Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Veterans know how to lead. The lessons we learned in the military form the foundation for bigger successes in business, entrepreneurship and community.
Host John S Berry, CEO of Berry Law, served as an active-duty Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army, finishing his military career with two deployments and retiring as a Battalion Commander in the National Guard. Today, his veteran led team at Berry Law, helps their clients fight some of the most important battles of their lives. Leading successful teams in the courtroom, the boardroom, and beyond, veteran leadership drives the firm’s rapid growth and business excellence.
Whether building teams, synchronizing operations, or refining tactics, we share our experiences, good and bad, to help you survive, thrive and dominate.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@PTSDLawyers/podcasts
Follow us on social media:
https://facebook.com/veteranled
https://twitter.com/veteranled
https://Instagram.com/veteranled
[00:00:00.930] - Craig Coleman
If you look at my life, it is a series of connected Plan Bs. No Plan As ever worked out for me, period.
[00:00:12.860] - John S. Berry
Welcome to Veteran Led. Today's guest is Dr. Craig Coleman, CEO of Coleman Health Services. Now, your story is nothing short of amazing, from enlisting in the Navy to becoming an officer to becoming a doctor and then starting your own company. So let's start from the beginning. You enlist in the Navy.
[00:00:33.390] - Craig Coleman
John, I enlisted in the Navy in 1984, and I'm from Richmond, Virginia. I joined, um, went to boot camp 10 days after high school. I came in as an enlisted electrician, shipboard electrician, learning how to troubleshoot things on the ship. I made to E-6. I went through a program called the Enlisted Commissioning Program, got my commission as a Surface Warfare Officer in the Navy. Did that for a while. Then I went off to the Navy Postgraduate School, got my degree in aerospace engineering. Then I went to the National Reconnaissance Office and built satellites for about 10 years. Went to Iraq, stayed there for a while, came back at the ripe old age of 40, and I went to medical school. Military paid for it. I came back, I served my last 6 years of 31 as a doctor in the Navy.
[00:01:27.770] - John S. Berry
Now you're retired as a doctor in the Navy. You had an amazing career, uh, especially working with special operations back in 2006. You could have hung it up, but instead you decided to start your own company. Why?
[00:01:39.080] - Craig Coleman
Well, as a doctor, I saw there were a lot of problems that you could not solve from the inside. The healthcare system, whether it's in the military or outside the military, is filled with inefficiencies. I could not do it from the inside. Even after I retired and went to work for TRICARE Prime Clinic, I saw some of the same things. And that were— those things were patients weren't getting better. They were coming in, we were treating them, streeting them, having them come back 6 months later, and they were still having the same problems. I tried to create innovation from the inside., but there's too much inertia in the system. And so I came to the outside of the system and tried to create it from the outside and bring it in.
[00:02:25.610] - John S. Berry
Yeah. Large bureaucracies make change so difficult. It is so hard to build something when you know there's a problem and then you get to the entrepreneurial world and, uh, there's, there's less restriction, but there's a lot more challenges. So tell us about that adjustment.
[00:02:40.870] - Craig Coleman
On the outside, you have to find the right people. One thing about the military is we have a chain of command. We have a, a command structure. You know who's in charge of what, you know, who has the authority, who has the control, who has the pen for purchasing things. It's a little less obvious on the outside. You have to network, find out who are the right people to talk to. Even if you have a great solution, if you're not talking to the right people, they don't know you have it.
[00:03:09.780] - John S. Berry
And you were able to use not just your expertise as a medical doctor, but also some of that cybersecurity background and other things that you learned in the military to build your company today. How did that come to you?
[00:03:20.120] - Craig Coleman
After I retired from the military, uh, like I said, my background is technical. My undergraduate degree was in electrical engineering. My master's degree is in aerospace engineering. So once I became a doctor and I got out the military, I still had this yearning to get connected back into a technical side. So I went back to school, got a degree in cybersecurity after I retired. And so I used that to go into cybersecurity, but within the health information technology sector. So I went to work for a large healthcare organization, but working in cybersecurity where I was able to bring to bear my expertise from the medical side as well as my technical side as well, you know, helping to solve some of the problems with data security and privacy and things like that.
[00:04:10.050] - John S. Berry
Now we're all aware of HIPAA and some of the laws that protect our medical privacy, but why was it so important for you to go deeper into that, to cybersecurity in the medical field, to go just beyond the HIPAA regulations?
[00:04:26.500] - Craig Coleman
Good question. And it had to do with what I was seeing out in society, and that is these data breaches where healthcare organizations were a prime target because of the value of the information that they have. So that's why I wanted to concentrate, you know, helping to solve that problem.
[00:04:47.020] - John S. Berry
Now, we talked at the beginning of the show before we went on the air about your amazing resume, and you said, you should see my resume of failures. And I think leaders all have that failure resume, but from going from an enlisted soldier to becoming a commissioned officer and then becoming a doctor, starting your own company, there's gotta have been a lot of failures along the way. Which ones were your favorite, where you learned the most that got you to where you are today?
[00:05:10.370] - Craig Coleman
And there were many. I always tell people, if you look at my life, it is a series of connected plan Bs. No plan As ever worked out for me, period. So I came in, like you said, as an enlisted sailor. And you know, my goal was actually to go to nuclear power school down in Orlando. So I went down to nuclear power school, but I wasn't ready for it yet. I wasn't ready for that level of academic discipline. And so I washed out, as they call it. But that washout was what led me to going to a ship, you know, and performing well and later becoming an officer. Had I not washed out, I would've continued in the program because they invest so much money into the nuclear-powered operators that you could never switch out of that. You would not have gotten out of that to do something else. And so that was one huge failure early in my career that led to the things that happened downhill from that.
[00:06:11.880] - John S. Berry
And as you move through medical school, the more rigorous academic challenges, I suppose that that was a pretty good, pretty, pretty good lesson learned. I think that, you know, some of the failures are the ones that teach us we've got to try harder, we've got to do better. You think you're ready, you're not, you're not ready. And you get slapped in the face and, and you pick up some pretty good habits usually. So how did that help you going through medical school later?
[00:06:33.450] - Craig Coleman
Every failure is a lesson. You know, sometimes it's a lesson in disguise, but it's a lesson nonetheless. And so certainly going through, well, by the time I went through medical school, the difference between what had happened with Nuke Power School and medical school was I had already been to undergraduate college, already been to graduate school. The difference is as an engineer, we learned to, take A, and we solve for everything that comes afterwards. Medical school is more memorization. I had to go back and learn how to rote memorize. Now, I did better after the academic part because I'm also, I'm a critical thinker. So that's the part that gives me an advantage later on. But in the early part, I had to learn how to memorize things.
[00:07:22.010] - John S. Berry
Going from I said enlisted sailor to officer to doctor to CEO. You keep building that bigger future. What's next for you and your company, Coleman Health Services?
[00:07:33.900] - Craig Coleman
I'm trying to get this into the VA because the VA is a place that is trying to do more with less. So my solution actually allows them to expand the capacity of what they have right now. That's the real key. 'Cause the only other way that you could do this is to hire more doctors. They don't have the capacity to hire more doctors because there's a shortage of doctors all around the country. And so the VA is just a microcosm of that larger problem, period. So again, what I would like to do is get in with the VA to help them to solve this problem of doing more with less. We live in an aging society where 12,000 people a day are turning 65. Those are our baby boomers. We have an outside proportion with our Veterans who tend to be sicker in general than the outside, than the civilian population. And so they need more care.
[00:08:31.970] - John S. Berry
Yeah, and I think that increased communication, because what we hear from the Veteran community is, I have issues, I need help. And then we hear about the 22 suicides a day. And as much as I hate to say it, guys like you and me are getting older, right? And when we were young, I think of all the stuff I did, right? Whether it was the ruck marches, Airborne School, all this stuff you think, okay, like, hey, I'm fine, I'm fine. But your body starts to deteriorate. And of course, we're so used to not going to sick call, not saying we have a problem, that then we get old. And to be fair, most of us are still that way where it's the spouse or our children that are telling us, hey, Dad, you really need to do something about this.
[00:09:12.390] - Craig Coleman
John, you make a great point and it's one that I was going to bring up, but I think I told you before, I also do CMP exams for QTC and VES. And the reason that I do 'em is because what I saw in my last 6 years as a doctor is that a lot of our senior officers and senior enlisted, their medical records do not reflect the experience that they've had because of the culture that we have of not going to medical. And so those same people I see on these CMP exams, I help them to articulate what they know exists. They had just been underselling themselves. So we don't, I don't help them to create something new. I help them to articulate what they know they experienced. I was on a ship. I used to see some of the senior guys, see them limping around. It's like, you're limping, but I don't see anything in this record. That suggests that you should be limping. And then they would tell me about it. Let's sit down and talk about it. Let's get you some imaging. Let's make sure that we get a diagnosis in here.
[00:10:14.490] - John S. Berry
Yeah. And I mean, that's so true. I mean, I can remember soldiers would show up in the morning for PT and there was an issue. It'd be like, "Hey, suck it up."
[00:10:21.210] - Craig Coleman
That's right.
[00:10:21.570] - John S. Berry
Or you fall out of a run or a ruck march. It's, "Hey, you're weak." Right? It wasn't get help. And quite frankly, the prevailing wisdom back then was you show formation. If there's an issue, the first sergeant's going to run it out of you.
[00:10:35.210] - Craig Coleman
That's right.
[00:10:35.250] - John S. Berry
You'll just keep running until you feel better. and then, and, and, and then if you go to sick call afterwards, we'll give you a couple Advil, some water, and you go back to duty.
[00:10:43.600] - Craig Coleman
That's right. That's right. And sadly—
[00:10:45.920] - John S. Berry
so, we wouldn't go to sick call. That's right.
[00:10:47.590] - Craig Coleman
And sadly, it's that type of missing signals early that shows up later. Those are the things that lead to the osteoarthritis and the low back problems that we see when people come in for these CMP exams. It's because we didn't recognize those signals early. And that's what a lot of things that I do right now are related to, recognizing signals early so that you can intervene, so we don't have to pay the cost downstream.
[00:11:14.950] - John S. Berry
Yeah. And I just think of, like I said, that hesitation to get the help is such a barrier. I can remember back when I was, uh, I was just feeling the worst I've ever felt. I was, I was on Al Asad Air Base and I ran into a, a PA that I knew, and I said, man, I, I just, I just don't feel well. He's like, come on in. And hey, he gave me 2 bags of IV and I, and I felt a lot better. But you know, I, Had I not run into him, I wouldn't have asked for it. Right. It just, it was just coincidence. And I think too often we don't ask for that help. And of course, there's not much follow-up.
[00:11:41.590] - Craig Coleman
That's right.
[00:11:41.970] - John S. Berry
And so, the fact that you're out there making sure that we are following up with our Veterans, that they are getting the treatment that, let's face it, they've earned.
[00:11:49.590] - Craig Coleman
That's right.
[00:11:50.330] - John S. Berry
Speaks volumes to how much you cared about those sailors when they were under your charge as a leader.
[00:11:57.050] - Craig Coleman
That's right.
[00:11:57.850] - John S. Berry
And, you know, had you not been an officer, had you not been an enlisted soldier, just came in straight as a doctor, you wouldn't have the same perspective.
[00:12:03.710] - Craig Coleman
You wouldn't have the same perspective. You're absolutely right about that.
[00:12:06.940] - John S. Berry
And I know this because I have a brother who was an Air Force doctor. He went straight from college, got the Air Force ROTC scholarship, went to med school, but he just served as a doctor. He didn't have that experience. And having that, I say boots on the ground experience, but you know what I mean? Being there with the men and women doing the work day in, day out, you see You see what really happens and you see that sometimes, I think that stigma, "Oh, you're a malingerer, you're a quitter, you're weak," it's real. It's real.
[00:12:40.380] - Craig Coleman
It is real. It is real. And again, sometimes it has to do with promotion. I mean, there are things that could end up in your record that from the medical aspect, especially from mental health, that people don't go talk about because they think, or they don't just think, they know. It is going to affect, you know, some type of a promotion board.
[00:13:00.550] - John S. Berry
Yeah. And even Veterans today, they get concerned because they worry about their right to have a firearm. And if I'm diagnosed with a mental health condition, right? And so there's a lot of things out there that are roadblocks to Veterans requesting the help that they need. And I think we've done a great job of overcoming those and our lawmakers have recognized those things. But we still have a long ways to go.
[00:13:19.400] - Craig Coleman
We do.
[00:13:19.770] - John S. Berry
Now, this takes us to the After-Action Review, Dr. Coleman. Your example of great leadership and your example of horrible leadership, and you don't have to name names.
[00:13:28.300] - Craig Coleman
My example of great leadership is easy. There was a guy when I was an '03, he was an '05. We were on an aircraft carrier together. We went over to Bosnia together. This guy, what made him a great leader, he was able to translate like the executive officer in the Navy. The executive officer is the guy right below the commanding officer. He he was able to translate appropriately the command orders to the rest of the crew, especially to the officers. And again, oftentimes leadership holds those things so close to them because they think that people below them don't quite understand, you know, the strategy. How do you convert strategy to tactics? But he, he did a great job of conveying that. I mean, and I found that to be just an excellent trait. And so did the military because he ended up retiring as a 3-star admiral, the Navy OG, before he got out. But yeah, that was my example. The ones that are able to convey things down in a way to, you know, to help you to know the why. Because again, I think that, You know, like you say, in the military, the more you can know, the better you buy into it.
[00:14:46.790] - Craig Coleman
Now I know there's an old school way of thinking that I don't need the boots on the ground to know why. They just need to take that hill because I said take that hill. But I'm saying though, from my perspective, that was an example of a great leader.
[00:15:00.010] - John S. Berry
And now the bad leadership.
[00:15:01.220] - Craig Coleman
Bad leadership, ones that just bark orders and also do not credit the people who work for them for their successes. They feel all the successes belong to them as opposed to, you know, at least articulating that the only reason that I got this success is because of these people right here. So if they not even able to verbalize that, whether they feel it or not, that to me is the example of a poor leader, you know, who feels like they did everything on their own.
[00:15:33.500] - John S. Berry
I found this strange leadership paradox when I reached '05, Lieutenant Colonel, was that there were officers who would inflate awards and just give everybody an award and then cheapen the award. But then there are also those who were so stingy with the awards that they never recognized deserving soldiers. And that always, it's very tough to find that balance in between, but you're right. In the military, no one does it on their own.
[00:15:57.070] - Craig Coleman
That's right. That is absolutely right.
[00:15:59.320] - John S. Berry
So, Dr. Coleman, where can Veterans learn more about your company and about you?
[00:16:04.910] - Craig Coleman
My website is called Coleman Health Services. Services is abbreviated, SVCS.com. ColemanHealthSVCS.com. And I'm also on LinkedIn as well.
[00:16:19.810] - John S. Berry
And I want to close with this. For Veterans who see your path and think, wow, this guy pivoted a lot to find what he wanted, to find the place where he is now, you know, continuing to live that dream. What advice would you give them about how you've evolved the, the continual evolution, uh, and not getting stuck with failure, not getting stuck with just doing one thing, but to continue to expand your future? How do you do that?
[00:16:49.020] - Craig Coleman
John, just like we talked about at the very beginning. There are no failures, only lessons. Learn the lesson and then move forward. That's it. No matter what, not the successes. Again, it's the failures where you learn the most. Just like with a sports team, they really don't do a postmortem unless they lose the game. That's when they really get on the board. And I would say that has been the key for me. Is not stopping wherever you are. Simply learn the lesson and move on.
[00:17:29.460] - John S. Berry
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led where we seek to help Veterans build an even bigger, better future after military service. Unfortunately, for some of our Veterans, the roadblock to a better future is that they are not receiving all of the benefits that they earned. If you need help appealing a VA disability decision, contact Berry Law.