Well, hi, everyone. I'm Daniel Williams, senior editor at MGMA and host of the MGMA Podcast Network. We are back today with our member spotlight podcast, and I am so excited to have the guest we have today, and that is Bob Bush. Bob is a seasoned health care executive who also has recently retired and is transitioning into some different roles in that retirement phase, but also keeping a lot of irons in the fire both in the professional and the personal life right now. And Bob and I just very recently had an opportunity to catch up in Phoenix for MGMA's financial conference.

We'll talk about that a little bit as well. We'll also talk about Bob's webinar that he's gonna be presenting. It's a member exclusive webinar, own succession planning. He also presented that at our last annual conference. We called it Leaders Conference back in 2025.

Now it's back to the annual conference. So without further ado, Bob, welcome to the show.

Well well, thank you. I'm I'm happy to be here. Know, You it's always interesting, Daniel, when you and I talk, and that's last time we got together for a podcast is right after the hurricane Michael hit the hospital I was at in Panama City, and we're talking about emergency planning. Well, this is similar to emergency planning when we start talking about succession planning. You don't wanna wait until there's an emergency to do succession planning.

You really wanna be ahead of the game on on that. So I'm I'm happy to be able to talk about some of those things with the with the people today.

Yeah. We are gonna touch on that from a lot of different angles. First, let's just catch up. You and I saw each other a little more than twenty four hours ago in Phoenix. We're both back home in our home base, so to speak.

It was so good to catch up with you there. Give us your initial readings on the financial conference in Phoenix. What what'd you think about it?

No. I thought it was great. Great energy, great speakers. You know, the two keynotes were just they hit, you know, the ball out of the park. A lot of hands on what to do.

And, you know, when I was at the booth and talking to a lot of people coming by, they were talking about how many different nuggets they can take back to their practice, which is the biggest thing about, you know, going to any kind of MGMA event. You always walk away with something that you can institute almost immediately. And so I know so many people are so happy with DataDive right now, because, you know, over the years it's got, it's gotten more and more robust, and Datadive was a couple times people came up and talked about how much more it's useful for them in their practice. But anyway, everybody seemed like they had a great time. I love the weather.

You know, we talked about the weather a little bit. It was beautiful in '92 there. It's gray and rainy here today, so it's a a whole different a whole different world.

Yeah. And you and I had an opportunity to really catch up. Like you said, we had caught up years ago when that hurricane came through, the Panhandle Of Florida. What was that? Five years ago or six years ago?

How long ago was that?

'18. 2018.

Oh my goodness. Yeah. Okay. Time flies. Flies.

I knew it had been a minute. And so you and I had a chance to catch up, and it's really neat to just that's one of the cool things about a face to face event. You really get that sideline time where you can step aside. You can be really focused in a session, but you can also connect with someone there and kinda hear their story and the things that they've got going on. And I really love that.

Yeah. And and and that's the beauty of MGMA and the members. You know, I ran across so many people that I haven't seen in years, and it was just good to connect with them and catch up with them and, you know, just kinda, again, reinforce that relationship we had before and just kinda like it's always good to see them again. Yeah. That's what's so great about MGMA and its memberships.

And everybody's great. You know, everybody wants to help each other out, which is always good.

Right. We're gonna, touch on quite a few topics here. We're really gonna dig into succession planning, but this is our member spotlight podcast. So let's get to know Bob Bush a little bit better. What are a couple of highlights?

You and I talked a lot about it in, I almost said Kentucky, but that's where you are right now. But we were in Phoenix for the meeting. And give us a couple of highlights of what you did when before you retired. What were some of the things you would like to share with us?

You know, from a professional standpoint, I had great opportunities every time that I had a new career opportunity given to me. So it's more responsibilities and things like that. And so my last opportunity was, I was in Austin, Texas with the Austin Diagnostic Clinic, and we had 140 providers and I was acting as the CEO of the group. So that was, you know, a great opportunity. But, you know, there's so many things that I've learned through for all my opportunities and all my, you know, emergency management is, you know, it was important back in the hurricane hit.

Right.

But then I started thinking about it when we talked about, You don't have to have a hurricane to have an emergency. It could be a broken pipe. It could be a downed system. It could be almost anything that changes your your operations. And so you have to be prepared for that.

And same thing with succession planning. You know, in my talk that I gave at Annual Leaders Conference, you know, it was talking about, you know, have to be prepared. It's not one of those things that you wait until something happens. It's like day one. And I think one of the things that I took into every practice or in every group that I was with is I'm looking at who my team is for the future.

And it's not just my team of leaders, but it's also who the front desk people are. Who are the leaders of the physicians themselves? You know, who is the backup IT person or the facilities management person? So it's not just when you start thinking about administrative leaders, you're talking, you're thinking about any role that how can they be, you know, ready for the next step in their careers.

Yeah. You don't realize how much you depend on a person until they're no longer with the organization. I know that at MGMA and other places, somebody who, I don't wanna say you take the person for granted, but you think, well, they do everything so well. We're never having to go over there and check on them. And then suddenly, they get another opportunity.

They move across the country. Whatever, something happens, and suddenly they're not there, and you go, oh my gosh. We didn't we didn't prepare for this. We didn't Right. Cross train.

We didn't have a plan in place. They might not be at that CEO level. They may be a middle manager. They may be a person at the entry level, but, boy, did they play an important role in the organization. You don't know it until you feel that pain point.

Right?

Yeah. Well, you know, my when you're saying that, my mind went to JR at MGMA. Yeah. Yeah. JR's been at MGMA for thirty some years.

That's right.

You know, it's like, he does everything.

That's right.

You know, he was at the the conference. He I see him on the driveways last time I

was out there

in River Snow. So there's people like that. But exactly what you're saying. There's no matter what the role is, you have to be able to think about who is that person's replacement? Who's that person's person's replacement?

And that we we do that, and we need to do that from day one. I think, I have a couple of forms I'd be more than happy to show as he goes through this, is you need to think about every role. Not just the mission critical that you think of, but the mission critical for that practice. It could be the accounts payable person. A lot of people really wanna make sure that they get a paycheck, so it's gotta be So, the HR payroll you know, you have to think through all those different roles, not just like you said, the the higher administrative roles.

Right. So you brought up something that we are gonna share with y'all. This is gonna be new to our MGMA Podcast, but we do have that video element. So in a few moments here, Bob is gonna share a screen a couple of times so you can really see the forms and how he tactically addresses a succession plan. So we may have already touched on it to a degree, when we think about what are those friction points, what are those recurring issues that happen when people don't prepare.

But share with us, what else did we leave out? What are some common themes that you see when organizations, medical practice don't prepare for a plan, a succession plan?

You know, I I tell a story about a group that had a leader, a physician leader. It was her, you know, she was the practice. She came back to town. She went to medical school. She came back to town, opened a primary care practice, and it was very successful.

Local girl started growing it, very involved with the operations day to day, not just, you know, taking care of patients, but the operations. So as the practice continued to grow and she brought new employees in, she did the interviewing, she did the hiring, she did the training. She also was very involved with making sure everything, all the money was deposited. She also was involved with the EMR, she had the codes and everything else. So every time that they brought somebody else in, you know, she was the center of attention.

She knew everybody's birthday. She knew she knew all the kids' names. She knew she knew everything about everybody. She knew the, you know, the Starbucks order. You know, the the, you know, pharmaceutical reps didn't have to talk to anybody else.

They just talked to hers, but she just she knew everybody's want. Well, unfortunately, one day, she was no she didn't come to the office. Right. No one no one knew where the key was to the front door. No one could log on to the EMR because she had she was always the first one in the office, and she logged on to everything.

So everything was under her password. She was the one that wrote the checks. She was the only one with a bank account. She's not there. It's like nobody knew what to do.

The the office manager loved it because her job was really simple because the doctor took care of everything. But what now, it's like everybody's looking at her and she's like, I don't know what to do. I have no nothing. So if you don't prepare, you don't have a good system to share the wealth or share the responsibilities, it can really put a practice in the hard spot. And you know, there's other examples that there's another group that all of a sudden, you know, one of the physicians got ill and had come back on practice.

Even though it's a surgical group. A couple of the APPs were at that age where, I'm retiring. A newer one of the group is like, hey, I got a better job where my wife's from, and I'm moving to her family's home. So all of a sudden you had a group with six providers, and you're down to two. So, again, it's one of those things where you have to be able to prepare even for the unknowns, and you have a game plan for it.

Okay. Now succession planning could also be thought of as an exit plan. Sometimes that can get into uncomfortable space from, the mindset of, oh gosh, this is an exit here. But how do we change that mindset? How do we get a reframing of what we do when when that is the conversation that we're gonna have so it doesn't feel like a, quote, difficult conversation, but it's a proactive conversation that sets up success for the person that's gonna step into the role and for the organization.

So they're in that gap.

Right. And I think that it's really interesting that you have to look at what the the environment of that practice is. You know? If, In my mind, when you were talking about that exit strategy, there's one person who has, is the first name on the door, basically of all the group. That conversation has to be in that, there's a lot of different things about it.

How the corporate is made up. Is it a sole proprietor or is it each of the physician members have a piece of the puzzle? So a lot of that conversation really depends upon how that entity is built. A lot of physicians, baby boomers are at that stage of their career right now that they're looking at, okay, the market's been really good. Do I walk away now, or do I just like, okay, continue to make some money and, you know, help the market, you know, hopefully, the market will continue to grow.

And I don't wanna give up. The other thing is they they're afraid of of leaving. You know? You know? This this is them.

This is their personality. This is their life. This is their character. Is I am doctor Jones, and I built this practice from, you know, myself. Yep.

And so, there's always that old story about a physician will die within, I think it was nineteen months after they leave their practice because they had nothing else to do. So when you're talking about that conversation, it's not just a single level conversation about, you know, have you started thinking about Medicare, you know, retirement? One, that's illegal to have that conversation with. But secondly, you know, you need to start thinking about how you can help get them ready for retirement. And that's not a six month deal.

You know, typically what you if you reading all the data that's out there, a retirement plan really is a five year plan. Okay. Okay. So what you need to do is sort of think about one is the financials. One is, is what your new goals will be.

Obviously your goal today is work. But what's your goal in the future? You know, what's your, what are you gonna make, find joy in? What are you gonna find self your self worth in? And that's really what the biggest part of that mindful thought through that process to get ready for that day.

A lot of people don't think about it. They just think about, okay, I'm gonna turn, you know, I think social security gets you at 67 or whatever it is nowadays. Okay. I'm gonna retire and walk away. Well, that's not really the right way to do it.

You really need to have a plan to figure out what you're gonna do to fill your hours of the day. That's it. And and have that self worth again. You asked about a question, a simple conversation. I think it's really a lot more than just a simple conversation.

It's a series of conversations to be prepared for that day.

Yeah. It is. You and I talked about that a lot at the financial conference, and let's come back to that in a minute. Let's just put a pin in it because I want people I think this is a really good time for you to share your screen and show people, what a solid succession plan looks like, the components. But I do wanna come back because you're in a unique situation where you have retired, and you told me a lot about, okay.

I've got a lot of hours to fill each day, and I want them to be purposeful. So let's come back to that. But let's if you can share your screen right now and walk us through what the plan looks like.

I'm gonna share a couple different Okay. Screens. One is is is the a succession planning template. And what kinda just kinda give you an overview. It is list of all of the titles across the top.

And again, this is a very basic form. And I would suggest to anybody listening, if you're gonna use a form like this, is you specify it to your group. Now, you notice that I have probably put CEO, CFO, administrator, manager, supervisor, physician, other. But what you really need to do, not looking at just those type of titles, those leadership titles, you need to look at department leaders. You need to look at human resources people.

You always need to make sure that somebody can do payroll, somebody can pay the bills, somebody who's a maintenance person. You know, you gotta make sure that all those titles, all those mission critical positions are looking at what you're doing to prepare for the future. You have to be able to think ahead. So what you do is you build this and it's a simple Excel spreadsheet, and you can add columns to it and lines to it. But what you do is you list all the roles, those mission critical roles, and then you start filling in the information on the left hand side.

Who the person is in that position? Is there a date of a projected retirement? Now you can think about that one or two ways. Now, we always think about young people who are going to try to build their career, make another move. You don't have to use date retirement, or you could use date of potential leaving the practice.

So you can use whatever terminology you want in that line. And then again, what is the urgency of that person's replacement? If it's you know, somebody who is 65, the probability that they're gonna retire in the next five years is pretty high. So you would say that's a high urgency of a or a one. Someone who is you think is gonna be there forever, you could change that to a five.

Mhmm. In the next section below, you start thinking about, okay, who are your potential candidates within your organization today?

Right.

And start listing those persons in each one of these columns, so you have an opportunity to go, okay, I can look at these people. And so when I do their review every year, start talking to them and getting more information back from them about, okay, where are where's their mindset? Do they see them staying with your practice longer? Do they see themselves growing in the practice, and how can they do that?

Bob Bob, let me jump in because you brought up that point about identifying the right candidates. Is it just make itself known to you? Is there a process that you go through to identify those right people that are inside the organization? How do you go about that?

If you live give me a second. Let me finish this. That'll take you to another screen that has that that information.

Alright.

So, anyways, I think it's you'd see it. People who might be in a potential candidate for these next one to three years or or five years plus. So you have those different those areas that you put in into each one of those areas. And I realize there's a lots of rows here. It might your practice might not be that big or your my practice might be bigger than that.

Could add or subtract that. The other thing is this is looking at internal candidates. Now, if you're in a large organization that has multiple practices in your marketplace, you might know somebody that's outside of your immediate practice that might be a good fit in one of these roles. So don't forget about putting those names in this document too so you can have this as your as your training tool. One of the things that you always do is you think about we use this tool.

We call it the Nine Box. All right. So this is a talent profile grid template, and you have one of these documents for each one of your employees, and you review it on an annual basis. Now, you don't necessarily review it with them, but you will use it as a tool with you and the people that you use to help planning the succession planning. So you'll basically have this for each employee, and you look at their leadership potential, which is up and down the left side, which could be low, could be medium growth potential or high growth potential, and their individual performance, which goes from unacceptable to exceeds.

Now, the colors of the boxes kind of relate to the value of those employees. Okay. So example, the upper green right corner. This person is a top talent. Need to provide them special development because they have high leadership potential and their performance exceeds.

So the four boxes in this basic area of the document, if that person is in these areas, you really need to develop them. Those people are the future of your practice. You you get them to take extra classes. You get them to be certified with MGMA or get their fellowship. You get them you know, basically, you spend more time with these people than anybody else that would be in the outer l of the of the document, of the grid.

Because, again, those are your future leaders, and that's where you really wanna put your effort. Opposite of that, you know, basically, if somebody is in the red area down here or even maybe these two orangey dark orangey ones

Mhmm.

Those are the people that you might wanna have the conversation as, you know, you this might not be the right practice for you. You know? You just don't seem to be catching on well. You're not you know, just just doesn't seem to be a good place for you. So people in these areas, you might wanna have that conversation.

It's like, you know, you might want to look at it for another opportunity somewhere in another group. So that's that's a kind of a a way to look at that that nine box. Again, you use all that stuff to to look at where you your potential for new leaders will be. The other thing that I do, I I don't have a form of it that I shared this morning, but I keep an Excel spreadsheet of every mission critical person in my team.

K.

And it's it's an Excel spreadsheet that gives their name, the their date of the year of birth. Okay. And so what it does, I have it color coordinated through Excel, so you you so I basically say anyone is at the age of 60 or above, their name turns red because there's a higher probability of retirement. Somebody between 60 and 50 is yellow, and then anything under that is green. And it just it updates on an annual basis when I put in the next year.

So it gives me an easy visual looking at, okay, who do I really need to have those conversations with? What are their plans for the future? So there's a couple of different tools that people can use.

That is so cool. Well, I wanna shift gears a little bit. We're gonna get to kind of your personal journey in a moment, but one thing that you've been involved in for a really long time. Again, this is our member spotlight podcast, and these really go in the direction of whoever our guest is. None are exactly the same because people have different career paths or at different stages in their career.

One of the things you did at some point in your career, and I wanna find out from you when that was, when did you make that relationship first with MGMA, and what has that been like to your career?

Gosh. Now you're going back. You're you're catching my mind here. So prior to prior to, getting into the practice management side Right. I was a physician recruiter.

Okay. So I worked for LifePoint Hospitals as a physician recruiter, and I had hospitals in Kentucky, Mississippi, and Alabama that I recruited for. An opportunity came available for me to physician recruit for a hospital group out of, out of Dallas. And so I went to the interview, and was going through the different processes, and meeting different people. I think one of the last people I talked to was the vice president of physician services.

And so he, you know, we had this long conversation, you know, talked about my background, saw what, you know, what my goals are and things like that. He said, You're probably a very good physician recruiter, but I bet you'd be a great practice manager. And so that opened the door to practice management. And so at that time, I was involved with the Association of Physician Recruiters on their national board and things like that. So it was like, you know, it's just a whole different mindset.

But I were always wanted I'm always one of those people that I wanna give back to the organizations that help help me, you know? And that's the same thing with MGMA. So moving from physician recruiting into practice management, my direct supervisor was an MGMA member. He was certified. And so the whole idea was now that I'm no longer recruiting, you need to get away from that board and you need to get involved with MGMA.

And so got involved. I think I was sort of got my certification, my board certification in 2009. I received my fellowship in '11, maybe, '13, something like that, maybe. Somewhere, it was a couple years different. I really, you know, it's one of those things where, again, I've learned so many different things from being involved with MGMA.

You know? It just helped my career in that, yes, I'm I'm board certified. Yes, I'm a fellow. But like we talked earlier, it's like my peers that I see and and, you know, just being able to learn from them and learn from the different you know, educational opportunities. MGMA has been a great, great supporter for my career as it's grown over the years.

And that's why I give back. That's why I've been involved. I've written, you know, some people probably hate me, but helped write the exams, questions, right now I was immediate past president or chairman of the certification commission. So it's a lot of things I have had the opportunity to be very involved with with MGMA, and it's great for my career and for me personally.

Yeah. You've mentioned certification, the ACMPE, and then you went ahead and got the fellowship as well. What would you say to people who are MGMA members who hear about it and go, oh my gosh. I don't know if I have the time commitment. I mean, how do you balance that?

How do you weigh it? And then if you are going to pursue it, what can that mean for people?

The easy correlation is all of our physicians have to be boarded. Have to be board certified. Basically, the insurance companies won't allow them to practice unless they're board certified. The same should be for us. Our physicians are proud that they're board certified.

And I think that once they realize that we have knowledge and the credentials to say that we have studied, we're committed to our career, we're committed to our tool, our craft, and that we have gone through the steps to being, have the education, show that we have the knowledge through passing the two different tests, continuing our continuing education on a biannual, triannual, fifty hours every three years, shows that we are committed to our career and we're committed to our craft, and that it has the same relevance as a physician's board, you know, boarding is.

Wow. Alright. We I promised it earlier. We're gonna go more to the personal side now. We're gonna shift one more time before we sign off.

As I mentioned, you and I caught up, talked quite a bit at the financial conference, really got to trade notes. You're a little bit ahead of me in the career path, but I was asking you questions like, what can I expect? What what can I do? So you had a pretty, impactful career in health care. And suddenly to just turn that dial off, you suddenly go, woah.

I mean, I can play golf. I can go travel for a while. I can do all these different things, but then suddenly, it's really that purposeful life, that meaningful life in retirement. Talk about that, some of the things you shared with me at the financial conference.

Yeah. And I think, you know, the thing that I'm learning more about talking to people about retirement is the mistakes I made. You know? You learn from you learn from the hard stuff that will hurt you. I think that's the thing is, you know, we we mentioned it before.

It's like, it's probably a five year process. Just thinking through, again, where's my self worth? Where do I see myself giving back? Where do I get gratification? And where am I in the idea of how can I be at peace?

You know? I just went to yoga this morning. So it's like, you know, using these different things to be able to say, okay, I, you know, this is what I need to do to be healthy, which is a big part of it. You know, it's like, you you need to make sure that you're still doing things to stay healthy. You still need the things that keep your brain going.

Family, friends that help support you that way. So there's all those different things. I probably started late on that ballpark of trying to get all those

Right.

Ducks in a row, and I'm still not there. You know, I'm two years into retirement. I'm still not there, but I'm still working at trying to figure out how to put all those different pieces of the puzzle together. I'm getting a little bit better at it. Luckily enough, I'm you know, all of our family we moved up to Kentucky to be close to my kids and grandkids after living in Austin for a while, which is a great great benefit for us.

You've been involved with our church, you know, being involved with the Y, a couple of different, you know, different organizations here in town. But it's also given me a chance to do do some consulting work Mhmm. Which is fun. And then, you know, I'm still very involved with MGMA. Like you said, like last weekend when we were in Phoenix, it's like, was there as a volunteer for the American College of Medical Practice Executives, being in the convention hall, being available for one on one conversations to have, you know, conversations with people.

Okay, how do, what does board certification mean? How do I do that? How do I accomplish it? And you know, all those sorts of things. So I'm trying to stay busy.

Yep. But there's an interesting book I'm reading in the process right now is the elimination of hurry. So I'm trying to balance, trying to get out of that hurry mentality that we all had when you know, we that you still have, that we had when we were in a in a work environment to take advantage of some of the other things that that's available for us.

That's so cool. You and I had a we had lunch together, and we kinda geeked out on yoga. We talked about that quite a bit. I went to yoga this morning too. So we talked about the different forms, the different practices.

So what kind of yoga class were you involved in this morning?

So we did a kind of a intermediate flow, I guess. We spent a lot of time opening up the heart.

There you go.

And and so, yes, she had us in different poses that stretched different muscles that didn't stress very much before. So usually, I go swim. I swim about a mile and a half before I go to yoga. So I always have different muscles aching by the time I I get done with yoga.

That is so good. Yeah. We were talking about that. And the one I I told you all about this class that I go to twice a week. I also went this morning.

It's a heated yoga sculpt. So it's 91 degrees, and it's not hot, like a 105 and that sort of thing, but it's heated, so you're definitely sweating. And then you have little dumbbells. Well, some for some people, they're large dumbbells, but mine were pretty low. I was telling you, I kinda tweaked something in my left shoulder about five, six days ago, so I've been taking it easy with that.

But, that really wakes you up. And you've also, it keeps you in balance because it's one thing to do some of the balance poses without weights in your hands, and then suddenly, let's dial this up. Let's add some heat. Let's also give some weights in your hands. And then you're kinda recalculating how you keep things in balance.

I like to use the metaphor of that, though. When you're in a balance pose, it's also what we're doing in life. Right? We're balancing work. We're balancing the personal life.

We're balancing the career, and in your case, now balancing retirement and what that looks like as well. So I think that's pretty cool. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I think, you know, the thing you're talking about balance is is so important as we age because of all the other things that happen to us. You know, if we're strong in our core and in our balance, that's gonna help us stay healthy longer.

Absolutely. Alright. Let me think if we have anything else that we wanna share with our audience. There's so many things we've been talking about. I'll leave a blank slate for you.

Kind of we're looking at that career path after that main career that we're having, and maybe we're decelerating a little bit, or maybe we're just getting to do things we always wanted to do. Maybe in your case, being close to family, kids, grandkids, being able to help out, volunteer at churches, giving back to organizations like MGMA. What would you say as you have this blank slate here and some last words you wanna share with us?

You know, if if people are anywhere in that ballpark of thinking five years, I'm gonna retire in five years, you really start you really need to start thinking about what you're gonna do at that point because you just can't hit the switch as you walk out the door with your box of pictures. You know, you really need to be able to have an idea and start putting your toes in some of those waters. Is volunteerism for you? Is are you all of sudden gonna start wanna ride a bicycle for 50 miles a day? What are you gonna do to fulfill that void that you're gonna have?

You know, for me, you know, the part of my job, 96% of my job was talking to people, dealing with people. And I realized that I didn't have that part of my life filled in retirement. When we moved here, it took the first six weeks was just kind of getting the house together and dah, dah, dah, dah. But then all of a sudden, was like, I don't have any interaction with people. I get up, I go to the library, I go to the Y, go, whatever.

But it's like, my interaction was limited because for eight, ten hours a day, I was always with people talking to them, helping them work through challenges. So I had to find something I could do every other day to have that interaction with people. So I have a part time job in a men's store just to be able to talk to people. Sometimes my boss is like, are are you trying to help them with clothes, are you just talking about basketball last night? Well, you know, Kentucky lost last night.

They have to talk about that stuff. So but, you know, I think that's what, you know, I think I I I wasn't planning on having it like a part time job when I retired. But again, that helps me with that piece of the puzzle that I was very in tune with, and all of sudden that whole thing fell apart. So anyways, to come back to what you're asking is like, you have to think about what you're doing today and what you're going to do either to fulfill that that same void or figure out what you know, how that's gonna just it's not gonna go away. You're still gonna have that desire to have that part of your life.

But again, it's one of those things where you have to start thinking about that, you know. And again, it's probably a five year thing figuring out all those different pieces in the puzzle that you're that's important you to during this part of your life, and also where is that gonna be in that priority list as you go forward.

Right. So Wow. You opened up so much that I wanna I wanna talk about and keep going, but I wanna give you back some time in your day. But you did open my eyes to something. And there is that idea.

We've seen studies on this. There's an epidemic of loneliness, in our culture, and particularly as people age. And particularly as they step away from maybe that work environment and being able it may sound like a simple thing, but it isn't always. And so to be able to have that connection to people, you have it through your job at the men's clothing store, but also through your church and through your work you do with MGMA and even going to the gym, being able to just have eye contact with people. Even if you don't have a conversation, getting to see another person and just seeing that, wow.

This this post kind of is opening up my heart and maybe opening up other things that I didn't even know existed in me. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

No. It's very important to stay stay involved, stay around people.

It really is. So, Bob Bush, you are our March member spotlight, focus, this month. So we grateful for you and all the work you've done with MGMA and grateful that you showed up for this MGMA Podcast today.

Well, thank you. Thank you. And then I wanna make sure I invite everybody to come the, I think, the eighteenth to the Webex. And, there'll be a little bit more information about succession planning at that day, but please join us.

Yeah. Absolutely. Bob is referring to he is gonna give a member exclusive webinar, own succession planning through MGMA. By the time this episode runs, that webinar, the live version, will have already occurred. However, it will be on demand for up to a year.

So what I'm gonna be able to do for everybody is link directly to that. I wanna link to that. I wanna link to the book that Bob mentioned. Give us that title again, Bob.

Yeah. Mark John Mark Coomer, wrote this book. It's the ruthless elimination of hurry. I don't know if you can read it there or not. It yeah.

So it's really a great tool to start thinking about where you're spending your time today and what's taking up all your time, kind of back to what you're asking about certification and and amount of time to get ready for certification. This will remind you to look at where you're spending your time. Is it with this thing, or is it actually being in tune with your family, in tune with getting better, whatever. So it's a it's a great book.

Wonderful. And then there's one other source I'll share with people. It's a podcast that I've been dropping into lately. It's called midlife chrysalis, and it's hosted by the founder of Airbnb. He really looks at ways that we really find meaning and purpose as we begin to, you know, inch along in our lives in that midlife to later in life career path and even beyond that.

And I think it really shows some purposeful ways of living, finding meaning not only in the work, but also outside of the work as well. So until then, I do wanna say one more thing. As I mentioned, Bob is our member spotlight this month. If you, MGMA members, are interested in being the member spotlight, please shoot a note to us. We'd love to have you on the show as well.

So until then, thank you everyone for being MGMA Podcast listeners.