneurial story with us and bring us up to speed with his newest venture, Chief, an AI predictive operations platform. So let's have a chat with Brett. So, Brett, thank you for joining me today. I'm excited to have you on this episode and so we can get to know a little bit about you.

Heath Fletcher:

You've done a lot in your in your career thus far. So why don't you start with giving us introduction to you and what you've been doing and, yeah, just enlighten us with who Brett Larson is.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. So my background educationally is in accounting and marketing. I went to Arizona State University. I am a, for better or worse, entrepreneur, founder. Like, I I build.

Bret Larsen:

I'm happiest when I'm building something. And it seems like I try to choose the most difficult problems to try to tackle. I wish there was some I I called my mom when I decided to do it again, I was like, hey. Did you not hold me enough or too much? Like, what's wrong?

Bret Larsen:

What's wrong with me? Why am I doing this again?

Heath Fletcher:

Why am I like this?

Bret Larsen:

But so I I finished I started my first company and sold it during my undergrad program at ASU, small ecommerce business, direct to consumer. I knew I wanted to do it again, and I'd because of some things I'd run into, narrowed it down to software. And, really, what I was looking for was being able to source and fulfill customer demand immediately, not have to carry inventory, higher margins. And I didn't know anything about software. This was 2012.

Bret Larsen:

Mhmm. So I went to I took a position with a company startup in North Scottsdale, Arizona called STAT Health Services, and they offered a product called STAT Doctors. And it was in it was if you're the audience is familiar with Teladoc or Mhmm. Amwell's benefit offerings, it that we were doing that exact same thing. And at the time, Uber was just starting to gain a lot of traction from a word-of-mouth perspective.

Bret Larsen:

Mhmm. And so when we pitched I was employee number six, marketing manager. My job was to create awareness for members who had access to our twenty four seven, 365 physician services through our platform. And so when but when we go pitch it to investors, the analog we'd always use is, like, we're we're Uberizing health care. And at the time, there was a lot of a lot of noise from the taxi cab industry about the disruption Uber was introducing.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

Trying to block them from airports and municipalities and other places. And the thought I had in that experience was what's the if we're the Uber of health care, what's the analog? Like, what industry we're disrupting

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

Where there is an opportunity for them to accelerate innovation and save themselves, frankly, from and and create the better experience themselves. Because I I firmly believe if the taxi cab industry had created better access to their services

Heath Fletcher:

Sure.

Bret Larsen:

A better user experience that they probably wouldn't be in the situation they're in today. Yeah. Maybe not as quickly anyway. Yeah. So that's that was where the idea for evisit was born, which I the the next company I started.

Bret Larsen:

And evisit rather than being the medical services piece, was the platform infrastructure piece. So we built a telemedicine platform. We build. We we market. We sell a telemedicine platform that simplifies health care delivery for enterprise health systems.

Bret Larsen:

So if you did a video visit with your doctor during the pandemic, you probably used evisit and didn't know it if you were based here in The US. Yeah. Okay. So. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

They white label our technology.

Heath Fletcher:

Behind the scenes. Yeah. Okay.

Bret Larsen:

The largest health systems in the country, Advent Ascension, Banner Health. You know, like, we we we were the backbone infrastructure for them, and it was an incredible experience, wild journey. And then I I stepped into the executive chairman role January 2023, and the plan was to take four or five years off. And, like, nine months in, my wife pulled pulled me aside gently and said, you can't be here anymore. At least not before 05:00 in the evening.

Bret Larsen:

I think she gets the just wasn't super super fulfilled. I was I was the only time I felt fulfilled was when I was with my family, but I just felt like I wasn't having impact. And so Right. She she gave me the right push, and I went and started looking at what to build next. And and that's where Chief was born.

Bret Larsen:

And so this new company, Chief, it's predictive operations platform. So if you or the audience have seen the movie, Minority Report

Heath Fletcher:

Minority Report. I was just gonna say that. Minority Report.

Bret Larsen:

It's like minority report for your business. It's designed. It's a machine learning platform that ingests all of your business databases, CRM, ticketing systems, accounting systems, and uses the historical data to predict future outcomes and what you what you can do about them. So identifies, like, the leading indicators for any given outcome and can say, hey. This like, you're gonna miss your sales number in q four.

Bret Larsen:

But if you do these things today, you can you can actually change that outcome. Do you want to do it? And so we're in the early stages of getting that in place. There's definitely application in in health care and higher ed, and our our main focus is other software companies today. Wow.

Bret Larsen:

So that's like a big arc. I'm happy I can dive in deeper on any any single one of those areas.

Heath Fletcher:

For sure. Before we go into that, I was gonna say, have you ever met doctor Jay Sanders?

Bret Larsen:

That name sounds so familiar.

Heath Fletcher:

So he's like the big he was he was labeled the father of telemedicine. So I did a podcast with him. Oh, cool. He was one of the earlier ones. Very cool guy.

Heath Fletcher:

You've got to you got to listen to his podcast or at least look him up. Yeah. Doctor. Jay Anderson. He was like the it was actually his his boss who was actually started it in Boston, telemedicine.

Heath Fletcher:

They bought two black and white television cameras, and the doctor was just he he tells the story way better than I do, but the doctor was really trying to get a avoid having to come to Boston for rush hour. So he

Bret Larsen:

he invested in More convenience than

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. Anyway, that was the sort of, like, the first of it. And then he retired and then handed the baton to doctor Sanders and said, it's all yours. You gotta keep going. And that was, like, in 1969.

Heath Fletcher:

And Yeah. And here and so he did. He kept working on it, and then, of course, it exploded in after COVID. Right? But Yeah.

Heath Fletcher:

But, anyway, really cool guy. You gotta check him out. He's really, really, really nice person and a great storyteller too. So okay. So you're so now where did this entrepreneurial drive in you come from?

Heath Fletcher:

Like, because you've been doing it for so long. Like, you started out of the gate very young. Like, where do you think that came from? And plus you also had science in your education too.

Bret Larsen:

My honestly, I my mother.

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm. K.

Bret Larsen:

I I remember, like, my the first business I started was selling produce out of our family garden. And then then, like, shortly thereafter, I think my mom went to Costco and bought a whole bunch of, like, bulk candy and taught me how to run a p and l and to manage a balance sheet and, like and her father, World War two vet, came home from the war, worked for Bell South till he retired, but then went to the library, got a book on roofing, built a multimillion dollar roofing. I don't wanna say inner empire, but enterprise in on the East Coast, and then re retired at 85 because my grandmother wouldn't let him get on the roof any longer and then died at 86. Like, he died in his boots. So I think it's probably in my DNA somewhere.

Heath Fletcher:

But Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

At the core of it, I think I don't think I've I've learned, what gets me up in the morning is seeing impact. Like, seeing something I've built be value be valued or create value for a market or a customer or my my proudest moments at evisit were when I'd meet someone who had my product in their pocket, and and I shouldn't there's no reason I should have met them. Right? Like and it even it was even more exciting when it was outside of my market or my network Mhmm. And knowing that because I'd the team and I had built something, like, they had it to use.

Bret Larsen:

And so I I it's it's it's always been a piece. As a kid, love playing with Legos. Like, I've always really enjoyed the creative process.

Heath Fletcher:

So and and then what what was it that drew you to health care? Was there something a moment or a pivotal moment or something that kinda, like, threw you in there?

Bret Larsen:

When I graduated from ASU, I dual majored accounting and marketing.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

And there were two industries I said I'd never work in. First was first was education and the second was health care.

Heath Fletcher:

Health care. Yeah. Of course.

Bret Larsen:

But I think what drew me there was it's interesting. Both those markets are tend to be laggards when it comes to technology adoption. I think for different reasons, like health care is a laggard due to the risk of innovation, and and the whole mantra is do no harm. So that they, by nature, that need to be very careful about how they how they innovate.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. And it's why it's such a slow moving beast too.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. Yeah. Especially in the enterprise space. But I think what drew me there was what I perceived as an incredible opportunity and the the like, an industry that is that is a laggard and and could be innovated in. You know, that was exciting to me.

Bret Larsen:

The idea that you could take a group that hadn't yet adopted some of this innovation and change the way I mean, at the at the end of the day, the the big vision at evas is fundamentally shift the way that health care is delivered.

Heath Fletcher:

Right. So And I'm sure it was so easily adopted and you didn't have a whole lot of pushback and

Bret Larsen:

Oh, never. No. It was, I mean, straight up into the right. No. I honestly, I can dive into that if you'd like.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. For sure. Well, because both I mean, you said education and health care, both which are very bureaucratic and very heavy in administration, which is tends to be a common complaint about particularly health care is how how heavy it is in administration and how that's where a lot of lot of things slow down, right, when you're going through regulatory processes and and trials and and and all that kind of stuff. Like, that's where it really starts to really slow down.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. It's I think I think the key piece to that is is as you look at health care, there is that it's not an aversion to innovate. I think they actually genuinely want to. But then how? So if you look, you you know, you ask, it was just it just all worked.

Bret Larsen:

We so I started the business in the 2014. I left actually an EdTech company that I had joined as VP of marketing while I waited out my noncompete. And it it was we got we we actually grew really, really quickly at first, but it was in small provider practices. And, frankly, the product we built was probably far too robust for what they needed. And so as we started looking at the data, we realized that we we needed to move up market to improve retention numbers, and so we did.

Bret Larsen:

At the time, when you'd go pitch a large health system, the topic of telemedicine was always on their five to seven year road map perpetually. Right. Yeah. It's on a strategic road map. We're gonna do that in the next five to seven years.

Bret Larsen:

And

Heath Fletcher:

And every five to seven years, they added a back

Bret Larsen:

Every yeah.

Heath Fletcher:

List. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

100%. Yeah. And part of it was, I think, the payment the payment systems in The US weren't set up. There were like, the parity laws were spotty state by state. So there weren't a lot of the right incentives that were aligning it and be and and depending on what health system you were talking to and what their payer mix was and, you know, there there were a lot of business elements that impacted the viability of that as a business model.

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

But at the 2019, we did a small extension on a capital raise with existing investors in InsideRound. And my my lead my fellow board member and lead investor came to me. He's like, Brett, you know I love you. Right? And I was like, oh oh, goodness.

Bret Larsen:

No good start out this way.

Heath Fletcher:

I think I'm you know, it's not you.

Bret Larsen:

Actually, I do know he love me. Like, we we had grown very, very close, and I was like, yes. And he's like, there's no more money. He's like, twenty twenty, you get profitable, You sell the business or you're out of business. Like, right, there's we've deployed all the reserves.

Bret Larsen:

This is it. And so in tandem, I we had also stopped my wife and I had stopped taking a salary from me visit at the November of that year. And we were I mean, I was I started evas when I was 28. So at this point, I was 32, 34. Like, I had no nest egg, I don't they're I don't I don't have a trust.

Bret Larsen:

We had I had a $100,000 in credit card debt that I had used to start evisit and, like, $5,000 in our savings account. And we had two kids. No. We had three. We had three kids at that time.

Heath Fletcher:

You forgot.

Bret Larsen:

And my kids got Christmas because because the board gave me permission to use our Amex gold points on Amazon. Wow. And Wow. I've never bought money from my parents. This is getting super personal.

Bret Larsen:

Maybe you don't wanna go down this rabbit hole.

Heath Fletcher:

No. This is no. This is exactly right. I mean, people, you know, people like to they don't wanna hear about your misery, but they like to hear that you had you had to have you had some obstacles

Bret Larsen:

that overcome. Right?

Heath Fletcher:

I mean, that's as real as I mean, this is real. Like, it's it's not it's not made up, you know. You're not and that's not your car behind you, by the way, on the wall. It's your dream car. But I mean, you know, you gotta know that people have to know where where people went through to see where you know, because they may be where you're at.

Bret Larsen:

Well, I

Heath Fletcher:

have They may be where you were at then, right now going For me This is what I'm feeling right now.

Bret Larsen:

For me, the two most important qualities in a founder entrepreneur is pain tolerance and the ability to learn. If you can if you can navigate through really hard painful things and learn, you you and stay alive long enough, you will get you'll get lucky or you'll find an opportunity that'll work out. But so I've never borrowed money from my parents. I called my father and asked if like, because I was trying to figure out how am I gonna pay my mortgage for the next six months, like, at least. And I asked him if they could lend us money, and he was like, we could do that.

Bret Larsen:

How much do you need? And I told him he's like, yeah. We can make that work. I was like, I don't know. We don't need it yet.

Bret Larsen:

I just need to know I'm trying to figure out what my options are. And then the very next day in the mail, I got a the banks used to send around those blank checks on on unused lines of credit where it's like, hey. Consolidate your debt. No interest for eighteen months. So I got a check-in the mail.

Heath Fletcher:

I used a few of those.

Bret Larsen:

The next day, I wrote myself a check for $25,000, and I put it in our savings account. And that is how we paid our bills for the following four or five months. And so moving into 2020, the pandemic hit. We had closed Banner Health as a customer in 12/31/2019, which is the only reason the investors at the time did an extension on the round because they we started showing, like, hey. There's opportunity here.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. I'm at least that's what I I'm convinced that's the only reason they did it. And the original contract was was smaller, but the CIO of Banner, who I I became pretty close with through the pandemic, she called and she's like, hey. Are you following are you following this this COVID thing? And I I was like, no.

Bret Larsen:

No. I don't watch the news. Yeah. Because it's nothing. And I I have enough head game I'm trying to figure out.

Bret Larsen:

I was like, yeah. What are you thinking about it? And she's she said, how how hard would it be? The original scope for Banner was 300 physicians in urgent care. And she's like, how hard would it be to to get new like, a bunch more doctors on?

Bret Larsen:

And I was like, well, how many are you thinking? She's like, 4,000. And I said, how how quickly? And she's like, tomorrow. And I said, we're in the middle of a ninety day implementation cycle with them, right, to configure the platform, to train the physicians, to train the support staff, to train the admins.

Bret Larsen:

And I said, let me call my team. This was a Friday. Called the team. They're like, we can we can make it happen, not overnight, but give us five days. I said, okay.

Bret Larsen:

So I called I called Diana back, and I said, yeah. We can do it. She's like, okay. Get it done. We didn't I we didn't even we're even speaking about renegotiating the contract.

Bret Larsen:

She's like, we'll figure that out, but this is, like, this is gonna be big and not a great way. So I hung up. And Saturday morning, she calls back. It's never a good sign when a customer calls you on a Saturday, especially not the CIO of a $27,000,000,000 IDN. So I pick up the phone, and I'm like, great.

Bret Larsen:

The pandemic's not gonna be a thing. And, you know,

Heath Fletcher:

They keep they found a cure.

Bret Larsen:

So She's like, just she said, just kidding. We and I was like, oh, okay. And she's like, we need we need 7,000 doctors live tomorrow. Right? And I said, okay.

Bret Larsen:

So we did it. It took us it took us I think it took us nine days. We told her that. She's like, fine. No training.

Bret Larsen:

Configured an entirely new workflow. The scale we saw, it was like, we grew we video or visit volume grew by, like, 76 times over the course of fourteen days. And so we had to refactor the entire platform twice because we kept thinking we had built enough headroom in the servers. We're, you know, we're cloud based, but and I remember from March, it was the fifteenth or sixteenth because it was right on my wife's birthday, through June. It was it was hundred plus hour work weeks.

Bret Larsen:

I work a lot anyway because I enjoy what I do, but usually not more than sixty, seventy hours a week. That's not a badge of pride. I don't have hobbies.

Heath Fletcher:

Not your people.

Bret Larsen:

No. Like, all your people were We were a team of 25. So we grew that year, like, 1200%. Our team went from 25 to eighty eighty five, all remote. It was but but the coolest part was for the previous four years, five years, I'd been telling, promising, painting a vision to the team that we were going to fundamentally change the way that care was delivered, that we were that at some point, their friends and family would have easier access to care because of the tools we were building, because of the solutions we were providing.

Bret Larsen:

The great thing about health care is there's such a strong social mission. And so to finally see the team see the payoff for the work we've been doing around, like, hey. We're we're we're literally saving lives at this point was was such a cool experience. But yeah. So we we it we just went on a tear.

Heath Fletcher:

Wow.

Bret Larsen:

We grew a ton that year. It was it was a lot of we were it was really cool to be in a spot to help in in, like, a global emergency.

Heath Fletcher:

And at the same time, your your company is now exploding whereas, you know, other companies are, like, completely being crushed by this pandemic too. So what an interesting sort of intersection for you, for your team. Everybody was working, whereas other people were and everyone was working remote, whereas everyone else is being, like, dispersed, go home, go to work, get home. And, like, what an interesting series of events for you to

Bret Larsen:

It was

Heath Fletcher:

for that to

Bret Larsen:

It was wild. It was I mean, we were on the phone 3AM in the morning with the city of New York. We were it was just like anyone and everyone. It it was you're trying to to manage and navigate. I mean, there was a time because we had to support people before the pandemic started where we had to start we had to figure out whose calls to answer or, like, we had we had everyone answering support calls, you know, and on top of everything else they had to do.

Bret Larsen:

It was just it was a crazy, crazy experience.

Heath Fletcher:

So there's nothing to prepare anyone for that, you know, in that state, you're you know, one day, you're you wake up and you're in you're just worrying about how this is gonna end up and money money problems and no more investors. That's it. And then the next thing you know, your your company is exploding. And that brings on a whole new set of concerns and stresses. And so how did you how did you manage that, and what did you draw from in order to kind of, you know, bridge that that growth spurt?

Heath Fletcher:

Because that's an extraordinary growth spurt.

Bret Larsen:

Honestly, that growth how did I manage the almost here's what most people don't recognize when they hear the story after the fact. When it works out, the assumption you make is, oh, well, you just had so much conviction. You knew it was gonna work. Like, you were pushing through it. And the thing is you don't.

Bret Larsen:

You may even if you say you do, there's this weight sitting in, like, on your chest where you're like, I've made commitments to investors. I have people that work at the company that rely on this to support their families. I've got a family. I'm supporting we raised I raised money from my parents, from my in laws, from other friends and family prior to the institutional money coming in. Like, there's an incredible amount of pressure that comes with with that.

Bret Larsen:

The the growth through COVID was everything I had hoped to architect in a business.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

Right? Like, we saw some really good growth the first couple of years. And then, like, the fundamental shift, we plateaued two years in because we started shifting from anyone who had a credit card and could afford $99 a month to more mid market. And so you saw our average revenue per account from 2017 to 2019 shift from, like it was, like, $4,600 a year at the end of 2017. By the end of twenty nineteen, it was $53,000 a year.

Bret Larsen:

And so our revenue growth was didn't look good. We had grown, but the health of the customer is fundamentally better. And then, I mean, the revenue per average revenue per account today is just just off the charts because we moved from mid market into enterprise. Right. So the the everything all the growth that occurred was everything I'd hoped to create.

Bret Larsen:

Like, I wanted to be white knuckling it because of that growth. In my mind, startups die from starvation or indigestion. And we went from That's

Heath Fletcher:

good freeze.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. We went from starving to to, like, inundated. We we literally couldn't answer all the sales calls we were getting. And so it just it it's navigating that part was easy, frankly. Navigating the part of being on the brink of death constantly for two years.

Bret Larsen:

And there was other stuff going on with with some with, like, previous partners that was emotionally just the most difficult thing I've ever experienced. Right? It was just like very, very that part, the near death experience and someone who's dead set on assassinating your character for, you know, thirty six months. That that was hard. And I so I think going through that was like, I could do this all day.

Bret Larsen:

Like, the growth side, I could do this all day long.

Heath Fletcher:

You never know what you're capable of until you're presented with those kinds of situations.

Bret Larsen:

When I when I started when things started to get hard, my father pulled me aside, and he was like, hey, Brett. Anyone can start a business and give themselves the title of CEO. He's like, by the time you're done, you will be the CEO. And I didn't know what he meant. And then getting through it, it was like, oh, I get it now.

Heath Fletcher:

Like Now I know.

Bret Larsen:

No one should ever want this job.

Heath Fletcher:

Because everything falls back on you. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly.

Heath Fletcher:

And then being the founder too, you also have this other layer of this, you know, the it's your baby too. Right? When you're just a CEO, not just a CEO, but when you're the CEO and not the founder, is is it it's got its own set of of stresses, it's got it's got all those you know, well, it's all on you, and you're responsible. You're accountable for everything. But when you add that other layer of being the founder, now you've also got this sort of real personal sort of vision and passion for seeing it actually happen, which adds another layer of stress, doesn't it?

Bret Larsen:

For sure. Well, and people, like, team members, investors, customers, like, they're not just buying the product. They're buying you. Right? Because as a founder, you're setting a vision, and you're selling that vision.

Bret Larsen:

You're selling your ability to connect to that That's right. Over certain outcomes. So it it's extremely personal. It's Yeah. And it's very, very lonely.

Bret Larsen:

It doesn't I had great team members. I had incredible team members, but there are certain rocks that only only you get to carry. I mean, it's it's and and it's it's the most amazing growth platform, personal growth platform

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

That you'll ever experience.

Heath Fletcher:

What kind what kind of stuff did you tap into? Do you have did you have a couple of mentors, or did you just focus on, you know, learning and or just just what what did you do to kind of build that side of your of your leadership skills?

Bret Larsen:

It's that's a great question. And before I lean into that, I'll say that what I didn't realize when I started was the skill set. There I think there are fundamentally four different skill sets in in business. Right? There's building, managing, working, and scaling.

Bret Larsen:

And each of them are very different. And the skill sets required as a founder CEO from zero to a million are extremely different than, like, five to ten, ten to fifteen, twenty to a 100. Right? They're like, Yeah. As a founder, the most difficult part or as a CEO founder, the most diff and I think a lot of the reason most people don't make it, they start to hit growth ceilings Yep.

Bret Larsen:

Is because they they they stop being able to iterate their skill set and or learn or evolve or they don't want to. Because it's

Heath Fletcher:

like Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

I enjoy this piece. I'm a builder, and I can go from zero to 10, and that requires about 25 to 50 people. And I can still get my arms around that, but it but the skill set changes from building to leading. And so what I did and I I think there were a few things that forced me into it kicking and screaming. But I hired an executive coach about two years in.

Bret Larsen:

One of my board members was like, have you ever thought about doing this? I was like, yeah. Don't know where to find one. So he introduced me to a few. So I've had an executive coach consistently since that point.

Bret Larsen:

The most the you wanna get really vulnerable, go go do a three sixty review with your team. I remember getting the results the first time, like, that's not true. And then seeing it, like, seven or eight times and be like, okay. Well, if it may not be true, but it's at least perception, and perception is reality. So, like like, just having again, the CEO role is a very lonely one and having Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

You there are certain things you must go to your board about. There are certain things your team must know to execute well. There are certain things you can't take to your team because it's just a distraction. There's nothing they can do about it, and it doesn't help the business, so you shouldn't take it to them. There are certain things, moments of self doubt or, you know, questions that we all have.

Bret Larsen:

If anyone tells you they don't, they're lying.

Heath Fletcher:

They're lying.

Bret Larsen:

That you can't take to your board or you undermine their confidence and, like, your their ability to help help you. You don't need to give them more question marks. There's enough of those without you adding to them. And that's I'll say there are certain things you must go to your board about. Right?

Bret Larsen:

Like, if there's some things happening in the business that fundamentally threaten the business, you must take that to them, and it's your responsibility too. But having a a party that is interested in your growth, not the business's growth Mhmm. Is such a big unlock. If I were if I were on the institutional investor side, there are two things I've never seen anyone do, three actually, that I would require. The first is I you you could not increase burn for six months post investment.

Bret Larsen:

Unless you could prove that there was a significant ROI, you could maintain burn, but you couldn't increase burn six month for six months post investment. I would in in as part of my due diligence, I'd spend time with the executive founder CEO's spouse or significant other. Because if if at any point my wife had told me she was done and I had to make a choice between the business or my family, my family I there wouldn't have been a hesitation. It would have been my family. So the reason, Eva, is it was successful is because Brie was there every single step of the way.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. It's your support.

Bret Larsen:

She never doubt it. Right? Like Yeah. And then and then the third is they would have to get a coach. And it and it wouldn't be someone I would introduce.

Bret Larsen:

It needs to it's a very personal relationship, but the ability to go to someone whose motivation is your growth and not the businesses unlocks crazy growth for the business. Because Mhmm. There is a direct correlation to a founder's ability to grow themselves and the businesses if you look at any business that stalled, I promise you nine times out of 10, you'll find that the founder has hit a ceiling. Mhmm. The business still has lots of potential most likely, but the founder has hit a ceiling that they need to work out and through.

Bret Larsen:

And I, like, I was fortunate that I had a community around me that helped introduce those things, but also a team that was super patient with me and and supportive.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. There's probably a point, like you said, with the founder and and the CEO. There's a point where you hit that ceiling, and there may be a bit of identity crisis going on because there there are some I've heard a lot of people make comment about that at some point, particularly in science, actually. I'll use that as an example is that founders are are typically scientists in in some of the more biotech sort of areas. Mhmm.

Heath Fletcher:

And they only have their their their passion or what they are doing is the science. And then they actually get pulled into this business aspect, which really sort of separates them and becomes you now you're, you know, you're trying to have two identities. You're trying to be a business person and a science person. And I think, yeah, I think you described this. Like, at some point, you have to decide, I'm just gonna be I'm gonna stay the scientist, and I'm gonna find someone else to be the business head because I'm not serving anybody by trying to do something that that's not what I wanna do and that's not what I'm passionate about to stay in the lane that I'm in and build a team around me, which really depends on being able to trust others in those roles.

Heath Fletcher:

And that's that's a big step for a lot of founders, I think.

Bret Larsen:

Well, I and I think as you're building a team, the goal is the way I'd articulate to my team was, hey. You should be hiring people that are so good, it kinda scares you. Like, they need to be culturally aligned. You can't be wondering whether or not they're out for your job.

Heath Fletcher:

For sure. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

But you should hire them and with with them having your job in mind. Like, could this person replace me?

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

Because I can't do better work until someone can do the work I'm doing. And so, like, how do you and that's a really uncomfortable place to be. Like, the idea of, you know, the insecurities I had is, like, why would someone like that be willing to work for me? You know?

Heath Fletcher:

Like Yeah. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

As a as a twenty year old kid, what do I have to offer? And the reality is that asset that is your vision, like, your ability to articulate and identify and it's a it's not an asset that that it is it is easy to come by. It's actually a skill set that I think is undervalued because Mhmm. It's a softer skill set where it's like, have this vision. I can so clearly see.

Bret Larsen:

And your job is this. As you become a CEO past a founder, your job is to articulate that vision so clearly that people can't not understand it. And you Right. And you know you're doing your job when you start to repeat what it looks like and people roll their eyes, or they can finish your sentence. Right?

Bret Larsen:

It's it's finally, you're like, okay. You go. Looking at the same place and Right. And then your job is to just create the guardrails. How do you make sure that they're staying within the bounds of what's possible and where you need to get to.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. That's a great description. I like that. Yeah. So now now fast forward, you've you've that was a great story about evisit hitting the when you hit the pandemic.

Heath Fletcher:

That's crazy. So then now evisit, you're you're you're still on the board with them. You're still involved. You're still participating, and that's going along. And now chief is is now rolling along.

Heath Fletcher:

So let bring us up to speed to today where Chief is at and and dig into that a little bit more. How how how what made you think of that model of a SaaS?

Bret Larsen:

So when when I I told you about nine months Mhmm. I stepped into the executive chairman role in January '23. Between the pandemic, we raised a couple more rounds of capital. The last round was was led by Goldman Sachs, their growth growth equity group, incredible partners. Like, if if you're building a business and and you have the opportunity to work

Heath Fletcher:

with

Bret Larsen:

Goldman, 100 take it. It like, what regardless of of what the competing terms are, those those individuals go to work and they can open doors that, like, almost no one else can. And they're and they're really just easy to work with. Right? They treat you like partners.

Bret Larsen:

They're great. I'm not being I'm not being paid for this endorsement. I

Heath Fletcher:

This is not an endorsement. This is they're not and they're not a sponsor of this episode. No. At what what point do you know that that's the kind of that when you need to approach a team like that?

Bret Larsen:

They actually approached us.

Heath Fletcher:

Oh, really?

Bret Larsen:

We went out to raise our series b, and it was actually we closed our series a in September 2020. And in our first board meeting that fall, I in during that time, Amwell, who was our biggest competitor, went public, and they had, like, a billion dollars of cash on their balance sheet. And I in our first board meeting, I said we should we'd, like, we'd grown 1200% that year, and I said we should go raise another round of capital. And they all kinda looked at me like, we just rate like, we had more cash in the balance sheet than we'd ever had. In fact, we were profitable in q one and q two of the following year, and we had more cash in the balance sheet the day before we closed the Goldman round than than than we had the day after we closed the a round.

Heath Fletcher:

Holy

Bret Larsen:

cow. And so they all looked at me, and I was like I kinda laid the story out. Was like, Amwell has a billion. We're not losing deals to them. We should be putting our foot on the gas.

Bret Larsen:

And so in the b round process that I was running, Goldman came to us, and it was near the tail end. I was like, hey. If you guys can move fast, you're welcome to lean in on this. But otherwise, we're we're almost done. And they're like, we can move fast.

Bret Larsen:

So it was, like, a week or two before they gave us a term sheet. And it was really just I for me, I I've as I look at the investors we raised money from, there are a few in there that are just phenomenal and a couple that are mediocre at best. And I won't say who because I still work with them. But the difference is the phenomenal ones show up like partners. Like, when there is a chance to take advantage, they don't.

Bret Larsen:

When you're trying to work through something, they don't kick you. They treat you like a peer, not an employee. And as a CEO, you are the you are an employee. But as a board member, you're a partner. So it's a fine balance.

Bret Larsen:

Right? And so it was as I got to know the team, I think part of it was the it was their it was the their minority growth equity group. So they made a minority investment, but the series b was a $45,000,000 round. At the time, it was the largest b round that had ever been raised in Arizona by a venture backed startup. And they just the way they approached the conversation was as partners, not as Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

You know? And it was I think it was so different from what when I thought of Goldman in my head, it was so different from what the image in my head was, which was not informed by anything anything. Just, you know, Goldman Sachs. And so I think that was part of it. Was like, wow.

Bret Larsen:

This is quite different. They're much faster, flexible, hip, you know, interested,

Heath Fletcher:

engaged. Invested.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. You know, they understand the market really, really well. And the other element was with our customer base. Mhmm. Other blue chip venture capital firms, their brands are big in startups.

Bret Larsen:

Mhmm. But very few of our health system customers would hear one of their names and be like, oh, we know exactly who they are. Everyone knows who Goldman is. Mhmm. And so that actually gave us a lot like, gave our customers a lot of confidence that we were we're a Goldman backed company.

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

Goldman is underwriting a lot of their retirement, you know, accounts and things like that. So and so that that was the calculus as I thought about who to work with and what partners to take on. But so I January 23, I promoted my president to CEO and stepped into the chairman role. I thought I'd take I think I told you this before we started recording. Five years off was the plan.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. I still have a young family. My oldest is 12. My youngest is three. We've got four.

Bret Larsen:

And, like, nine months in, my wife was like, hey. I love you. You can't be here anymore. You can come home after work, but you need to go. So I I did a I interviewed for CEO roles, and every time I got close to an offer, I thought, I don't want another job.

Bret Larsen:

Like, I don't want I I will start with a job with x amount of employees on day one. That doesn't sound fun. Mhmm. And so I just started, you know, late twenty or 2023, 2024, generative AI started becoming much more like, that was the hot topic. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

And the big question I had I actually called my coach just after I'd gone on a couple of international trips, got home. I called my coach. He's like, I think I'm depressed. And he was like, you're not depressed. You're languishing.

Bret Larsen:

And I was like, I don't know what that means. He sent me a Harvard an HBS article I read. And I was like, called him back. I like, okay. I'm I'm languishing.

Bret Larsen:

What do I do about it?

Heath Fletcher:

It's just a nicer word.

Bret Larsen:

He was like, get back to work. And I realized I wasn't being challenged. I didn't

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

I had restored a couple of other dream cars that I I had always wanted to work on. Like, I did all these things and just wasn't finding a whole lot of purpose. And so I just went and started interviewing senior operators at at growth stage software companies. And the question I was asking that I was trying to get answered is what does it look like to to operationalize generative AI? What does it look like to actually put it to work?

Bret Larsen:

Not go go work with it, but to get it to go work for you.

Heath Fletcher:

Right. To get it to yeah. To use it as a tool to do something you wanted to do. Yeah. Okay.

Bret Larsen:

And as I interviewed more and more of them, a lot of CFOs, a lot of CEOs, probably combined it was over a 100 of these interviews. The recurring theme and and one of the pain points that was resurfaced for me was getting timely access to data to make decisions is incredibly painful. And even worse, those are usually reactive inquiries. You're Right. A problem something has happened, and you're trying to figure out why and what to do about it.

Bret Larsen:

And as I reverse engineered the process, we'd go through a evisit. It was like every time I had it there's usually four questions that come with anything that happens data wise. What happened? Which is usually pretty clear if you're managing by the data. It's like, oh, our pipeline dropped.

Bret Larsen:

Our utilization went up. Our whatever. The next question is why did it happen? The question after that's what's gonna happen next? And then the fourth question is what will happen if?

Bret Larsen:

And so what I found was the the answer to the next three questions get progressively more expensive. It it'll take if you ask one of those three questions, it'll take one of your data analysts three to four weeks and six to eight thousand dollars depending on what how you compensate them. And that's just the hard cost for them. They didn't count all the other people who are involved in that process.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

And so I thought, well, you know, what if what if you could train AI to proactively surface these things so you know what's gonna happen? And this all came out through these interviews. It was like, how do you how do you access data? What tools do you use? What works?

Bret Larsen:

What doesn't work? How much do you spend? So it was really, like, an evolutionary process where I just kept asking more questions to try to figure out, like, how do you unlock the asset that is your operating data in a way that that puts it to work for you that creates simplicity.

Heath Fletcher:

How are you how are you getting these people to to answer these questions for you?

Bret Larsen:

Like How do I get them on the phone? Or

Heath Fletcher:

how Yeah. Like, how are you, like, how are how are you in in engaging with these people to ask them these questions? These are pretty these are pretty specific questions, and they wouldn't they be like, what are you up to?

Bret Larsen:

I told them. Like, I was like, hey. Oh, you're Yeah. I'm like, hey. I I

Heath Fletcher:

You're just doing research.

Bret Larsen:

I'm founder CEO. I'm building something again. I don't know what it is yet, but I'm building it for you because I narrowed it down. Like, I wanna build for growth stage b to b senior operators. Like, those are my people.

Bret Larsen:

No one joins a software company who isn't growth oriented. They Right. No one no one starts few of us start software companies. We're like, you know what? I'd love to just pay my mortgage every month.

Bret Larsen:

That'd be great. Right? Like, they're there to create significant impact. And and anyone who tells you it's about the money is half lying. Because if it was just about the money, they'd choose a different occupation.

Bret Larsen:

They'd go be a banker or a lawyer or an attorney. Like, there are far better ways to create wealth than starting software companies or any company because the pain the pain associated is significant. It's really like, there are better easier ways. If that's why you're doing it, do something else. And so I'd I'd my thought was like, these are my people.

Bret Larsen:

I wanna work with people who move fast, who can think fast, who make quick decisions. So I that's how I pitched them. And I just said, hey. I'm building something. I did this before.

Bret Larsen:

I know what it's like to be where you're at. I'm doing it again, and I'm gonna build it for you. And I'd love to spend thirty, forty five minutes just picking your brain on your day to day experience across, like, how you operate.

Heath Fletcher:

That's cool.

Bret Larsen:

And I

Heath Fletcher:

mean, not not a lot of people would actually they would that'd be mean, that's a that's that's the way to get that information, but I think a lot of people would actually go to the trouble actually doing that. It's cool.

Bret Larsen:

It well and That's great. You know, the groups that responded, they're super generous with their time. A lot of them Yeah. And you just stay engaged. Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

Like, there was a bunch of them that actually prepurchased the product before we actually went out and raised a small seed round. So it just like, the the problem statement resonated. They got it. And now, you know, we're in the phase where we're working our tails off to make sure we can deliver on the promise. So

Heath Fletcher:

So what phase are you actually in right now?

Bret Larsen:

Good question. So we have we launched our MVP last October. The next iteration, we launched the April onboarding customers, early feedback. Right now, we're just we're just beating up the product. Like, how do we get it to answer questions more accurately?

Bret Larsen:

You know, it's it there's a lot of AI stuff out there right now, so there's the big difference is Chief is is is machine learning platform. So it's classical AI where you get a lot of people who are doing, like, generative AI wrappers, and that's that's not what we're doing.

Heath Fletcher:

Right.

Bret Larsen:

So we're in the phase where we're a b testing go to market messaging, seeing what resonates, what they click on, where they dive in, where they convert, where they don't convert, and then just you know, this is an ongoing it never ends, but, like, refining product experience. How do we make sure that, you know, the product delivers the value that that we're selling? So

Heath Fletcher:

Sorry. Are there people using it right now? Mhmm. Like, beta testing? Yeah.

Bret Larsen:

We have we have we have seven seven customers onboarded. We've got, you know, a whole bunch in the backlog that are we're slowly ingesting their data and training the platform and getting them on and using. So

Heath Fletcher:

So, Wak, just briefly describe what who would be using this, and and what would they be using it for? Just for listeners to get an understanding as, like, where would I why would I bring Chief on?

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. So the the initial user set is a it's a RevOps user user set. So you think about if you there's a lot of talk about agents right now. Like, the chief agent is your sales ops manager. It's it's the thing that's watching every interaction, checking to see, you know, and and identifying like, hey.

Bret Larsen:

Bill's pipeline coverage just dropped below four times where it needs to be. And we know that Bill needs four times his close rate's 22%. So we need four times his his his quota for it to hit that. His sales cycle is seventy two days. His the deal average deal size is 46,000.

Bret Larsen:

Based on all this, we know he's going to miss his number in November if something doesn't change. But today, if he increases prospecting, which is Bill's most effective form of of pipeline generation, and he increases calls from 60 to 80 per day for the next three weeks

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

Based on his conversion rates, we can get him back to a place where he's gonna hit his number. And then it's do you want we could reason we call it chief is because it acts like a chief of staff. And do you wanna assign a bill and manage him towards this outcome? So the ideal customer is like a VP of sales, CRO, head of head of sales at a company doing between at least 5,000,000. We like to shoot for 10 to a 100.

Bret Larsen:

Like, our customers today range from 20 to 300,000,000 in ARR. But it is it's constantly scanning your datasets to identify risks. It'll go in and act as, like, the data hygiene, you know, analyst and be like, hey. You forgot to fill out this CRM field. You've didn't you pushed the close date twice.

Bret Larsen:

When that happens, deals are tend to not close. You should engage in a senior leader with their senior leader to get things back on track. So it's learning from everything that's happened in your business historically. That's pretty cool. And and working to to improve rev ops and rev performance.

Heath Fletcher:

Wow. That's great. That's great. So it's rolling out. And and what's the now you've you've had a you've had your finger in the marketing pie in all of your ventures because you can actually did marketing in school too.

Heath Fletcher:

So you are you always playing a part in that in every step of the way?

Bret Larsen:

I I love I'd say my, like, centers of excellence are go to market. It's been fun because it's been a long time since I've done the marketing side. As we grew at Chief, I worked myself out of that job. Yeah. So it's been fun to relearn what the playbook looks like.

Bret Larsen:

Like, the playbook I used to scale cheap in the early days is totally different. Yeah. We're seeing good reactions and responses to the tactics we're using today on that. But my centers of excellence are, like, enterprise sales, go to market, like, demand gen, and early product validation, like early product user experience, like

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm. Defining

Bret Larsen:

the product and helping the team see the vision there. I'm not technical by background, so I have to bring a lot smarter people around the table to actually build it. But the that's where I'm spending most of my time is just go to learning from the customer. Like, I'm having as many market conversations as as we can to learn and and iterate.

Heath Fletcher:

And are they finding that this isn't this is sort of a a new this is something that they haven't they can't find anywhere else at the moment?

Bret Larsen:

We're not the real difference is the predictive and proactive piece. Like, what a lot of the competitors we see out there are just rag based systems where you have ChatGPT wrapped around a document to simplify it. You know? Like, oh, ChatGPT can give you an answer of, like, what color is this wall? Sure.

Bret Larsen:

But asking ChatGPT to forecast where you're gonna end up in nine months based on your current pipeline, it it'll give you an answer, and it'll be wrong. Yeah. Right? Because it's not It'll just guess. Yep.

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. And so when we show people what it can do, they immediately get it. Like, if they're like, oh, can you actually do this? And we'll we'll ingest a dataset for them and show them the outcomes. And so the attach rate's really, really high.

Bret Larsen:

Like, we have we have more customers getting ready to onboard than we have capacity to onboard right now, which is a great problem to have. That's a good I It's a good my team, I'm like, you're our job like, the problems never go away. They just get better. So, like Yeah. The question we'll ask every ninety days is are we solving better problems in each of our functional departments than we were ninety days ago?

Bret Larsen:

If the answer is yes, congratulations. Well done. If the answer is no, why not? Like, why aren't we solving? What haven't we learned that that That's right.

Bret Larsen:

Given us the right to solve a better problem? You know, ninety days ago, we were solving pre revenue problems. Today, we're solving onboarding velocity problems, which is Mhmm. A better problem in in my experience.

Heath Fletcher:

And this product's suitable for almost any industry too. Right?

Bret Larsen:

Yeah. I mean, as I look at, you know, in the back of my mind, if if it hadn't worked in the markets we're looking at, my thought was we could go to education and do predictive analytics on student dropouts. Like, in higher education specifically, we could go to health care

Heath Fletcher:

and we'll get re

Bret Larsen:

Oh, that's interesting. Admission problems. Mhmm. Because there are data points that would indicate before a patient leaves an exam room or a an in, you know, hospital bed. Like, if these things have or haven't happened, you are going to see that patient again, and it is an extremely expensive problem.

Bret Larsen:

So there are, like, in fintech, you know, there are predictive elements where you can say, we know this person isn't gonna pay their bill

Heath Fletcher:

Mhmm.

Bret Larsen:

If you wait till this point to remind them. But if you do it now, you know, your your your payment rates go way, way up. So there are there are acute specific problems across various verticals that Mhmm. We've kinda held in the back of our in our back pocket to be like, hey. If we if we need to get more specific than we are already are, here's here's where we should go.

Bret Larsen:

Mhmm. Test the value prop.

Heath Fletcher:

Awesome. So anybody stepping into your shoes or or working their way in in anywhere throughout your trajectory of your career, any advice or resources that you would advise them to tap into along the way? I mean, obviously, the executive coach is great advice, and you're still seeing an executive coach. You've never actually given that up from what I understand. And I've heard that before too.

Heath Fletcher:

Any other sort of feedback or input for someone walking in your shoes?

Bret Larsen:

Such a head game. Like, figure out what your morning ritual is or your weekly ritual or whatever it else is that helps get you centered. Because, like, really, I I believe, like, as I've looked at various companies, like, your ability to to have impact is directly correlated to your pain tolerance. And like I said earlier, like, your ability to learn. Most of us can do those two things.

Bret Larsen:

It's just like, what are you willing to give up? It's it's how do you keep your head on straight and and, like, reframe how you see challenges and opportunities, and it is, like, 100%. I I compare business building to, like, a professional sport. Right? Depending on where you want to play the game requires different levels of skills.

Bret Larsen:

If you look at the greatest players in the world, they're constantly learning, iterating, challenging. I mean, if you ever watched the documentary on Tiger Woods, like, the transformation he went through where he he broke down his entire game, like built, you know, put on it was like 30 or 40 pounds of muscle and redefined his swing. Like, doing that after you're at the top of your game

Heath Fletcher:

At the top of

Bret Larsen:

your game. Yeah. That's wild. Like, it's it's a totally different mindset that's required. And so I think it's just understanding, like, where do you wanna go, and are you willing to go through the pain required to get there?

Bret Larsen:

And if you are Yeah.

Heath Fletcher:

And pushing yourself out of your comfort zones too. Right? Because you there is a point when you're in your in your in our career path, you get to a point where it's like, well, I'm really comfortable where I'm at. I know what I'm doing. I could do this in my sleep.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. And then but then, you know, you you almost have to, like, push it. Push yourself out of that out of that spot because otherwise, that's where you'll just you'll just stay. And there's no growth when you're that point.

Bret Larsen:

This sounds so I feel like you hear this a lot, but, like, do something you really love. Like, I I love building businesses. I learned over the course of nine years that I didn't love health care. I still loved building businesses. And so it it I think if you if you're doing something that really gets you out of bed in the morning, like, you're okay with it's okay.

Bret Larsen:

Like, the discomfort's okay. You know? You you you're like, yeah. This is worth it because I know there's something on the other side of this that makes me 10

Heath Fletcher:

times better. The love you have for building businesses, is is it the love of the building the business, or what is the part of it that you love? Is it the is it the thrill? I mean, because there's there's always problems to solve. There's always obstacles in the way.

Heath Fletcher:

There's always it's not like it's a smooth ride. You know? Like, what is it about that part of it? Is it the thrill of the of of, you know, resolving those problems? Is it the thrill of getting through the adversity?

Bret Larsen:

I think I think there's two pieces. One is the growth that comes through it and I I guess the the being challenged and growing from that challenge, solving the problem. And two is seeing the impact that the the solution has. I it's really about, like, I I don't have a lot of hobbies, and I used to wonder why. And it's because for most things, as soon as I feel like I'm halfway competent, I'm like, okay.

Bret Larsen:

I understand how this works now, and I'm I'm bored. Right? But Yeah. With business

Heath Fletcher:

Actually, I can relate to that, actually.

Bret Larsen:

Everything's always changing with business. Yeah. Everything. The market's changing. Your customer's requirements are changing.

Bret Larsen:

The business itself is changing. And so there's like, I can count on, you know, two or three fingers the amount of times growing evisit that I felt like I had things figured out. And it never lasted for more than two or three weeks. It was like, yeah. Okay.

Bret Larsen:

We got this. This is easy. And then something would happen. Like, this isn't that easy. And it and it every nothing is in my experience.

Bret Larsen:

Like, nothing worth doing really is. And so it's make sure you love it because it's not gonna be easy. And so, like, choosing something that you're, like, deeply passionate about, which I didn't really understand. Frankly, I hear that all the time. I'd like, okay.

Bret Larsen:

Mhmm. Like but if you if you really care about the the problem, there's there's, like, not a lot that'll get you'll go through any amount of pain required to solve it.

Heath Fletcher:

Amazing. Well, we just blew through an hour.

Bret Larsen:

That was fun.

Heath Fletcher:

That was really fun. Thank you so much. Thank you. Where can people find more find out more about Chief?

Bret Larsen:

Getchief.com, getchief.com. And then you can follow follow me or the team on LinkedIn or I'm starting to get more active on x, and and the plan is to get more active on Instagram just to to share more about Chief and what we're up to. But the best place is is our website getchief.com.

Heath Fletcher:

Awesome. Thank you, Brent for spending an hour with me. I really appreciate it. It's been it went really fast. It was awesome conversation and yeah.

Heath Fletcher:

Inspiring story.

Bret Larsen:

So I appreciate it.

Heath Fletcher:

Everyone will have have enjoyed listening to you talk. So Awesome. Thanks for

Bret Larsen:

having me.

Heath Fletcher:

Yeah. You bet. Well, we could've just kept right on talking. That was a great chat. Super inspired by Brett's story.

Heath Fletcher:

He's definitely a founder, a builder, and, who has tapped into his early experiences that have certainly helped him prepare for the many challenges of building in health care and tech. His story is super powerful and a reminder that resilience is discovered in the hardest moments and that surrounding yourself with the right people is just as important as the product you're building. So he's gonna put those leadership skills to test once again with his newest venture chief. So watch for that and go check it out in his website. It'll be exciting to see where he takes it in the coming months.

Heath Fletcher:

So I hope you found this episode valuable. Please subscribe and share it, and join us again for another episode. Please stay healthy, and we'll see you again soon.