Heather Newman
Hello everyone, here we are again for another Mavens Do It Better podcast where we interview extraordinary experts that bring a light to our world. And I could not be more thrilled to have on today Jamey Edwards of Cloudbreak Health. So, hi. Hi, how are you?
Jamey Edwards
I'm terrific.
Heather Newman
Where are you coming to us today from?
Jamey Edwards
I am sitting in my office in El Segundo California.
Heather Newman
Awesome. That's just down there from me. So yeah,
Jamey Edwards
not too far. Not too far. like our office is just you know, if I pointed the camera over there, you’d just see the runway of LA and planes taking off to all sorts of great places which lends me, affords me all sorts of good daydreaming opportunities.
Heather Newman
That's fantastic. Yeah. Marina Del Rey is no slouch.
Jamey Edwards
That's right. You got boats.
Heather Newman
Got some boats, some dream of California dreaming out there for sure. I have to ask you about the don't give up the ship that flag back there. Tell us about that. Because it's right there prominent and awesome. So yeah,
Jamey Edwards
um, you know, as we were, as we were talking about that, you know, that flag to me is a symbol of the entrepreneurial journey and the fact that the struggle is real. And I think we are very quick to kind of look at people who are, these companies that are out there doing great work and assume that everything is just going so great. But the fact of the matter is, every day, we're dealing with very real issues. This is a reminder to me not take not to give up the ship, and that you know, the work that we're doing is important. And so, no matter what obstacles we're facing, you know, we can either go around them, through them above them, over them, whatever it might be, but that's, that's my daily reminder.
Heather Newman
Yeah, it's awesome. And I love the logo treatment on that. It reminds me of that, you know, keep calm and carry on sort of that
Jamey Edwards
Exactly. So that these were actually flown on the back of a sailing ship, up in the Pacific Northwest, and the guy, comes up with these things and flies them off there to give them that, nice, weathered and authentic, look and we have a bunch of flags around the office here. And this was one that I wanted over the back of my desk.
Heather Newman
Yeah. It's wonderful. It's so cool. So Cloudbreak Health. Wow, disruptive, amazing, innovative, all of that. Will you tell our listeners a little bit about Cloudbreak the elevator pitch and where it got started? You are CEO and co-founder as well?
Jamey Edwards
Yes. So, Cloudbreak is a unified telemedicine company that provides services in over 1,200 hospitals across the United States and 85,000 times a month, we beam in a resource to those facilities, on over 10,000 different video endpoints. And so, the core thing that we do is really bringing language interpreters to the point of care for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and limited English proficient. That's really how the company got started. But we really classify ourselves as a healthcare disparities solutions business. And so, we realized that once we had solved this initial disparity of how we can help limited English proficient Deaf patients receive the same standard of care as their English-speaking counterparts, that we could do more with the platform when these screens were dark. Exactly. When this when the screens were dark, there was more that we could do. And we had built this private broadband network in all these facilities. And so, we started having hospitals ask us to build out new use cases. And so now we're doing telepsychiatry and telestroke. And really the system can be customized to bring any resource to the point of care that's needed to help solve the disparity.
Heather Newman
Wow, first of all, thank you. That's amazing. What a great thing you are bringing. How did you get started in the in, in healthcare? So yeah, well,
Jamey Edwards
Well, that's how much time do we have?
Heather Newman
Well, you know,
Jamey Edwards
I'll try and give you the short version of it. But the first 10 years of my career was actually investment banking and private equity. I wanted to learn that side of the business because I took an entrepreneurship class when I was in college at Cornell, from this esteemed professor, Professor David Ben Daniel. And, he taught me about how entrepreneurship is all about taking an idea making it real and having an impact and that really resonated with me, but what I realized was, this was during the time of Enron and all these financial scandals. I never want to be in a position where I'm relying on someone to teach me, to tell me what's happening in the business, right? And so, I became an investment banker and that was amazing training. [It] was a chance to drink from a firehose, in terms of information. It was a great chance to see companies do it right and do it wrong. Well, while I was doing this, I came from a family of doctors and my uncle, aunts and uncles on both sides are physicians. My sister is a doctor, my brother in law's a doctor. So, I was always surrounded by healthcare. And my favorite uncle, a guy named Dr. Irv Edwards, had founded an ER business in Southern California called Emergent Medical Associates and he had run it for a few years and asked me to come join him full time because I had done some consulting for him. As you can imagine, it was very easy for me to impress my physician uncle with my knowledge of revenue, EBITDA, cash flow, PowerPoint, Excel, all these different, awesome business tools that we learn. And so, I helped him move out of his home office to a real office. I built a lot of infrastructure, and software tools. He said, Hey, I need you to come run the business full time and I joined the company when it was about $12 million in revenue. And over the course of the next eight or nine years, we reached around $150 million of revenue and turned into a leading group in the Southwest that competed against Team Health and Envision and big, physician outsourcing groups like that. And we did ER, hospitalist, and anesthesia medicine. But while I was doing that, I come across a company called the Language Access Network and the founder of the company, Andy Panos, who founded the original predecessor to company to Cloudbreak in 2003. He was really the founder of the video medical interpreting industry in our country. He was the first guy to bring an interpreter in and beam him to the point of care over a telemedicine platform. We ended up meeting and becoming fast friends and I became enamored with his business. I actually helped him with his investor deck and through that learned a lot about his company. We engineered a deal where (he was in a public shell at that point in time), so we pulled this company out of the public shell took it private, and then proceeded to grow it. And so, for six years, I was running Language Access Network and Emergent Medical Associates side by side. Language Access Network was reaching escape velocity. So, we did a series a financing round with Kayne Partners who has been our private equity partner since 2015. And we've grown the business 3x since that period of time and I am now full time, running this business. And when we did the Kayne deal, we rebranded the company as Cloudbreak Health and really re-founded it because we realized that there was more…there was more for us to do besides just language services.
Heather Newman
right? Absolutely. Wow, you've had an amazing career and you're busy man.
Jamey Edwards
Definitely busy. Some might say entrepreneurially ADD. I've heard that before. But I love this kind of concept. I love the creation process. Which is really what does it for me.
Heather Newman
Absolutely. I mean, I came across some tele health with a friend that worked with me she was a doctor in Sebastopol, California, I used to live there in Sonoma County and the doctor she was working for that was sort of very high in dealing with strokes. And that was some of the first times I'd ever heard of that a few years ago. And I tell it tell us again, how many people you've served because,
Jamey Edwards
Well, right now it's north of a million people a year. So if you take a look at over the course of the company's history, I mean, we're talking millions and millions of people that have been touched by the platform and, I love actually walking through our telemedicine centers and hearing all the different languages being spoken, hearing those integrated with a telemedicine call and understanding that on the other end of that screen, there's someone who's scared, who doesn't speak the language or who is having a stroke, whatever the case might be, or, going through a mental health issue, and the platform's helping them navigate that. In one of the scariest times of their lives, which is when they're actually in a hospital, in a clinic or an urgent care center. And, you know, that's pretty powerful for us, it's really what gets us out of bed.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. I was gonna say, if you don't have a personal why there you go, right. I know. I know you do. But you know, like you just told us so that's great. Yeah. And as far as the investment, the investment and the entrepreneurial bug, and you were surrounded by doctors, your entire life. Kind of makes sense you got into health care. Around the dinner table, you're hearing all of that from your folks and family. Right?
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, I mean, I have to tell you, I had no idea what the opportunity was in healthcare. Healthcare, to me was always kind of scary from an entrepreneurship standpoint, right? It's highly regulated, highly risk averse, big, huge health systems that typically have been thought of a very bureaucratic. I think that keeps a lot of people out of the healthcare entrepreneurship game, if you will. But when you get in here, and you build your expertise, and you realize that healthcare, a lot of it is driving change from the inside out and being able to build consensus in a different way. We just can't put an app out there and expect it to work. we've got to train people, get buy-in, a lot of times do you know evidation type of studies. And it's just a little bit different of a market and I'm almost pained to say it, because I'm always out in the field saying healthcare is not different. If they can do this in entertainment, we can do it in healthcare. If they can do it in manufacturing, we can do it in healthcare, But you do need to have a certain knowledge base to make things successful in a healthcare environment.
Heather Newman
Absolutely. And I know that there were iterations of the business and of the technology. So, what but where did that sort of the actual tech of the business? Where did that get started? And how did you iterate on that?
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, the tech actually got started in and around that language services use case. So, we started experimenting with a slew of different platforms from Cisco to Vidyo, Polycom, Skype for Business. And we realized that we didn't want to just be on one of them. We wanted to be on all of them. And so, we developed a standards-based video solution that would be video interoperable with Zoom and other platforms that are out there. Zoom is actually taking off these days as one of the platforms in market, we realized you needed to do more than just bring, video into a call, you need to surround it with workflow, you need to really work on, the UI/UX part of it and create a user experience for both clinician and patient that was highly, highly functional and engaging. And I would say even fun.In healthcare fun is sometimes an evil word, but I'm gonna say, make the tech fun.
Heather Newman
P-h-u-n. Okay.
Jamey Edwards
Exactly, exactly. And so we really evolved everything off this initial language services use case and the cool thing about the language services use case is it's really the gateway telemedicine drug. It's the one-use case that's throughout the entire hospital. And so, whether you're in labor and delivery, or whether you're at admitting and registration, that patient journey throughout the institution requires language services. And so, a lot of companies started off with one use case and that use case was stroke. Okay, great. So, you're in the emergency department, but you're nowhere else or you're doing mental health. Great. You're inthe ER or you're doing ICU? Well, that's only in the ICU. So, language services was really the Trojan horse, if you will, that allowed us to get 10,000 plus video endpoints in the field. And there's some companies that inspire us out there, like InTouch Health, who has, you know, more hospitals than we do. And we've been following those guys pretty closely and are super impressed by their platform. There, they have 4,000 video endpoints to our 10,000. So, its kind of gives an idea of the power of this language services use case.
Heather Newman
Yeah. And how do hospitals I mean, I'm, you know, you're doing marketing. Obviously, you're getting out there and talking about this. Yes. I'm sure you're speaking. You're a member of HIMSS, of course.
Jamey Edwards
Yes. Yes. Absolutely.
Heather Newman
Yeah. I've been to HIMSS before I went with a cyber security company. I was impressed with the size of that show.
Jamey Edwards
Yes. HIMSS is a center of gravity. Yeah, you show up to HIMSS and everybody that you need to speak to is there. And it's not just a conference. If you take a look at the HIMSS educational curriculum, it's really grounded on improving healthcare with tech. But there's a lot of non tech driven Healthcare Improvement stuff that HIMSS does. And so, in the name of health information management side, it’s almost misleading what the conference actually is, which is a center of innovation and collaboration in healthcare.
Heather Newman
Yeah. When I really liked about the setups I, I did event planning for years and years for Microsoft
Jamey Edwards
yeah. And so, imagine what it's like to pull off a conference like that.
Heather Newman
Yeah, right, and building booths and all of that, and I really loved a lot of the hands-on stuff from folks where you could go in touch the tech, you know, see how it works and all that sort of thing. So that was a cool thing. Yeah, I liked HIMSS a lot.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, I always I find it very invigorating, because I'll show up to a conference like that. And not only do I get to see everyone that I haven't seen since the last major conference, since JPMorgan or Startup Health or whatever it is. One of the reasons I love to go to conferences to see everyone in person again and get my conference, family back together.
Heather Newman
Yeah, it's like a home week, right, you're like, Hey everybody, what's up?
Jamey Edwards
That's right. But it's also to see, the kind of the macro view of what's happening in healthcare at any time, there are years at HIMSS where AI was in Vogue, and then it's telemedicine. And then it's XYZ and it might be chat bots, it might be whatever. But you can really get a sense for how the technology is evolving by walking that exhibit floor.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. I think sometimes healthcare gets a little bit of a rap of being behind in tech, you know, even our financial services, institutions and utilities and stuff, some of the most important things kind of in our world to keep us safe and happy.
Jamey Edwards
Absolutely
Heather Newman
you know, so I think, you know, being innovative and hopefully inspiring others. I think Cloudbreak is doing that in twofold for sure. Right?
Jamey Edwards
Well, we try and, we kind of joke around at HIMSS a little bit that, the larger the booth the startup has the more likely they're not to be around in a year. But, we're there to have meetings. Clearly established companies have large booths, but it's interesting to see the evolution of who is out there kind of trying to make a splash and tell their story. But there's always something really neat that you end up discovering. I think it's cool to see the different companies that have evolved to be at HIMSS like Uber and Amazon it's cool to see some of those companies in the mix and Google Cloud and all those types of things to see what their goals are in healthcare.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. I was looking through Twitter and hashtags and all that stuff and you want to lift your foot up? I don't know.
Jamey Edwards
Oh, you know, I didn't wear them today, but I have them. I have them right here.
Heather Newman
Hey, look at that. So, you know What's so funny? I have a pair of those socks.
Jamey Edwards
Who gave you yours?
Heather Newman
I bought them for myself a while ago cuz
Jamey Edwards
Oh my God, we have to gift you the original article. I'm making myself a note right now.
#Pinksocks.
Heather Newman
You know, I think it was you know, remember when the finger stash was in vogue. Remember, and People were actually getting it tattooed.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah,
Heather Newman
there you know, I think like there was a there was the twisty moustache phase that happened I don't know probably five or six years ago and I think it was in the midst of that plus, I'm from the Midwest and my uncle's all had big twisty 70s mustaches back in the day
Jamey Edwards
super jealous of that. That's pretty cool.
Heather Newman
So, so will you tell everybody about pink socks because it's so neat.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, so the #pinksocks is really a movement and it's pretty incredible. A guy named Nick Adkins and his partner Andrew Richards started #pinksocks, just as kind of a lark. Nick had gone to Burning Man and really bought into all the different principles of Burning Man, one of which was radical gifting. And so this concept of gifting he came back with, besides swapping out his pants for a kilt, which is now his trademark, item if you see him walking around a conference. You can spot Nick anywhere because he's got his #pinksocks on and kilt and a fedora and a big beard, so he's representing, the #pinksocks brand in that way. But he basically came back and just started gifting these socks out actually at a HIMSS right, segue wise. And I think Eric Topol and some leaders and then Jeroen Tas from Philips, they've been given these socks and initially it was just, hey, just wanted to brighten your day. Then you start to see more people wearing them and they start to become a conversation piece. Then the people who are wearing them were really centered around healthcare innovation and you know, you started to see chief innovation officers wearing them and now 40,000 pairs of these socks. Actually, I think it might be 60,000 now because Nick corrected me the last time. So I'm gonna go with 60,000, had been given around the world globally. Tthink about that they're just gifted, and the #pinksocks movement is started and the movement is all about kindness and, making someone's day and you can walk around a conference be like, Hey, nice socks, and it's an opportunity to connect with someone. That was really the genesis of it. And a month ago or two ago, we actually started doing #pinksocks giving in schools. And there was a school in El Paso that built a kindness curriculum around the #pinksocks for their students. So, imagine the power of that at that age to walk out and realize kindness is important and the way we treat each other is important. And now, #pinksocks have become a vehicle for things like that.
Heather Newman
That's amazing. Yeah. And he was on a there's a TED talk about it. Is that right?
Jamey Edwards
Yes. Yeah. Did a TEDx talk. Yeah.
Heather Newman
Okay. Absolutely. Yeah, that's so cool. I was so excited to see that and there was a gal on that was wishing someone a happy 105th birthday this week. And I was just like, I was like, Okay, I want to get in on this.
Jamey Edwards
It's literally taken on a life of its own. #pinksocks is looking for donations to do more school events and things like that, and the website's www.pinksocks.life if anyone wants to check it out. But, quite frankly, it's like, get some of the socks and just gift them out. It's amazing the conversations that happen. I had a woman [come up to me when] I was wearing the socks. And I was in a restaurant in Dana Point California. And a woman came up to meand she said, I love your socks. [I thought] Oh my god. She Said , I want to give you my sunglasses. So here I am wearing my socks, so I can gift them to other people. This woman, you know, [the sunglasses were] not my style,but was kind enough to gift these to me. I ended up sending her some socks for her and some of her friends after the fact but that's the whole point. We all need to realize that we're in this together. To me, that's what #pinksocks symbolize.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the burning the ten Burning Man principles, you know, one being radical gifting is that's it, you know, I'm, I often when I'm there and other times, you know, I've just given things to people off. You know, I'm like, I've had gotten a lot of joy out of this and maybe it's time to bring some joy to somebody else. So
Jamey Edwards
absolutely, absolutely. And kind of you start to realize that selfishly, giving makes you happy.
Heather Newman
Yeah.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah. And so, gifting is one of the most selfish things we could possibly do.
Heather Newman
So where are you from exactly? are you a New Yorker?
Jamey Edwards
I'm not a New Yorker, but I am from Western New York. I grew up in Buffalo, New York. So I'm a Western New Yorker and I was born in Cleveland, but Buffalo, New York is kind of where I remember all my childhood memories. I lived there from fifth grade on. [Iwent to] Cornell undergrad and Cornell for grad. So, I did spend some time in Manhattan during my investment banking years. LA is home and I love it here and the West Coast lifestyle. It's clearly not a best kept secret anymore given traffic out here but there's not a day I don't go home that I'm not grateful to be on this coast and, have my kids (I have a 10 year old, I'm sorry, an 11 year old and a nine year old now). get to be outside. I don't even think they know how good they have it.
Heather Newman
Right? Yeah, yeah. When there's snow up to the, you know where?
Jamey Edwards
Yeah. I kind of missed that first snowfall. Fall autumn leaves, right. And that first day of spring, but besides that, I’m good.
Heather Newman
Yeah. So, you mentioned family and you're, you've got a lot going on. You know, with our listeners, we talk about wellness and self-care and stuff. How do you? How do you do that for yourself?
Jamey Edwards
This is gonna give away my kind of West Coast, Juju, if you will. I've started meditating. Right, I found that mindfulness to be a really good practice. And I've actually started meditating with my daughter every night before she goes to bed, which is super cute, although now she can't go to bed without meditating. So, it's become part of her daily practice. So sometimes I'm traveling on a trip and I need to meditate remotely with her. Um, so that's really helpful. I think being outdoors…taking hikes and doing that I coach my kid's soccer team. So, I always try and make sure I'm as present as I can, because I think it's very easy to get caught up with how much work there is to do. And there's a lot of work to do. But the work is always there, whether you plow through it or not. So, I try and balance that out with family and even on my LinkedIn feed, I say, you know, father, husband, founder, and that's the order for me. It’s how I want to live my life.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. So, for those on the on the listening for, you know, you're you've been entrepreneur, or you are not come up as an entrepreneur, you are one investment banker, all of that. A couple of you know, if few were like, I want to give one piece of advice out to folks, or maybe two,
Jamey Edwards
One sage piece of advice? Yeah. Well, I think one would be people tend to ask, why me? And I think people need to ask more. Why not me, right? As an entrepreneur there are a ton of reasons why you can't pursue something. And I like to always search for the one or two reasons why something will work as opposed to 100 reasons why it won't. And so, for me like that's my key piece of advice. Why should you be watching someone else live the life you want to lead or build the product you want to build? Why shouldn't it be you who does that? And there are many opportunities that I've had learning lessons from this where I've written a business plan, or I have jotted down an idea. I mean, how many of you would raise your hand out there in podcast land if you ever had an idea and you saw someone execute it, and you're like, Oh, I thought about that. Those words get said millions of times across the United States, but one person actually said, I'm gonna do it. And I think there's a certain power in saying, why not me? Why shouldn't I be the person to do it?
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. And there's a sort of a trend in marketing right now that I keep seeing and there's this Role of storyteller and storytelling. And I'm so happy that that like there's jobs that say, Chief storyteller on LinkedIn right now. Do you have a chief storyteller is that you?
Jamey Edwards
I try and empower all of us in the company to be storytellers. Storytelling is a big part of what I think has made me successful in my career. Because if you want to build a great business that you want employees to be a part of, well, you need to tell them a story that is engaging for them. And that's based on a mission and a culture that they want to be a part of. If you want your clients to, if you want to be the employer of choice, and the partner of choice, that's all storytelling, you need to create a company that has a story that people want to be a part of. And so, for me, storytelling is incredibly powerful. It's the difference of showing someone a spreadsheet with numbers on it or going through and walking them through those numbers and saying what they all mean and talking about the value of it. Different people tell stories in different ways. But storytelling to me is a key part of what makes someone successful in business.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. I think it's interesting that your way that you've traversed in your career, you know, so many, like we were talking about all these ideas and ideas that may not have been, you know, realized, or I could have done that, or I had that idea. And I found, so I had a theatre company in Seattle. I was a theater major back in the day. And so, a bunch of us had a theatre company in Seattle, and it was sort of the late 90s, early 2000s. And, you know, we had to have our own theater company.
Jamey Edwards
That was during like Pearl Jam's heyday.
Heather Newman
Oh, I was in college during the grunge movement and it was
Jamey Edwards
Holy smokes! That had to be incredible.
Heather Newman
I snuck into every club before I was 21. Mother Love Bone and all those wonderful,
Jamey Edwards
Everything from the Singles soundtrack, right?
Heather Newman
Yeah, totally. And those guys that the rocking hair, who were so angry and cute, you know? It's great. Thanks, dad. Good timing. Um, but, you know, we had the company and we, we had to have our own though, you know, it was like we had to have our own identity. And then we had to do our own books and our own marketing and all this stuff. And you know, there were a ton of companies, little fringe companies that were doing the same thing. You know, we were doing, we were fighting for audience, we were fighting for space. We were fighting for attention and all that stuff. And to me, sometimes, taking a step back and saying, who's doing something that is already in bloom and hooking up with them. It seems to me that's sort of what happened with you. And that that seems to me, people don't almost always stop and go, well, who else out there is doing something cool. Maybe I could be a part of, right.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't agree with that more. I mean, I think a lot of building a company and even building courage by being opportunistic. How many times have you looked back at your life decisions and say, well, that wasn't as big a deal as I thought it was, I'm leaving this place. And I'm going on to my next thing.I don't know if I can leave. I really like my bosses. And this is my career. It not what happens next.
We're always worried about what we can't see beyond walking out that door. But for me, I've never been risk averse to that. I remember leaving my banking job. And people being like, what are you doing? You're going to give this up. I learned what I wanted to learn. This has been an amazing experience. I worked with wonderful people on great deals. I got to work on Google's IPO and follow on and do a bunch of fun stuff like that. But I was ready for the next step, and people thought I was an idiot [for leaving when I did], but here I am today. My path definitely wasn't [a straight line], It was all around the corners, around the bend and over the creek and through the woods and all that type of stuff. But it's been great, and it's made me who I am. So, I think being able to attach yourself [to an already successful organization]. That's how you learn. If I didn't, work at Lehman Brothersand have my time there… attaching myself to a place that did something really, really well (even though one part of it had the real estate issues). I learned a tremendous amount. And I got to prove to myself that I could do certain things that I didn't know that I could do. And I learned from the best. I think there's something about if you see someone out there who's doing something really well, and either partnering or emulating them, there's nothing wrong with that, you can still be authentic and original, by using other people's best practices.
Heather Newman
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's your ship. Sometimes it's somebody else's ship, but the rides still good, right?
Jamey Edwards
That's right. I love that. I might steal that from you. I love that.
Heather Newman
Absolutely. It's all good.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah. Thoseare the things we talked about storytelling. Stories are what make us human, and they're what allow us to connect. They're the glue that hold us all together.
When you think about it, one of our partners today is Amazon, and you know, that is a relatively new partnership for us, but we're learning things from them every day.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, and that's being open. That's an entrepreneurship spirit, I think as well. But yeah, I just I keep seeing sometimes where I'm like, Ah, you know, this person's creating something brand new. And I'm like, well, don't you doubt? They're, they're doing it through, like, once you get over there with them. So yeah.
Jamey Edwards
To this point I was reading an article on creativity. And one of the things they talked about was that when you're a creative person, free association is a key part of that creativity. It's asking the questions, why and what if, and, oh, what if we? It sounds silly, right. But…what if Amazon or Walmart merged? Asking that question, as part of what being creative is, and figuring out how markets are going to play out and what types of products you can create? Well, what if we could be the people to solve that problem instead of them? So, I think that's one of the powers of it.
Heather Newman
Yeah, so you have a big year ahead. I'm sure we're roaring into the 20s. A new decade, I'll do that for you too
Jamey Edwards
Big year ahead.
Heather Newman
Do you have Can you share maybe say a personal goal or a goal for the business that you're like, Okay, this is where we're going to go reach for, you know?
Jamey Edwards
We at Cloudbreak, I'd like to tell you that we've had, hockey stick growth the whole time. But that's just not what growing a business is. And so, for me, this is a growth year.I want to reignite our growth engine in a really big way. And I don't know how you felt, but I felt like 18 and 19 were kind of funky years. In ‘15,‘16, and ‘17, we're growing. This is awesome. Everything's great. But 18 and 19 were kind of funky years. I'm in a group called YPO, which is the Young Presidents Organization and it's a group of other CEOs and Presidents who run companies. In talking to them, everyone felt ‘18 and ‘19 were really just strange years. Deals not getting done for certain reasons or strange things happening like random occurrences like fires [and other disasters]. We actually had one of our buildings, not collapse, but fall three inches. How does that happen? So, we had to clear out our call center and get a new call center fired up in three days and do all these different [things]. Those were the types of issues that were happening in ‘18 and ‘19.
So 2020. The year of clear vision, as I like to call it, or the year of clarity. We are going into 2020 hot right now. We've just signed a bunch of new contracts and things are really moving in our direction. We're hoping to grow the business. and personally, I'm hoping to work out a little bit more. I gotta be honest, that's New Year's resolution type of stuff, but I'm looking to work out a little bit more and eat a little healthier.
Heather Newman
Yeah, that there's someone who said that self-care and self-love is the gift that we not only give to ourselves, but it's the gifts that we give to everyone in our lives in the world. And I love thinking about it that way when I'm like, should I eat this? Or should I go to the gym that's right there literally in my apartment building?
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, by the way, I have a huge, sugar issue. Let's put it that way. I little things of cookies around and chocolates over there and all sorts of stuff like that which are like my little guilty pleasures. You mentioned the thing about self-care being the gift that we give to others. So, we're a StartUp Health company. And StartUp Health is one of, the biggest incubators out there, and they have their mindsets, they talk about frequently. How you can't be the best you can be for everybody else if you're not taking care of yourself. It's one of the main points that they talk about. As an entrepreneur it's easy to forsake going to the gym and work the late hours and eat badly and do all these because you feel like you're sacrificing for everyone. But the best thing you can do to run your business and to be able to take care of everyone and take care of your employees is to take care of yourself.
Heather Newman
Yeah, absolutely.
Jamey Edwards
Yeah, we ascribe to that.
Heather Newman
Yeah, I dig it. So last question. Thank you for this so fun.
Jamey Edwards
It's a blast. I feel like we could keep this going for like another hour or two.
Heather Newman
I know, I know. I was like I go cuz I'm about to come down to El Segundo and say hi.
Jamey Edwards
We could do that we can go grab lunch.
Heather Newman
Okay, that'd be awesome.
Jamey Edwards
I could give you your socks in person.
Heather Newman
Oh, my goodness. Okay, deal. Deal deal. Love it. Okay. Um, so, you know, I'm very interested in moments in sparks in our lives. And so, I asked every listener every listener, well, I sort of am asking every listener to ask that question them themselves, but every guest what spark or moment you know, person, place thing moment. Seats you where you are right now, today?
Jamey Edwards
God, when I when I look back, I'm 45 now. So, when I look back on it, I would say the, the seminal moment for me, because it led to me being in this entrepreneurship class, was getting my acceptance letter to Cornell when I was in high school. The reason I say that is because I was a good student, but not a great student. And my SAT scores were strong, but not awesome. And I worked really hard to position myself to get into school, I'd gone to Cornell for a summer camp, and I fell in love with it. It just felt like the place I needed to be. The place where I was going to grow and expand and it was the next chapter that I really wanted. I applied to the School of Industrial labor relations there. I did an internship with a union. I thought I wanted to be a change management consultant. I spent a lot of time writing amazing essays that really showed who I was. And you know what? I think Cornell took a chance on me as a result of that. When I got that letter, I just felt like my whole life was rolling out in front of me, and it kind of did. I loved being at school. It was an amazing time of growth for me and I remember going to Professor Ben Daniel’s entrepreneurship and personal enterprise class, where I wrote this first business plan and that's what I really got hooked on. It was what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I realized that if I really wanted to impact people,I could actually take an idea out of my head, make it into something real and have it be valuable for someone and impact the world in a positive way. And for me, that's my drug. That creative process of, being the guy who says, Well, what if we did do this? And why don't we just do it? Because, you know, we'll figure it out as we go along. If you take a look at a lot of the best companies that are out there, they didn't end up where they were as a result of sticking to their plan. They figured it out as they went along. And I think, to me, that’s the great thing. Again, you stand in the middle of our call centers, and you hear all the people that we're helping every day… that started off as someone's idea that they plucked out of their head and, made it real.
Heather Newman
yeah, absolutely. It's one of the things I love about working in technology or in business, you know, it's like, everything starts with an idea from right up here, a cocktail napkin or that thing that somebody bloops out. So yeah, thank you and thank you for Cornell admissions.
Jamey Edwards
Thank you, Cornell admissions. Cornell's become my biggest philanthropy as a result, so I believe in the power of education, and I get back up to campus to speak to the students and things.
Heather Newman
Oh, that's so great. Thank you. Thank you for sharing your story and being on today. You're awesome.
Jamey Edwards
This was great. Thank you for the opportunity. And this is by far one of the best interviews I've ever done. This has been awesome. I love the conversation and dialogue, and I'll look forward to meeting you in person.
Heather Newman
Yeah, I know. I can't wait. I know. We. I was looking at everyone on the on the podcast. It's a we'd come I come across to on Twitter and then on, you know, Forbes, Business Council stuff and everything. And so, I was just like, I was reading but I was like, he I we need to talk. So
Jamey Edwards
Yes. Well, I'm glad I'm so happy that you reached out. This was amazing.
Heather Newman
Yeah. Healthcare Maven, for sure. All right. Thank you, Jamie. I appreciate it.
Jamey Edwards
Thank you. I appreciate the time.
Heather Newman
Absolutely. Well, there we go, folks. We just had another Episode of the Mavens Do It Better podcast and here is to another beautiful day on this big blue spinning sphere. Thanks everybody. Bye.