June 8, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode of The Visionaries Show, hosts Jen Crowe and Mohan Ananda sit down with Charbel Daniel, President and CEO of Northwood, to discuss his inspiring journey from real estate to healthcare leadership. Charbel shares how he’s reimagining dignified living for seniors, the critical role of technology in predictive healthcare, and why Northwood’s mission is more important than ever in a post-COVID world. He emphasizes the need to ask better questions, cultivate a supportive organizational culture, and drive sustainable, incremental change in elderly care.
Key Takeaways:
1. Charbel Daniel highlights the power of understanding problems at their roots instead of rushing to solutions.
2. A culture of asking better questions is essential for innovative approaches to seniors' care.
3. Post-pandemic healthcare demands a focus on efficiency and community-based solutions.
4. Technology plays a pivotal role in predictive healthcare and aging in place.
5. True sustainability in elderly care comes from supporting passionate teams and incremental innovation.
🎧 Listen now to learn how Charbel Daniel and Northwood are shaping the future of dignified senior living and the role of community in driving positive change.
Discover what Northwood does: https://www.linkedin.com/company/northwoodcare/.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
Welcome once again to the Visionaries Show.
I'm your host, Jen Crow, branding lead of Authority Fusion.
And here's my co-host.
Mohan Ananda, an ordinary entrepreneur.
And here with us in the show is Charbel Daniel.
He is in the healthcare industry, but before that he's done a lot of wild and quite haveaccomplished, has accomplished a lot of things.
(00:29):
Now we wanna get to know him more today.
Charbel, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
Could you introduce yourself a little bit more for our audience?
Yes, absolutely.
So my name is Charbel Daniel.
Currently, I'm the president and CEO of Northwood, which is a group of companies focusedon the seniors and long-term care sector, namely across the entire sector.
(00:59):
Anything from home care to long-term care, is like nursing homes, assisted living,supportive living, to a foundation, career college, affordable housing, and a technology
branch as well called InTouch.
And really the organization grew out of social injustices that happened in providingaffordable housing.
(01:23):
It's one of the largest not-for-profits in this sector in Canada.
And it's doing some amazing work with a very, very passionate team just focused onproviding dignified living for seniors.
That is quite timely, because just this morning I went to a facility here and packed somemeals for the Meals on Wheels.
(01:44):
So somebody went out to deliver those meals.
You mentioned that it came out of observing the social injustice.
But how did you make that transition?
It looks like you've done a lot of work in the real estate industry, and then youtransition into this.
How did you make that transition?
(02:05):
So the real estate entry into the real estate industry was something I was kind of borninto.
It's the business my dad had started early on in his career.
And as a result, myself, my brother had kind of taken on my brother runs that full time.
And that's what we have and kind of do on the side.
My professional career has always been in health care.
(02:27):
Initially, it started off in the EMS or emergency pre hospital setting with the ambulanceindustry.
I am a former paramedic and a
worked the field before and growing through healthcare and leadership this amazingopportunity came up with an organization that just really aligns with my values about how
do we how do we really provide a service and give back to the communities and I wasexcited to to jump on board.
(02:56):
I think Mohan has a lot to say about this because he himself has a business that has to dowith healthcare.
Yes, am into, or I have very much interested in the healthcare industry and also currentlyinvolved in a company which has been there for 10, 13 years.
(03:20):
It's, now we changed the name recently.
It used to be called Second Opinion Expert.
Now it's called Dray Health.
DRE stands for Dr.
D-R-A-I, because of introducing AI into the system.
And, but anyway, that's why I'm really, really excited to know the type of things you do.
(03:45):
We also have similar tours.
We have what we call congregate, which is a small post acute centers.
We have a number of them in California, but some other states.
And we also work with the skilled nursing homes.
We have skilled nursing homes.
We operate and we also have a home health care that's for senior citizens.
(04:07):
as well as, and we do some remote patient monitoring.
So in the healthcare industry, the full spectrum.
we have something in common, and maybe after the interview, I can connect with you to ourpeople and see whether we can work like a two plus two, making it five.
So there is an opportunity there.
(04:28):
Even though we can talk about it, that's not the real thing I want to talk more today.
I have a question.
No, I'd love to discuss that more with you.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Sure.
I saw that you wrote a book.
I have not read it, but I just skimmed through the problem with solutions.
(04:49):
Yes, that's, and I'm very much interested to know more about it.
And maybe what they could do is give a summary of the book, just a short, and then addresson, you, I think you stressed on
How to build a culture to create the best solutions.
(05:12):
I mean, that is something very important to all the entrepreneurs because entrepreneurslook for the best solutions.
So go ahead and give us a little summary and address on how really what people orentrepreneurs, companies should do to create this.
It's an amazing way to get the best solutions for the problems.
(05:38):
Yes, wonderful.
The Problem with Solutions, the book, for me was born out of frustration, really.
And the frustration with how often we rush to fix things before we really understand.
what's broken.
I've worked in healthcare and leadership for years myself.
I've kept seeing the same patterns over and over.
(06:00):
People jumping straight to action, throwing money or people at a problem and wondering whyhasn't anything improved.
So I wrote this book to challenge the way we think about problem solving and not just inbusiness but in life in general.
You know we don't actually have
a solution problem.
(06:22):
There's no shortage of solutions that people will come up with when they hear an issue.
We have a problem problem and many people spend all their energy solving symptoms and notreally getting to the root cause and not finding out
What truly caused the problem?
What are we really trying to get at?
(06:43):
And so in essence, the first step isn't solutioning, so to speak, but it's about askingbetter questions.
And when you think about the environment or the culture that you want to develop in yourbusiness or in your organization, the first step is being comfortable in not knowing
(07:04):
everything.
And the team has to be comfortable in understanding that the expectation isn't to knoweverything.
You can't possibly have that.
But we have the culture where if people don't have the information, we feel like they'realmost useless or they don't add value.
And the real value comes in from my perspective.
is in asking better questions and asking the right questions.
(07:29):
And that's also a thing that I see a lot of challenges in organizations because somepeople take offense to these questions.
Depending on what they're asked, they'll feel that they're being attacked, they'll puttheir guard up, and that creates an environment where it hinders progress.
And so if you can't ask these questions, if you can't be comfortable in not knowing, thenyou're not really going to get to the real core of the problem of what's going on to build
(07:57):
on it and solve it.
And there's been so many people and generations before us that have come through and youhear it time and time and there's a law called Kidlin's Law.
And basically it says if you can't write the problem down clearly, then you don'tunderstand it.
And the best way to understand it is ask those questions, get to the root cause, and don'treason through analogy.
(08:21):
And I think those are the first steps in getting that organizational culture in thedirection and moving in the right direction is feeling that it's OK to not know.
Ask questions.
There's nothing wrong with asking the questions because odds are if you're asking thequestion.
I might have that same question and I just might be afraid to ask it.
(08:43):
So you have to put that out there.
Before, I want to show you a book.
A friend of mine wrote it.
Just hold on one second.
he just wanted to show his background.
It is a nice background.
It's a real ocean.
Because you know those usual backgrounds with oceans in the back, but they're just...
(09:06):
This is a friend of mine who wrote this book.
It's fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
I mean, so there is some...
it.
connection with your thinking.
mean he's a very successful entrepreneur.
His name is Yuri Levine.
(09:27):
I mean I have read that book so that's why I am curious how you have you know gone intothis.
Anyway I just want to give you that thought something too.
It's a very important issue because people
Problems are likely, I'm a student of astrophysics and it's not solutions we get, but youhave to ask the right question, find the right problem so that we can find some solution
(10:00):
to it.
But anyway, go ahead.
You two should really talk after this because you studied astrophysics, actually had along career on that.
And Charvel studied physics.
And I'm just, I'm the brain in this group.
Anyway, I just want to ask, in order for our audience to better understand how to approacha problem with a solution mindset, can you tell us an instance where...
(10:30):
as you navigate this industry in healthcare helping the senior.
Is this a non-profit organization?
Correct.
Okay, that's even better, because did you experience rejections or resistance on whatyou're doing?
How did you navigate that?
How did you come up with a solution in order to do what you have in your mind, yourvision?
(10:58):
So there's a couple different ways to approach that and a couple essential things that youneed to do.
The first one is you have to be persistent.
If you're gonna challenge the status quo and you're gonna come up with somethingunconventional, you can't expect it to land the first time you discuss it.
You're going to need to have that energy and the grit to revisit the conversation multipletimes.
(11:25):
And the reason for needing to revisit it is because you're gonna need to startunderstanding how to shift perspective for the individual you're having the conversation
with.
And I know we always hear the statement, perception is everything, but perspective isactually everything.
And you need to understand what people are seeing from their vantage point and what thismeans to them.
(11:50):
So as an example, in the healthcare industry, when I was overseeing the provincialoperation with EMS, there were a lot of challenges post-COVID world.
Every industry experienced pretty much the same thing when it came to workforce shortages,burnout, and all things related to that.
(12:15):
And in most other industries, I mean, if you have a coffee shop and you're short staffed,somebody doesn't buy coffee that day, it's not going to be life or death.
But in healthcare, it...
absolutely can be and you don't have the leeway of lacking service or or being delayed inthat service delivery and so there were so many challenges around what we were doing and
(12:40):
how we were doing it and for decades and
I can't even go as far back as we want.
The idea was that if you want to enhance service delivery, it meant that you had to addmore resources.
And so that meant if your ambulances don't get to where they need to go in time, add moreambulances.
(13:00):
And if they don't get there, then you add.
And you keep adding until you feel that you've provided the coverage that you need andprovided the service that you need.
Well, that worked post-COVID.
When you had access to a lot of health human resources and you could hire and people were,there were more abundance of individuals working.
In the post-COVID world, we have to start looking at things differently and actuallybecoming more efficient, which is how we should have looked at it to begin with.
(13:29):
And it wasn't about how do we add more ambulances to solve this problem.
The problem wasn't more ambulances.
It was what are they doing?
and how are they doing it and who's on the ambulances that's doing that work.
And so we started with things just as simple as patient transfers.
And when I say a patient transfer, that's from a facility to a facility.
(13:52):
So that's not a 911 call.
We had our provincial ambulances doing all of it.
They would do inter-facility transfers, they would do 911 calls, and when we dug deep intothe paperwork and the care provided on those inter-facility transfers, we found that more
than 80 % of the time, no care was provided.
(14:15):
And so...
immediately you see that you don't really need a trained full paramedic, a healthcareprofessional to come in and do those inner facility transfers.
So it opens the door to say okay who else can we train, what kind of training do theyneed, and how do we parcel that service off to do something a little bit different.
(14:37):
And that's where we started.
By doing that, we were able to move our paramedics more into the roles where they'resupposed to be, providing that frontline emergency care.
And we continued to build on that.
We then started looking at the emergency calls and we said, okay, how many of theseemergency calls are true emergencies?
And let me say that when I say a true emergency, I 100 % understand and appreciate thatwhen somebody calls 911, to them, it's all a real emergency.
(15:08):
But I mean, by definition.
of when it comes into a 911 call center what does that emergency actually look like andwhat does it require and by parceling that out even further we were able to realize that
about 70 % didn't need an ambulance right away.
And so we created another branch that had a single responder and we had a virtual careteam that was made up of a physician and a nurse and a paramedic.
(15:37):
And this single responder would then attend to that call.
They'd collaborate with the virtual care team.
And more times than not, would may end up in not transporting that person to a hospital atall.
And it was this approach.
try each right like wow it's amazing how are you exactly doing that like how do you trainthe person to determine that just by speaking on the phone.
(16:03):
So there's the training for our, well I shouldn't say our, I'm not at EMC anymore, but thecall center staff in general 911 centers, they have a set of questions that they ask
that'll outline what bucket it falls into.
And based on that algorithm of questions that they're asked, it'll identify where it landsand what level of emergency it might be and what level of response it would require.
(16:29):
That's definitely a Visionary move, right Mohan?
Yes.
I love the Latin music playing in your background.
I know somebody's working on the pool.
Let me just follow up on the problem and solutions.
(16:51):
You also kind of in your book, you're touching on when you should take the step to getsome assistance from experts or outsiders.
to find a solution for the problem which you have encountered.
(17:13):
How do you make the decision?
How would you advise people when to do it?
So that's a tough area because it definitely differs from individual to individual.
And I encourage organizations not to be overconfident or overstretch their team andresources in trying to overcome some of the issues or problems that they have, because
(17:43):
you're going to wind up with another problem.
And as you're probably gathering, these problems can layer.
And so you've got a problem that might be revenue related and you think, OK, well, wecould solve this by digging into here and doing more marketing here and all of these
things.
But if you don't have the resources to do that marketing and you push your team further.
(18:06):
you're creating another problem where you're burning your team out and then you're goingto be short resources.
And so for that specific area, I would encourage organizations just to be wise in how theyleverage the resources that they have internally.
And it's not just about the number of resources, it's the expertise as well.
And so a lot of organizations may not have in-house marketing expertise if that's the areathat they're going.
(18:33):
And so if that's the solution that you need to take on because it's public awareness orbranding that needs to be resolved, then seek out the experts in that area because they're
experts for a reason and they'll be much more efficient in helping you achieve what youwant.
Ultimately, what you want to get out of anything that you're trying to solve is not just asolution.
(18:55):
A solution isn't really a product that you should be walking away with.
What I how I see it is it's a process.
And so if you've got a problem and you found a way to solve it and get to that root causeand enable something better, it's that process that you want to retain so that you can
(19:15):
redeploy it time after time after time.
And it's the solutions that carry a lot of value that people don't realize.
There's one interesting example.
You think about the gold rush back in the nineteen hundreds out of curiosity.
Who do you think made some of the most money during the gold rush?
during the 1900s.
(19:36):
Where would you throw your guess at?
No idea.
I've seen movies.
Believe it or not, it was the people who made the shovels.
Because they found a solution to the problem, which was how do you dig up that gold andwhere do get it from?
(19:57):
They created a solution and they sold it.
And most massively successful organizations today really build on selling solutions.
It's not so much products.
When you think about real tangible things, you think about Uber.
Uber doesn't actually own any taxis.
They sold a solution and it's working.
(20:18):
Amazon does the same thing.
Airbnb does the same thing.
Facebook does the same thing.
All of these places have created massive solutions that people can take.
and implement a process and run it across multiple areas in their organization.
And that's the value.
I think that's where the heavyweight comes in.
It's not what you've actually achieved in solving the problem, it's the process, thatactual solution.
(20:43):
Yeah.
for that where you can, We talked about that, Moha, about something about if you come upwith a solution, the process, the transferability of it in any situation is important.
But I just want to mention that, yeah, right, even in wars, the suppliers of ammunition,these are the people who make a lot of money.
(21:08):
It's a business, right?
Anyway, so.
How big is your operation?
So right now we are a group of five organizations at Northwood and a team of about 2,500to 3,000 team members.
So it's fairly large.
I can say that we have a very, very passionate team about the work that they do.
(21:35):
And a lot of the things that...
we've discussed about the approach to problem solving and getting down to the solution andgetting to the basics.
I found at Northwood that it's actually already part of the culture.
There's tweaks here, tweaks there, but the approach, the way the team looks at things,it's already built into that.
(21:57):
And I look at the different programs that exist there right now.
There's, as I mentioned earlier, the health human resource area was impacted across allsectors.
And some of the things being done at Northwood and across the sector where there'sbridging programs and standardization programming and all of these things to create
longevity among the workforce so that they have growth and opportunity and development arevery innovative.
(22:25):
And in creating that culture where it's not about recruitment.
I go back to the health human resource or human resources in general because that's wherepeople are hurt the most.
But Northwood sees it as an attraction.
And it's about how do you attract people and be a magnet organization and make it a placewhere people want to be and want to stay.
(22:50):
And even the word, the terminology, I mean, if you think about the word recruitment, thathas ties back to military.
That's what you were when you joined the military.
You were a new recruit.
And in general, the military has to recruit because if you're injured or you've beenfatally injured, you can't come back to work.
You have to recruit.
(23:13):
The disappointing side is that I think at some point, businesses took this on and said,well, we'll recruit and we'll push our workforce.
And if we break them, we'll get more.
And if we break them, we'll get more.
And that doesn't work.
You can't break your workforce.
and break your team in order to be successful.
You want a team that wants to be there and is passionate about the work and trulyunderstands your why.
(23:37):
And that's where you'll get true success.
And I've witnessed this so much at Northwood because even when I first started, they had along service awards event and we were handing out long service certificates for people
that have been there 35 and 40 and 45 years.
And I've met...
people's kids who now have joined the Northwood team because they were seeing the passionof their parents working at Northwood that as they grew up, they trained or wanted to
(24:06):
enter that industry and are working there as well.
And these are true processes to solving real problems because human resource problemseverybody faces and it doesn't matter what sector, what environment you're in and getting
down to really building that culture and finding out what is it that you need to do.
And moreover, the other piece I'll add, which ties back to everything we just talked aboutregarding problem solving is you cannot expect your solution today to be your solution
(24:39):
tomorrow.
And you have to be okay with that because a lot of people invest a lot into their solutionand say, that's it, I've solved it, it's done.
And as I mentioned, it's not a one-stop thing, it's a journey.
And then when you revisit it in a couple years, some people take offense to it.
And they say, you're telling me what I did two years ago is a problem today?
(25:03):
Well, yes, it is.
At the time, it was a great solution.
Based on the information that you had and the tools that you had, it was the right thingto do, and I would have done the same.
But times change.
Expectations change.
Cultures change.
and you need to adapt to all of those, which means you need to continue to revisit, andthat's why it's all about having a process.
(25:27):
And it's the same thing with the teams.
How I tie it back to the team to say, I just remember when I first started working as ayoung, single individual, my priorities were pay and vacation.
Those are the top two things.
As long as you paid me and I had vacation time, I was happy.
But if that's all my employer knew 15 years later and they still treated me that way whenI then had a family, wife, kids, and now my priorities were more about pension, longevity,
(25:58):
these things change and you have to continue to revisit them and that's...
That's how you create true solutions and avoid problems.
Not waiting for something to break.
And that's a terrible statement too.
I'm sure you've all heard it.
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
Drywall, that's it.
It applies to that.
Jiprock drywall.
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
(26:20):
Aside from that, you should be looking at what's going on and seeing how you can make itbetter.
Do you plan to expand outside the region you're currently operating in?
So we're doing a lot of work on the tech branch of things within Northwood.
One of them is the InTouch line and Smart Tech.
(26:43):
So InTouch focuses on peace of mind for seniors and elderly individuals that are living athome.
Not just peace of mind for them, but for their families as well.
And the way it provides peace of mind is that it's a wearable technology that goes aroundthe neck.
And should there be an emergency, it's a press of a button.
(27:03):
And should there be any sudden movements such as a fall, it calls into a call center wherethere's a live person there that will call in and say, are you okay?
And then engage emergency services.
And so that area we're looking at and we're looking at how do we expand that because wehave an aging population globally.
(27:24):
And the future of elderly care is not in facilities, it's in communities.
And so it's about how do you build the resources.
facilities, but in communities as well.
Yeah, I just wanna quote you on that.
Thank you.
Keep going, sorry.
(27:45):
Yeah, and so I would add that it's about creating the resources and the tools needed forpeople to age in place.
That's truly the future and what the future needs to look like.
And that's decades.
It's going to take decades to get there.
That's not something that's going to happen overnight.
(28:07):
It's a bit of a mind shift, a culture shift.
And I think we're on our way.
But it's going to take some time and all the tools don't currently exist to properly ageat home yet, but they're coming.
We need Dr.
AI to, I think that because there's a point here when after you shared all of that,thought, wow, we need technology to get some things going.
(28:34):
And this is where you and Mohan can really sort of discuss something, how to use AI.
How do you think Mohan, can this organization use AI for
you need to have the right technology, no question about it.
But let me ask you, in your kind of looking for the right problems or trying to find thesolutions for those problems, do you have a specific...
(29:08):
long-term vision and goal where you want to go or how is that coming into play.
Absolutely.
Our mission is to ensure overall dignified living for seniors in our communities.
(29:29):
And what's beautiful about that mission statement is that it evolves.
with what that dignified living looks like.
And so if it's in a facility, our motto is live more.
Most people think, including myself, before joining the industry is that you go to along-term care facility for end of life.
(29:49):
You're there and you're there essentially to expire.
But the philosophy at Northwood is about creating a community where you can live more.
It's ensuring that the resources exist, the communities exist,
the livelihood exists so that you can live a longer, healthier life.
(30:09):
at Northwood.
And that translates to our home care branch and how do you support people at home.
It translates to our foundation, which leans on generous donors to help us do more.
It leans on our career college where we can help people achieve their dreams and it leansheavily on the technology branch on how do we enable people to live at home and to live
(30:34):
longer.
And when we talk about AI, I had a great discussion with a colleague of mine in this
industry just last week and we had a discussion about how do you leverage wearabletechnology and AI to start predicting outcomes.
And so if you're wearing, if you have a wearable piece of technology and it's trackingyour movement and what you're doing, then the lack of that movement
(30:59):
would also have an indicator on how you're feeling or what you might be experiencing.
And when you connect all of that with being able to collect some vitals remotely and otherdetails, you can start predicting how somebody or what somebody might be experiencing or
feeling or a virus that they might have caught and be very proactive in treating it.
(31:25):
And that's
That whole proactive approach in healthcare is definitely moving in that direction, butit's a bit tricky because healthcare education in general is reactive.
And especially I think about the emergency branch.
You don't go to something unless it's happened.
(31:48):
and then trying to shift that mindset into how do you prevent it from happening to beginwith, again, that's a whole other leap in itself.
But that's where we need to get to.
We need to get to true preventative medicine across the sector, including emergency,including seniors and long-term care, so that the pressure can come off the healthcare
system a little bit and we can start treating things in a non-emergence setting.
(32:12):
And I think in my opinion, my vision of the future, I that's where we need to go.
is the only major tool that's going to help us get there in creating these predictiveoutcomes of what we're seeing.
they should create a wearable technology modeled after a dog.
(32:33):
Dogs can sense everything.
I'm not kidding, right?
They can sense vibration.
That's worth looking into, Mohan.
You're into AI.
AI and remote monitoring is very, very valuable.
But I just want to kind of understand, because all these so-called introduction of newtechnology, new things will need some...
(33:04):
financial thing, know, help.
So what is your kind of a plan for sufficient capital and how do you make things work inthe way you want to?
Is there a kind of a roadmap for financial support?
(33:25):
Yes, and that's great question.
So for us being a not-for-profit and a charitable organization, there's three avenues thatwe typically can go down.
The first one I spoke about already was our foundation, where we do fundraising forspecific projects.
And I have to tell you from what I've seen, you cannot underestimate the generosity ofpeople in helping.
(33:49):
push innovation and solutions through.
So that's one avenue that we do.
We have our annual Livmore Gala award ceremony coming up on June 7th of this year.
And we get a good turnout this year.
We're expecting 1,500 attendees.
And that's one of the ways that we do some fundraising.
(34:10):
The other avenue is through grants.
We've got a great team that reviews grants specific to some of the projects that we lookat, whether it be technology, innovation,
system improvement and enhancements.
And last but not least, of course not in any particular order, but we work very closelywith the provincial government here and they fund a lot of the things that we do when it
(34:31):
comes to long-term care and home care, in fact most in all.
And if we're looking at doing any pilot projects, we can take that to our provincialgovernment partners and seniors in long-term care, share the details of it, and if there's
interest then they may fund a pilot project.
And we're very fortunate because we
have a very innovative, forward-looking provincial government right now who's focusing onthese solutions and technological solutions.
(34:58):
So it's been really good at looking at these opportunities.
But we try and do them independently first, if we can, through fundraising, grants, andthen we'll look to partner with government where possible.
The reason I asked because in the US, ability to get grant is coming down because of ourchanges in the way they are trying to make it more efficient.
(35:28):
But your place, the grants are still available and those things will have no potentialproblems, I suppose.
That's our hope.
So far we've seen no impact or change to them and we hope that will stay the case.
But it's really helpful also that there are individuals willing to, with such generosity,to share their resources, which is pretty similar to the US in a way.
(36:01):
Mm-hmm.
Would you be involved or would you be looking at acquiring any of the private care centerslike yours to be part of your team or what's your, how do you expand or what's the plans
for expansion?
(36:22):
So currently we're undergoing quite a significant expansion within Northwood.
Generally how that happens is that when the government identifies the need for morelong-term care facilities, they'll partner up with different agencies or there's a few
different in the province and if you're successful then you'll be awarded the contractto...
(36:44):
launch that new facility.
We have a management contract with one location here in Nova Scotia called in Chestercalled Shoreham Village and we're currently undergoing a rebuild of that entire facility.
So that's a two to three year project and then next we have two new builds one in FallRiver here in Nova Scotia and one in Akuma.
(37:08):
Both of them are 144 bed facilities each.
And so essentially, the footprint of Northwood that exists right now when it comes tolong-term care is going to double in the next two years.
As far as home care goes, the demand continues to grow.
There's a lot of competition and other service providers here that are all doing a greatjob and providing great service.
(37:32):
And as that continues to grow, we'll continue to scale accordingly to make sure that thoseservices are maintained.
So you would work with profit-making institutions as well as some strategic relationshelping each other, or is it only you look for a non-profit organization?
(37:55):
No, not necessarily.
Whether an organization is for profit or not for profit, as long as our values are alignedin our mission and quality care, then we're aligned and we'll work together.
There's very reputable, profitable organizations in the province and we work closely withthem and we're looking to continue to build relationships there.
(38:16):
Our model of being a not for profit...
is who we are.
It's not to be taken against any for-profits, but that's not the deciding factor.
It's truly about the value, the quality care, the mission, the vision, all of those thingsthat if we're aligned, then there's some great work to be done together.
(38:38):
Excellent, excellent.
great plan for the future.
Charbel, it's been so great hearing all about what you do.
It's very noble, actually, very admirable.
How long have you been doing this?
So I've been in healthcare for 20 years.
Most of that has been in the pre-hospital emergency setting.
(39:01):
I joined Northwood about nine months ago.
So I can tell you're really in it for the long term because there's a lot of things youare looking towards in the future.
Now, our audience should be very curious by now.
So if you can talk more and invite them to read your book, purchase your book from Amazon,this is your opportunity.
(39:27):
For sure, mean, as I mentioned, the book came out of a bit of a frustration, but truly,the idea is whether you're leading a company or raising a family, or you're just trying to
figure out your next move, the book talks about how do you slow down?
How do you ask better questions?
How do you become comfortable with sitting in discomfort and not knowing right away?
(39:53):
And the best solutions?
are the ones that actually work.
They come after that.
So that's really, I want people to walk away realizing that the instinct to jump in andfix things isn't always helpful.
In fact, most of the time it's not.
And true power lies in becoming this, I call it an investigator.
(40:15):
you know, let your curiosity lead you, be methodical and comfortable sitting with theproblem before rushing to solve it.
And instead of thinking, how do I fix this?
I'd like people to start thinking, do I even truly understand this yet?
And that's really the shift.
And I think that's what people will get from the book is from being a fixer to being aproblem investigator.
(40:40):
That's the mindset that you want to shift.
The book leads you to deeper insight and better solutions and fewer unintendedconsequences.
You know what's so wise about what you said is to have that peace of mind that if it's notright in front of you, just the answer, just, know, somehow it will come.
(41:02):
It's the same mindset I have when I can't find something in the house.
You know, I would tell myself, I can't find it.
I don't remember where I placed it.
You know what?
It will turn up.
It should be just inside the house, right?
And always they turn up.
So Mulhan, do you have some final questions for Charbel before you wrap this up?
agree with this thought about how you tackle problems.
(41:25):
I had a, as I was saying as a student, I tried to solve the really unthinkable problems,but you can't.
But the most important value I learned from one of my teachers, in fact, he happened to bea...
(41:46):
Nobel Prize winner in physics Richard Feynman, told me that, he told me don't try to solvethe big problem, I mean if you want to find solution, take that big problem into small
problems.
(42:07):
and find out whether you can start solving the smaller problems, then eventually you cansolve the big problem.
Rather than, you know, so it's a, that has been my practice.
your book kind of addresses, I mean, even though I haven't fully read it, addresses thosetype of steps.
(42:30):
maybe you could give some advice to our listeners when there are really big problems.
problems facing them.
How do you tackle it?
How do you go forward?
And how would you kind of tackle them in the right way or possibly right way?
(42:53):
Yeah, great perspective.
I look at it just slightly differently.
I tend to get attracted to the bigger problem, but I take the approach of incrementalsolutions.
So it's not about that full swing one solution that's gonna fix it all, but it's about howdo you drop in the little bits of things that are gonna get you towards where you wanna
(43:19):
go.
And that's also what I speak to in the book and I call it the pendulum effect or theequilibrium effect.
And with your physics background, I'm sure you'll appreciate this, but when you think of apendulum that's swinging and you think of it up to one side and that's your problem.
It's all the way over here.
you
where you want it to be is in this area where it's comfortable, where it's at equilibrium,know, gravity's where nothing's pulling on it.
(43:47):
But generally speaking, what hap- exactly, and generally speaking what happens is that youhave this problem, you throw every solution you can think about at it, and where does it
go?
It goes all the way to the other extreme.
So you've solved this problem, you've created this problem.
Yeah.
then you say, okay, I'm going to tackle this with everything that I have, and you get backover here, and you keep getting closer and closer to that equilibrium point until you've
(44:14):
taken the longest path possible to get there.
And so by taking these incremental solutions and saying, here's my problem, and theexample I use is just because I've experienced it, was around communication.
Organizations generally will have the challenges where you'll hear from your teams andthey'll say, well, you don't communicate enough.
(44:35):
We don't hear from you.
And in a previous role that I was in, we said, OK, well, we're going to tackle thisbecause we're going to throw everything at it.
We're going to do newsletters.
We're going to do town halls.
We're going to go around and spend time with people.
We're going to do short videos.
We're going to do all of the above and more.
And we pushed that all out and we took this problem.
(44:57):
We solved it.
But then we got over here.
because then people said well there I'm getting flooded with information I don't know whatto read there's too much there I don't know where to start I'm not going to read any of it
and so then we said okay well we need to parcel these back and you parcel it back so faryou get over here and you keep going back and forth versus we don't get enough
(45:18):
communication and then you ask the question what communication are you looking for howwould you like to be communicated to
and you collect this information, it's okay to be able to live with the problem for alittle bit.
Collect the information and maybe the answer is we'd like a newsletter once a month thatcovers these topics.
(45:38):
You drop that in, measure.
Did you hit it perfectly?
Odds are you don't hit it perfectly from your first attempt and then you adjust again.
You ask more questions.
What is missing?
What can we add?
And so for me, it's not the size of the problem, it's the size of the solution.
And it's that incremental implementation of the solutions that you put in to go ahead.
(46:02):
And the one last thing I'll drop in on that is.
Some people have heard of this or not, but I call it the Beta Ridge Paradox.
It's not my term.
It's a term that's already been coined.
But it basically speaks to the idea that you might be comfortable enough where you are,but you're actually in a bigger problem than you realize, and you need to break free, and
(46:29):
you need to do something about it.
So essentially, you're not failing badly enough to make a drastic change, but you're alsonot succeeding enough to celebrate.
And I describe it as like quicksand.
It's disguised like you're standing on solid ground.
It's comfortable enough to stand on, but you really can't actually build anything on it.
(46:54):
And that space is the most dangerous space anybody can live in.
And a lot of people live in that area.
on a human nature side of things.
We may be uncomfortable with where we live, but it's not bad enough to move, so I'll putup with it little bit longer.
You may not be fully happy with where you're working, but it's not bad enough to leave.
(47:18):
And these examples go through organizations or life or anywhere you want.
And the matter of the fact is, if it was worse, it would get better quicker.
because you didn't feel like you had enough to act on.
So the example is, if you think about, if you were gonna walk a mile, well, if you weregonna go a mile, you'd probably walk it.
(47:41):
You'd say, it's just a mile, I'm gonna walk.
But if I told you you had to go somewhere that's five miles away, you'd say, no, that'stoo far away, I'm gonna take my car.
You actually get to the five mile point quicker than you get to the one mile point,because it was so much worse.
And that's the same thing you see in life and in organizations is that it's not bad enoughto do something about and it's good enough to just keep.
(48:03):
And we do that.
It's human nature.
We do it with everything in our lives, everywhere.
But it's that awareness, seeing it and saying, I'm not going to wait till it gets worse.
I'm not going to wait until it gets broken before I fix it.
I see that it's already not working great and I can make it better.
And that's where you want to be.
can almost read your mind, Mohan.
(48:25):
I think something in common about the two of you, again, is that you guys are, you havethis in-depth knowledge in science.
And Mohan would say to me, Jen, a lot of people operate by inertia.
Unless you push them, they'll just stay there.
There needs to be some effort to push them.
(48:47):
But even then, some people still, I just want to chill here.
Wow.
Very wise words from Sharpe.
Well, it's Newton's one of Newton's laws of motion, right?
An object at rest will remain at rest unless a force has acted upon it.
room, it's getting more sciencey.
Yeah.
(49:08):
Wow.
Just before we end our conversation, of course you had a very interesting real estatebackground, right?
You were working in the real estate area, operating and all kind of.
How would you compare what you did there and what you're doing now and what lessons youhave learned from going from one to the other?
(49:45):
that's a great question.
I think a lot of the lessons that I've probably learned through real estate...
early on is around budgeting, financing, making sure that you're sustainable.
There's a big misconception because a lot of people call not-for-profits as they call themnon-profits and it's not a non-profit.
(50:08):
A non-profit is an organization that is not sustainable and a not-for-profit is anorganization that is sustainable, has revenue, but reinvest that revenue into community.
programs.
It's not about building a bank or funds in the background.
And I know in the real estate sector, and especially because that was private, you get alot of exposure.
(50:34):
I got a lot of exposure, too, ensuring sustainability, good revenue flow that it cancontinue to thrive.
And then the other piece would be customer service.
You know, I've learned that through...
jobs that I've had early on in my career, whether it be in computer sales or real estate,but
customer service and just truly being an active listener with individuals, showing somecompassion and empathy to what you're talking about and what people are sharing with you,
(51:04):
reacting accordingly and having a genuine interest in what people are telling you and whattheir concerns are and wanting to do better.
Those are all things you don't necessarily have to only learn them from the
construction or rental industry, these are things that you just, through your experiences,as long as you pay attention to them, they're valuable lessons to pick up along the way.
(51:29):
And I really believe they've helped shape who I am, especially when I think of all myparents.
My parents, they immigrated to Canada and they left Lebanon at the time because they hadno choice.
And they got here, they had no funds, they didn't speak the language, and they had grit.
(51:49):
They had the grit to say we want to build a future and we want to make something of it.
And my father's starting as a janitor, my mom as a seamstress and working their waythrough and saving and eventually owning a small business to building a real estate.
empire, so to speak, is all things that I've learned from watching them and ourdiscussions at the dinner table.
(52:14):
That entrepreneurial mindset, that drive to want to do better and want to grow.
So I believe that some of it for me is just genetic.
It's things that I've grown up with.
I've inherited it from being around my mother and my father, who are two very drivenindividuals that were put in a situation where they had no choice.
(52:35):
Failure was not an option.
.
Mm-hmm.
That's wonderful.
Sharble, thank you very much.
just, oh, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
just finishing thought, I think I see some interesting parallel.
Of course, the profit making or entrepreneurship is primarily to create some wealth orsomething for legacy purpose, something for your next generation.
(53:08):
Whereas a non-profit, like I do have a foundation, I have a non-profit, but which isprimarily you're providing to the community at large what you could do and you work, it's
not to create any wealth creation.
It's doing it to provide service.
(53:29):
So there is some parallel to that, but it looks like you're doing something similar.
Of course, financial sustainability should be there.
both.
Of course, if you're in a private business, if there is no financials available, you won'tgo anywhere.
Same thing with the nonprofit test, either an endowment or some ability to bring insufficient funds to run and operate regularly.
(54:00):
So there is some similarities, but nobody takes it home from a nonprofit.
Whereas you're a for-profit, some shareholders or some investors, they have the benefit of
the growth of the company.
So there is some parallel to it.
So you want to say anything?
(54:20):
final thoughts.
Yeah, thank you, Mohan.
My final thoughts are actually related to that.
Sharbel, would you invite our audience, especially those within your region, I hope theyget to watch this, how can they help?
your mission.
(54:41):
That's a great question.
There's a lot of ways to help.
First is just awareness that the status quo is not acceptable.
And when you think about the service industry, the healthcare industry, all of thesethings, I personally believe that...
true happiness comes in serving others and in making a difference in other people's lives.
(55:05):
You can impact your own life very easily.
You should have the power to do that at any moment.
But by stepping out of your own shadow into someone else's and supporting them to dobetter,
That's where real satisfaction comes in.
And that's why I enjoy the service industry so much.
And I think if people want to help, there's multiple ways.
(55:27):
Financially, there's through the foundation to support and help us grow and create newprograms, new innovation and things that we're driving in this industry.
Other ways is that we have...
amazing volunteer branch within our organization and I would say you know that that is anamazing way to give back because
(55:52):
people love company of other people.
And if you have time and you can come and volunteer at one of the Northwood locations andspend time with some of these seniors and elderly folks and have some great conversations
and just be there as a sounding board, that in itself is priceless.
So there's no shortage of ways to help, whether it's time or finances or support any waythat they want.
(56:19):
Easy to access us through our website.
at Northwood.com and happy to have any conversations with anybody about people who want tomake an impact in this area and how we can do it together.
So if you guys want to help, want to volunteer, you can go to northwood.com and you'llfind more information there and how to contact them.
(56:43):
Well, thank you very much, Charbel.
This has been a very insightful conversation and I'm just so impressed and I admire you alot today.
I I've just, I think I've met you once or twice while you were in a, during a call withDoug, but this is,
I agree, you're one of the top five nicest, smartest, wisest people so far.
(57:09):
We need just one more.
Anyway, we appreciate your time.
Thank you, Mohan.
We will see you again.
You know what?
Before I close this, I want to take this opportunity to invite everyone to attend theVisionaries Roundtable.
Go to www.visionariesroundtable.com.
(57:31):
All right, so we will see you again in the next episode.
I'm your host, Jen Crow, and my co-host.
Good morning and thanks again.
It's a pleasure.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
Oh.
I think somebody.
Welcome once again to the Visionaries Show.
I'm your host, Jen Crow, branding lead of Authority Fusion.
And here's my co-host.
Mohan Ananda, an ordinary entrepreneur.
And here with us in the show is Charbel Daniel.
He is in the healthcare industry, but before that he's done a lot of wild and quite haveaccomplished, has accomplished a lot of things.
(00:29):
Now we wanna get to know him more today.
Charbel, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me on the show.
Thank you.
Thank you for your time.
Could you introduce yourself a little bit more for our audience?
Yes, absolutely.
So my name is Charbel Daniel.
Currently, I'm the president and CEO of Northwood, which is a group of companies focusedon the seniors and long-term care sector, namely across the entire sector.
(00:59):
Anything from home care to long-term care, is like nursing homes, assisted living,supportive living, to a foundation, career college, affordable housing, and a technology
branch as well called InTouch.
And really the organization grew out of social injustices that happened in providingaffordable housing.
(01:23):
It's one of the largest not-for-profits in this sector in Canada.
And it's doing some amazing work with a very, very passionate team just focused onproviding dignified living for seniors.
That is quite timely, because just this morning I went to a facility here and packed somemeals for the Meals on Wheels.
(01:44):
So somebody went out to deliver those meals.
You mentioned that it came out of observing the social injustice.
But how did you make that transition?
It looks like you've done a lot of work in the real estate industry, and then youtransition into this.
How did you make that transition?
(02:05):
So the real estate entry into the real estate industry was something I was kind of borninto.
It's the business my dad had started early on in his career.
And as a result, myself, my brother had kind of taken on my brother runs that full time.
And that's what we have and kind of do on the side.
My professional career has always been in health care.
(02:27):
Initially, it started off in the EMS or emergency pre hospital setting with the ambulanceindustry.
I am a former paramedic and a
worked the field before and growing through healthcare and leadership this amazingopportunity came up with an organization that just really aligns with my values about how
do we how do we really provide a service and give back to the communities and I wasexcited to to jump on board.
(02:56):
I think Mohan has a lot to say about this because he himself has a business that has to dowith healthcare.
Yes, am into, or I have very much interested in the healthcare industry and also currentlyinvolved in a company which has been there for 10, 13 years.
(03:20):
It's, now we changed the name recently.
It used to be called Second Opinion Expert.
Now it's called Dray Health.
DRE stands for Dr.
D-R-A-I, because of introducing AI into the system.
And, but anyway, that's why I'm really, really excited to know the type of things you do.
(03:45):
We also have similar tours.
We have what we call congregate, which is a small post acute centers.
We have a number of them in California, but some other states.
And we also work with the skilled nursing homes.
We have skilled nursing homes.
We operate and we also have a home health care that's for senior citizens.
(04:07):
as well as, and we do some remote patient monitoring.
So in the healthcare industry, the full spectrum.
we have something in common, and maybe after the interview, I can connect with you to ourpeople and see whether we can work like a two plus two, making it five.
So there is an opportunity there.
(04:28):
Even though we can talk about it, that's not the real thing I want to talk more today.
I have a question.
No, I'd love to discuss that more with you.
Absolutely.
Thank you.
Sure.
I saw that you wrote a book.
I have not read it, but I just skimmed through the problem with solutions.
(04:49):
Yes, that's, and I'm very much interested to know more about it.
And maybe what they could do is give a summary of the book, just a short, and then addresson, you, I think you stressed on
How to build a culture to create the best solutions.
(05:12):
I mean, that is something very important to all the entrepreneurs because entrepreneurslook for the best solutions.
So go ahead and give us a little summary and address on how really what people orentrepreneurs, companies should do to create this.
It's an amazing way to get the best solutions for the problems.
(05:38):
Yes, wonderful.
The Problem with Solutions, the book, for me was born out of frustration, really.
And the frustration with how often we rush to fix things before we really understand.
what's broken.
I've worked in healthcare and leadership for years myself.
I've kept seeing the same patterns over and over.
(06:00):
People jumping straight to action, throwing money or people at a problem and wondering whyhasn't anything improved.
So I wrote this book to challenge the way we think about problem solving and not just inbusiness but in life in general.
You know we don't actually have
a solution problem.
(06:22):
There's no shortage of solutions that people will come up with when they hear an issue.
We have a problem problem and many people spend all their energy solving symptoms and notreally getting to the root cause and not finding out
What truly caused the problem?
What are we really trying to get at?
(06:43):
And so in essence, the first step isn't solutioning, so to speak, but it's about askingbetter questions.
And when you think about the environment or the culture that you want to develop in yourbusiness or in your organization, the first step is being comfortable in not knowing
(07:04):
everything.
And the team has to be comfortable in understanding that the expectation isn't to knoweverything.
You can't possibly have that.
But we have the culture where if people don't have the information, we feel like they'realmost useless or they don't add value.
And the real value comes in from my perspective.
is in asking better questions and asking the right questions.
(07:29):
And that's also a thing that I see a lot of challenges in organizations because somepeople take offense to these questions.
Depending on what they're asked, they'll feel that they're being attacked, they'll puttheir guard up, and that creates an environment where it hinders progress.
And so if you can't ask these questions, if you can't be comfortable in not knowing, thenyou're not really going to get to the real core of the problem of what's going on to build
(07:57):
on it and solve it.
And there's been so many people and generations before us that have come through and youhear it time and time and there's a law called Kidlin's Law.
And basically it says if you can't write the problem down clearly, then you don'tunderstand it.
And the best way to understand it is ask those questions, get to the root cause, and don'treason through analogy.
(08:21):
And I think those are the first steps in getting that organizational culture in thedirection and moving in the right direction is feeling that it's OK to not know.
Ask questions.
There's nothing wrong with asking the questions because odds are if you're asking thequestion.
I might have that same question and I just might be afraid to ask it.
(08:43):
So you have to put that out there.
Before, I want to show you a book.
A friend of mine wrote it.
Just hold on one second.
he just wanted to show his background.
It is a nice background.
It's a real ocean.
Because you know those usual backgrounds with oceans in the back, but they're just...
(09:06):
This is a friend of mine who wrote this book.
It's fall in love with the problem, not the solution.
I mean, so there is some...
it.
connection with your thinking.
mean he's a very successful entrepreneur.
His name is Yuri Levine.
(09:27):
I mean I have read that book so that's why I am curious how you have you know gone intothis.
Anyway I just want to give you that thought something too.
It's a very important issue because people
Problems are likely, I'm a student of astrophysics and it's not solutions we get, but youhave to ask the right question, find the right problem so that we can find some solution
(10:00):
to it.
But anyway, go ahead.
You two should really talk after this because you studied astrophysics, actually had along career on that.
And Charvel studied physics.
And I'm just, I'm the brain in this group.
Anyway, I just want to ask, in order for our audience to better understand how to approacha problem with a solution mindset, can you tell us an instance where...
(10:30):
as you navigate this industry in healthcare helping the senior.
Is this a non-profit organization?
Correct.
Okay, that's even better, because did you experience rejections or resistance on whatyou're doing?
How did you navigate that?
How did you come up with a solution in order to do what you have in your mind, yourvision?
(10:58):
So there's a couple different ways to approach that and a couple essential things that youneed to do.
The first one is you have to be persistent.
If you're gonna challenge the status quo and you're gonna come up with somethingunconventional, you can't expect it to land the first time you discuss it.
You're going to need to have that energy and the grit to revisit the conversation multipletimes.
(11:25):
And the reason for needing to revisit it is because you're gonna need to startunderstanding how to shift perspective for the individual you're having the conversation
with.
And I know we always hear the statement, perception is everything, but perspective isactually everything.
And you need to understand what people are seeing from their vantage point and what thismeans to them.
(11:50):
So as an example, in the healthcare industry, when I was overseeing the provincialoperation with EMS, there were a lot of challenges post-COVID world.
Every industry experienced pretty much the same thing when it came to workforce shortages,burnout, and all things related to that.
(12:15):
And in most other industries, I mean, if you have a coffee shop and you're short staffed,somebody doesn't buy coffee that day, it's not going to be life or death.
But in healthcare, it...
absolutely can be and you don't have the leeway of lacking service or or being delayed inthat service delivery and so there were so many challenges around what we were doing and
(12:40):
how we were doing it and for decades and
I can't even go as far back as we want.
The idea was that if you want to enhance service delivery, it meant that you had to addmore resources.
And so that meant if your ambulances don't get to where they need to go in time, add moreambulances.
(13:00):
And if they don't get there, then you add.
And you keep adding until you feel that you've provided the coverage that you need andprovided the service that you need.
Well, that worked post-COVID.
When you had access to a lot of health human resources and you could hire and people were,there were more abundance of individuals working.
In the post-COVID world, we have to start looking at things differently and actuallybecoming more efficient, which is how we should have looked at it to begin with.
(13:29):
And it wasn't about how do we add more ambulances to solve this problem.
The problem wasn't more ambulances.
It was what are they doing?
and how are they doing it and who's on the ambulances that's doing that work.
And so we started with things just as simple as patient transfers.
And when I say a patient transfer, that's from a facility to a facility.
(13:52):
So that's not a 911 call.
We had our provincial ambulances doing all of it.
They would do inter-facility transfers, they would do 911 calls, and when we dug deep intothe paperwork and the care provided on those inter-facility transfers, we found that more
than 80 % of the time, no care was provided.
(14:15):
And so...
immediately you see that you don't really need a trained full paramedic, a healthcareprofessional to come in and do those inner facility transfers.
So it opens the door to say okay who else can we train, what kind of training do theyneed, and how do we parcel that service off to do something a little bit different.
(14:37):
And that's where we started.
By doing that, we were able to move our paramedics more into the roles where they'resupposed to be, providing that frontline emergency care.
And we continued to build on that.
We then started looking at the emergency calls and we said, okay, how many of theseemergency calls are true emergencies?
And let me say that when I say a true emergency, I 100 % understand and appreciate thatwhen somebody calls 911, to them, it's all a real emergency.
(15:08):
But I mean, by definition.
of when it comes into a 911 call center what does that emergency actually look like andwhat does it require and by parceling that out even further we were able to realize that
about 70 % didn't need an ambulance right away.
And so we created another branch that had a single responder and we had a virtual careteam that was made up of a physician and a nurse and a paramedic.
(15:37):
And this single responder would then attend to that call.
They'd collaborate with the virtual care team.
And more times than not, would may end up in not transporting that person to a hospital atall.
And it was this approach.
try each right like wow it's amazing how are you exactly doing that like how do you trainthe person to determine that just by speaking on the phone.
(16:03):
So there's the training for our, well I shouldn't say our, I'm not at EMC anymore, but thecall center staff in general 911 centers, they have a set of questions that they ask
that'll outline what bucket it falls into.
And based on that algorithm of questions that they're asked, it'll identify where it landsand what level of emergency it might be and what level of response it would require.
(16:29):
That's definitely a Visionary move, right Mohan?
Yes.
I love the Latin music playing in your background.
I know somebody's working on the pool.
Let me just follow up on the problem and solutions.
(16:51):
You also kind of in your book, you're touching on when you should take the step to getsome assistance from experts or outsiders.
to find a solution for the problem which you have encountered.
(17:13):
How do you make the decision?
How would you advise people when to do it?
So that's a tough area because it definitely differs from individual to individual.
And I encourage organizations not to be overconfident or overstretch their team andresources in trying to overcome some of the issues or problems that they have, because
(17:43):
you're going to wind up with another problem.
And as you're probably gathering, these problems can layer.
And so you've got a problem that might be revenue related and you think, OK, well, wecould solve this by digging into here and doing more marketing here and all of these
things.
But if you don't have the resources to do that marketing and you push your team further.
(18:06):
you're creating another problem where you're burning your team out and then you're goingto be short resources.
And so for that specific area, I would encourage organizations just to be wise in how theyleverage the resources that they have internally.
And it's not just about the number of resources, it's the expertise as well.
And so a lot of organizations may not have in-house marketing expertise if that's the areathat they're going.
(18:33):
And so if that's the solution that you need to take on because it's public awareness orbranding that needs to be resolved, then seek out the experts in that area because they're
experts for a reason and they'll be much more efficient in helping you achieve what youwant.
Ultimately, what you want to get out of anything that you're trying to solve is not just asolution.
(18:55):
A solution isn't really a product that you should be walking away with.
What I how I see it is it's a process.
And so if you've got a problem and you found a way to solve it and get to that root causeand enable something better, it's that process that you want to retain so that you can
(19:15):
redeploy it time after time after time.
And it's the solutions that carry a lot of value that people don't realize.
There's one interesting example.
You think about the gold rush back in the nineteen hundreds out of curiosity.
Who do you think made some of the most money during the gold rush?
during the 1900s.
(19:36):
Where would you throw your guess at?
No idea.
I've seen movies.
Believe it or not, it was the people who made the shovels.
Because they found a solution to the problem, which was how do you dig up that gold andwhere do get it from?
(19:57):
They created a solution and they sold it.
And most massively successful organizations today really build on selling solutions.
It's not so much products.
When you think about real tangible things, you think about Uber.
Uber doesn't actually own any taxis.
They sold a solution and it's working.
(20:18):
Amazon does the same thing.
Airbnb does the same thing.
Facebook does the same thing.
All of these places have created massive solutions that people can take.
and implement a process and run it across multiple areas in their organization.
And that's the value.
I think that's where the heavyweight comes in.
It's not what you've actually achieved in solving the problem, it's the process, thatactual solution.
(20:43):
Yeah.
for that where you can, We talked about that, Moha, about something about if you come upwith a solution, the process, the transferability of it in any situation is important.
But I just want to mention that, yeah, right, even in wars, the suppliers of ammunition,these are the people who make a lot of money.
(21:08):
It's a business, right?
Anyway, so.
How big is your operation?
So right now we are a group of five organizations at Northwood and a team of about 2,500to 3,000 team members.
So it's fairly large.
I can say that we have a very, very passionate team about the work that they do.
(21:35):
And a lot of the things that...
we've discussed about the approach to problem solving and getting down to the solution andgetting to the basics.
I found at Northwood that it's actually already part of the culture.
There's tweaks here, tweaks there, but the approach, the way the team looks at things,it's already built into that.
(21:57):
And I look at the different programs that exist there right now.
There's, as I mentioned earlier, the health human resource area was impacted across allsectors.
And some of the things being done at Northwood and across the sector where there'sbridging programs and standardization programming and all of these things to create
longevity among the workforce so that they have growth and opportunity and development arevery innovative.
(22:25):
And in creating that culture where it's not about recruitment.
I go back to the health human resource or human resources in general because that's wherepeople are hurt the most.
But Northwood sees it as an attraction.
And it's about how do you attract people and be a magnet organization and make it a placewhere people want to be and want to stay.
(22:50):
And even the word, the terminology, I mean, if you think about the word recruitment, thathas ties back to military.
That's what you were when you joined the military.
You were a new recruit.
And in general, the military has to recruit because if you're injured or you've beenfatally injured, you can't come back to work.
You have to recruit.
(23:13):
The disappointing side is that I think at some point, businesses took this on and said,well, we'll recruit and we'll push our workforce.
And if we break them, we'll get more.
And if we break them, we'll get more.
And that doesn't work.
You can't break your workforce.
and break your team in order to be successful.
You want a team that wants to be there and is passionate about the work and trulyunderstands your why.
(23:37):
And that's where you'll get true success.
And I've witnessed this so much at Northwood because even when I first started, they had along service awards event and we were handing out long service certificates for people
that have been there 35 and 40 and 45 years.
And I've met...
people's kids who now have joined the Northwood team because they were seeing the passionof their parents working at Northwood that as they grew up, they trained or wanted to
(24:06):
enter that industry and are working there as well.
And these are true processes to solving real problems because human resource problemseverybody faces and it doesn't matter what sector, what environment you're in and getting
down to really building that culture and finding out what is it that you need to do.
And moreover, the other piece I'll add, which ties back to everything we just talked aboutregarding problem solving is you cannot expect your solution today to be your solution
(24:39):
tomorrow.
And you have to be okay with that because a lot of people invest a lot into their solutionand say, that's it, I've solved it, it's done.
And as I mentioned, it's not a one-stop thing, it's a journey.
And then when you revisit it in a couple years, some people take offense to it.
And they say, you're telling me what I did two years ago is a problem today?
(25:03):
Well, yes, it is.
At the time, it was a great solution.
Based on the information that you had and the tools that you had, it was the right thingto do, and I would have done the same.
But times change.
Expectations change.
Cultures change.
and you need to adapt to all of those, which means you need to continue to revisit, andthat's why it's all about having a process.
(25:27):
And it's the same thing with the teams.
How I tie it back to the team to say, I just remember when I first started working as ayoung, single individual, my priorities were pay and vacation.
Those are the top two things.
As long as you paid me and I had vacation time, I was happy.
But if that's all my employer knew 15 years later and they still treated me that way whenI then had a family, wife, kids, and now my priorities were more about pension, longevity,
(25:58):
these things change and you have to continue to revisit them and that's...
That's how you create true solutions and avoid problems.
Not waiting for something to break.
And that's a terrible statement too.
I'm sure you've all heard it.
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
Drywall, that's it.
It applies to that.
Jiprock drywall.
If it's not broken, don't fix it.
(26:20):
Aside from that, you should be looking at what's going on and seeing how you can make itbetter.
Do you plan to expand outside the region you're currently operating in?
So we're doing a lot of work on the tech branch of things within Northwood.
One of them is the InTouch line and Smart Tech.
(26:43):
So InTouch focuses on peace of mind for seniors and elderly individuals that are living athome.
Not just peace of mind for them, but for their families as well.
And the way it provides peace of mind is that it's a wearable technology that goes aroundthe neck.
And should there be an emergency, it's a press of a button.
(27:03):
And should there be any sudden movements such as a fall, it calls into a call center wherethere's a live person there that will call in and say, are you okay?
And then engage emergency services.
And so that area we're looking at and we're looking at how do we expand that because wehave an aging population globally.
(27:24):
And the future of elderly care is not in facilities, it's in communities.
And so it's about how do you build the resources.
facilities, but in communities as well.
Yeah, I just wanna quote you on that.
Thank you.
Keep going, sorry.
(27:45):
Yeah, and so I would add that it's about creating the resources and the tools needed forpeople to age in place.
That's truly the future and what the future needs to look like.
And that's decades.
It's going to take decades to get there.
That's not something that's going to happen overnight.
(28:07):
It's a bit of a mind shift, a culture shift.
And I think we're on our way.
But it's going to take some time and all the tools don't currently exist to properly ageat home yet, but they're coming.
We need Dr.
AI to, I think that because there's a point here when after you shared all of that,thought, wow, we need technology to get some things going.
(28:34):
And this is where you and Mohan can really sort of discuss something, how to use AI.
How do you think Mohan, can this organization use AI for
you need to have the right technology, no question about it.
But let me ask you, in your kind of looking for the right problems or trying to find thesolutions for those problems, do you have a specific...
(29:08):
long-term vision and goal where you want to go or how is that coming into play.
Absolutely.
Our mission is to ensure overall dignified living for seniors in our communities.
(29:29):
And what's beautiful about that mission statement is that it evolves.
with what that dignified living looks like.
And so if it's in a facility, our motto is live more.
Most people think, including myself, before joining the industry is that you go to along-term care facility for end of life.
(29:49):
You're there and you're there essentially to expire.
But the philosophy at Northwood is about creating a community where you can live more.
It's ensuring that the resources exist, the communities exist,
the livelihood exists so that you can live a longer, healthier life.
(30:09):
at Northwood.
And that translates to our home care branch and how do you support people at home.
It translates to our foundation, which leans on generous donors to help us do more.
It leans on our career college where we can help people achieve their dreams and it leansheavily on the technology branch on how do we enable people to live at home and to live
(30:34):
longer.
And when we talk about AI, I had a great discussion with a colleague of mine in this
industry just last week and we had a discussion about how do you leverage wearabletechnology and AI to start predicting outcomes.
And so if you're wearing, if you have a wearable piece of technology and it's trackingyour movement and what you're doing, then the lack of that movement
(30:59):
would also have an indicator on how you're feeling or what you might be experiencing.
And when you connect all of that with being able to collect some vitals remotely and otherdetails, you can start predicting how somebody or what somebody might be experiencing or
feeling or a virus that they might have caught and be very proactive in treating it.
(31:25):
And that's
That whole proactive approach in healthcare is definitely moving in that direction, butit's a bit tricky because healthcare education in general is reactive.
And especially I think about the emergency branch.
You don't go to something unless it's happened.
(31:48):
and then trying to shift that mindset into how do you prevent it from happening to beginwith, again, that's a whole other leap in itself.
But that's where we need to get to.
We need to get to true preventative medicine across the sector, including emergency,including seniors and long-term care, so that the pressure can come off the healthcare
system a little bit and we can start treating things in a non-emergence setting.
(32:12):
And I think in my opinion, my vision of the future, I that's where we need to go.
is the only major tool that's going to help us get there in creating these predictiveoutcomes of what we're seeing.
they should create a wearable technology modeled after a dog.
(32:33):
Dogs can sense everything.
I'm not kidding, right?
They can sense vibration.
That's worth looking into, Mohan.
You're into AI.
AI and remote monitoring is very, very valuable.
But I just want to kind of understand, because all these so-called introduction of newtechnology, new things will need some...
(33:04):
financial thing, know, help.
So what is your kind of a plan for sufficient capital and how do you make things work inthe way you want to?
Is there a kind of a roadmap for financial support?
(33:25):
Yes, and that's great question.
So for us being a not-for-profit and a charitable organization, there's three avenues thatwe typically can go down.
The first one I spoke about already was our foundation, where we do fundraising forspecific projects.
And I have to tell you from what I've seen, you cannot underestimate the generosity ofpeople in helping.
(33:49):
push innovation and solutions through.
So that's one avenue that we do.
We have our annual Livmore Gala award ceremony coming up on June 7th of this year.
And we get a good turnout this year.
We're expecting 1,500 attendees.
And that's one of the ways that we do some fundraising.
(34:10):
The other avenue is through grants.
We've got a great team that reviews grants specific to some of the projects that we lookat, whether it be technology, innovation,
system improvement and enhancements.
And last but not least, of course not in any particular order, but we work very closelywith the provincial government here and they fund a lot of the things that we do when it
(34:31):
comes to long-term care and home care, in fact most in all.
And if we're looking at doing any pilot projects, we can take that to our provincialgovernment partners and seniors in long-term care, share the details of it, and if there's
interest then they may fund a pilot project.
And we're very fortunate because we
have a very innovative, forward-looking provincial government right now who's focusing onthese solutions and technological solutions.
(34:58):
So it's been really good at looking at these opportunities.
But we try and do them independently first, if we can, through fundraising, grants, andthen we'll look to partner with government where possible.
The reason I asked because in the US, ability to get grant is coming down because of ourchanges in the way they are trying to make it more efficient.
(35:28):
But your place, the grants are still available and those things will have no potentialproblems, I suppose.
That's our hope.
So far we've seen no impact or change to them and we hope that will stay the case.
But it's really helpful also that there are individuals willing to, with such generosity,to share their resources, which is pretty similar to the US in a way.
(36:01):
Mm-hmm.
Would you be involved or would you be looking at acquiring any of the private care centerslike yours to be part of your team or what's your, how do you expand or what's the plans
for expansion?
(36:22):
So currently we're undergoing quite a significant expansion within Northwood.
Generally how that happens is that when the government identifies the need for morelong-term care facilities, they'll partner up with different agencies or there's a few
different in the province and if you're successful then you'll be awarded the contractto...
(36:44):
launch that new facility.
We have a management contract with one location here in Nova Scotia called in Chestercalled Shoreham Village and we're currently undergoing a rebuild of that entire facility.
So that's a two to three year project and then next we have two new builds one in FallRiver here in Nova Scotia and one in Akuma.
(37:08):
Both of them are 144 bed facilities each.
And so essentially, the footprint of Northwood that exists right now when it comes tolong-term care is going to double in the next two years.
As far as home care goes, the demand continues to grow.
There's a lot of competition and other service providers here that are all doing a greatjob and providing great service.
(37:32):
And as that continues to grow, we'll continue to scale accordingly to make sure that thoseservices are maintained.
So you would work with profit-making institutions as well as some strategic relationshelping each other, or is it only you look for a non-profit organization?
(37:55):
No, not necessarily.
Whether an organization is for profit or not for profit, as long as our values are alignedin our mission and quality care, then we're aligned and we'll work together.
There's very reputable, profitable organizations in the province and we work closely withthem and we're looking to continue to build relationships there.
(38:16):
Our model of being a not for profit...
is who we are.
It's not to be taken against any for-profits, but that's not the deciding factor.
It's truly about the value, the quality care, the mission, the vision, all of those thingsthat if we're aligned, then there's some great work to be done together.
(38:38):
Excellent, excellent.
great plan for the future.
Charbel, it's been so great hearing all about what you do.
It's very noble, actually, very admirable.
How long have you been doing this?
So I've been in healthcare for 20 years.
Most of that has been in the pre-hospital emergency setting.
(39:01):
I joined Northwood about nine months ago.
So I can tell you're really in it for the long term because there's a lot of things youare looking towards in the future.
Now, our audience should be very curious by now.
So if you can talk more and invite them to read your book, purchase your book from Amazon,this is your opportunity.
(39:27):
For sure, mean, as I mentioned, the book came out of a bit of a frustration, but truly,the idea is whether you're leading a company or raising a family, or you're just trying to
figure out your next move, the book talks about how do you slow down?
How do you ask better questions?
How do you become comfortable with sitting in discomfort and not knowing right away?
(39:53):
And the best solutions?
are the ones that actually work.
They come after that.
So that's really, I want people to walk away realizing that the instinct to jump in andfix things isn't always helpful.
In fact, most of the time it's not.
And true power lies in becoming this, I call it an investigator.
(40:15):
you know, let your curiosity lead you, be methodical and comfortable sitting with theproblem before rushing to solve it.
And instead of thinking, how do I fix this?
I'd like people to start thinking, do I even truly understand this yet?
And that's really the shift.
And I think that's what people will get from the book is from being a fixer to being aproblem investigator.
(40:40):
That's the mindset that you want to shift.
The book leads you to deeper insight and better solutions and fewer unintendedconsequences.
You know what's so wise about what you said is to have that peace of mind that if it's notright in front of you, just the answer, just, know, somehow it will come.
(41:02):
It's the same mindset I have when I can't find something in the house.
You know, I would tell myself, I can't find it.
I don't remember where I placed it.
You know what?
It will turn up.
It should be just inside the house, right?
And always they turn up.
So Mulhan, do you have some final questions for Charbel before you wrap this up?
agree with this thought about how you tackle problems.
(41:25):
I had a, as I was saying as a student, I tried to solve the really unthinkable problems,but you can't.
But the most important value I learned from one of my teachers, in fact, he happened to bea...
(41:46):
Nobel Prize winner in physics Richard Feynman, told me that, he told me don't try to solvethe big problem, I mean if you want to find solution, take that big problem into small
problems.
(42:07):
and find out whether you can start solving the smaller problems, then eventually you cansolve the big problem.
Rather than, you know, so it's a, that has been my practice.
your book kind of addresses, I mean, even though I haven't fully read it, addresses thosetype of steps.
(42:30):
maybe you could give some advice to our listeners when there are really big problems.
problems facing them.
How do you tackle it?
How do you go forward?
And how would you kind of tackle them in the right way or possibly right way?
(42:53):
Yeah, great perspective.
I look at it just slightly differently.
I tend to get attracted to the bigger problem, but I take the approach of incrementalsolutions.
So it's not about that full swing one solution that's gonna fix it all, but it's about howdo you drop in the little bits of things that are gonna get you towards where you wanna
(43:19):
go.
And that's also what I speak to in the book and I call it the pendulum effect or theequilibrium effect.
And with your physics background, I'm sure you'll appreciate this, but when you think of apendulum that's swinging and you think of it up to one side and that's your problem.
It's all the way over here.
you
where you want it to be is in this area where it's comfortable, where it's at equilibrium,know, gravity's where nothing's pulling on it.
(43:47):
But generally speaking, what hap- exactly, and generally speaking what happens is that youhave this problem, you throw every solution you can think about at it, and where does it
go?
It goes all the way to the other extreme.
So you've solved this problem, you've created this problem.
Yeah.
then you say, okay, I'm going to tackle this with everything that I have, and you get backover here, and you keep getting closer and closer to that equilibrium point until you've
(44:14):
taken the longest path possible to get there.
And so by taking these incremental solutions and saying, here's my problem, and theexample I use is just because I've experienced it, was around communication.
Organizations generally will have the challenges where you'll hear from your teams andthey'll say, well, you don't communicate enough.
(44:35):
We don't hear from you.
And in a previous role that I was in, we said, OK, well, we're going to tackle thisbecause we're going to throw everything at it.
We're going to do newsletters.
We're going to do town halls.
We're going to go around and spend time with people.
We're going to do short videos.
We're going to do all of the above and more.
And we pushed that all out and we took this problem.
(44:57):
We solved it.
But then we got over here.
because then people said well there I'm getting flooded with information I don't know whatto read there's too much there I don't know where to start I'm not going to read any of it
and so then we said okay well we need to parcel these back and you parcel it back so faryou get over here and you keep going back and forth versus we don't get enough
(45:18):
communication and then you ask the question what communication are you looking for howwould you like to be communicated to
and you collect this information, it's okay to be able to live with the problem for alittle bit.
Collect the information and maybe the answer is we'd like a newsletter once a month thatcovers these topics.
(45:38):
You drop that in, measure.
Did you hit it perfectly?
Odds are you don't hit it perfectly from your first attempt and then you adjust again.
You ask more questions.
What is missing?
What can we add?
And so for me, it's not the size of the problem, it's the size of the solution.
And it's that incremental implementation of the solutions that you put in to go ahead.
(46:02):
And the one last thing I'll drop in on that is.
Some people have heard of this or not, but I call it the Beta Ridge Paradox.
It's not my term.
It's a term that's already been coined.
But it basically speaks to the idea that you might be comfortable enough where you are,but you're actually in a bigger problem than you realize, and you need to break free, and
(46:29):
you need to do something about it.
So essentially, you're not failing badly enough to make a drastic change, but you're alsonot succeeding enough to celebrate.
And I describe it as like quicksand.
It's disguised like you're standing on solid ground.
It's comfortable enough to stand on, but you really can't actually build anything on it.
(46:54):
And that space is the most dangerous space anybody can live in.
And a lot of people live in that area.
on a human nature side of things.
We may be uncomfortable with where we live, but it's not bad enough to move, so I'll putup with it little bit longer.
You may not be fully happy with where you're working, but it's not bad enough to leave.
(47:18):
And these examples go through organizations or life or anywhere you want.
And the matter of the fact is, if it was worse, it would get better quicker.
because you didn't feel like you had enough to act on.
So the example is, if you think about, if you were gonna walk a mile, well, if you weregonna go a mile, you'd probably walk it.
(47:41):
You'd say, it's just a mile, I'm gonna walk.
But if I told you you had to go somewhere that's five miles away, you'd say, no, that'stoo far away, I'm gonna take my car.
You actually get to the five mile point quicker than you get to the one mile point,because it was so much worse.
And that's the same thing you see in life and in organizations is that it's not bad enoughto do something about and it's good enough to just keep.
(48:03):
And we do that.
It's human nature.
We do it with everything in our lives, everywhere.
But it's that awareness, seeing it and saying, I'm not going to wait till it gets worse.
I'm not going to wait until it gets broken before I fix it.
I see that it's already not working great and I can make it better.
And that's where you want to be.
can almost read your mind, Mohan.
(48:25):
I think something in common about the two of you, again, is that you guys are, you havethis in-depth knowledge in science.
And Mohan would say to me, Jen, a lot of people operate by inertia.
Unless you push them, they'll just stay there.
There needs to be some effort to push them.
(48:47):
But even then, some people still, I just want to chill here.
Wow.
Very wise words from Sharpe.
Well, it's Newton's one of Newton's laws of motion, right?
An object at rest will remain at rest unless a force has acted upon it.
room, it's getting more sciencey.
Yeah.
(49:08):
Wow.
Just before we end our conversation, of course you had a very interesting real estatebackground, right?
You were working in the real estate area, operating and all kind of.
How would you compare what you did there and what you're doing now and what lessons youhave learned from going from one to the other?
(49:45):
that's a great question.
I think a lot of the lessons that I've probably learned through real estate...
early on is around budgeting, financing, making sure that you're sustainable.
There's a big misconception because a lot of people call not-for-profits as they call themnon-profits and it's not a non-profit.
(50:08):
A non-profit is an organization that is not sustainable and a not-for-profit is anorganization that is sustainable, has revenue, but reinvest that revenue into community.
programs.
It's not about building a bank or funds in the background.
And I know in the real estate sector, and especially because that was private, you get alot of exposure.
(50:34):
I got a lot of exposure, too, ensuring sustainability, good revenue flow that it cancontinue to thrive.
And then the other piece would be customer service.
You know, I've learned that through...
jobs that I've had early on in my career, whether it be in computer sales or real estate,but
customer service and just truly being an active listener with individuals, showing somecompassion and empathy to what you're talking about and what people are sharing with you,
(51:04):
reacting accordingly and having a genuine interest in what people are telling you and whattheir concerns are and wanting to do better.
Those are all things you don't necessarily have to only learn them from the
construction or rental industry, these are things that you just, through your experiences,as long as you pay attention to them, they're valuable lessons to pick up along the way.
(51:29):
And I really believe they've helped shape who I am, especially when I think of all myparents.
My parents, they immigrated to Canada and they left Lebanon at the time because they hadno choice.
And they got here, they had no funds, they didn't speak the language, and they had grit.
(51:49):
They had the grit to say we want to build a future and we want to make something of it.
And my father's starting as a janitor, my mom as a seamstress and working their waythrough and saving and eventually owning a small business to building a real estate.
empire, so to speak, is all things that I've learned from watching them and ourdiscussions at the dinner table.
(52:14):
That entrepreneurial mindset, that drive to want to do better and want to grow.
So I believe that some of it for me is just genetic.
It's things that I've grown up with.
I've inherited it from being around my mother and my father, who are two very drivenindividuals that were put in a situation where they had no choice.
(52:35):
Failure was not an option.
.
Mm-hmm.
That's wonderful.
Sharble, thank you very much.
just, oh, sorry.
Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
just finishing thought, I think I see some interesting parallel.
Of course, the profit making or entrepreneurship is primarily to create some wealth orsomething for legacy purpose, something for your next generation.
(53:08):
Whereas a non-profit, like I do have a foundation, I have a non-profit, but which isprimarily you're providing to the community at large what you could do and you work, it's
not to create any wealth creation.
It's doing it to provide service.
(53:29):
So there is some parallel to that, but it looks like you're doing something similar.
Of course, financial sustainability should be there.
both.
Of course, if you're in a private business, if there is no financials available, you won'tgo anywhere.
Same thing with the nonprofit test, either an endowment or some ability to bring insufficient funds to run and operate regularly.
(54:00):
So there is some similarities, but nobody takes it home from a nonprofit.
Whereas you're a for-profit, some shareholders or some investors, they have the benefit of
the growth of the company.
So there is some parallel to it.
So you want to say anything?
(54:20):
final thoughts.
Yeah, thank you, Mohan.
My final thoughts are actually related to that.
Sharbel, would you invite our audience, especially those within your region, I hope theyget to watch this, how can they help?
your mission.
(54:41):
That's a great question.
There's a lot of ways to help.
First is just awareness that the status quo is not acceptable.
And when you think about the service industry, the healthcare industry, all of thesethings, I personally believe that...
true happiness comes in serving others and in making a difference in other people's lives.
(55:05):
You can impact your own life very easily.
You should have the power to do that at any moment.
But by stepping out of your own shadow into someone else's and supporting them to dobetter,
That's where real satisfaction comes in.
And that's why I enjoy the service industry so much.
And I think if people want to help, there's multiple ways.
(55:27):
Financially, there's through the foundation to support and help us grow and create newprograms, new innovation and things that we're driving in this industry.
Other ways is that we have...
amazing volunteer branch within our organization and I would say you know that that is anamazing way to give back because
(55:52):
people love company of other people.
And if you have time and you can come and volunteer at one of the Northwood locations andspend time with some of these seniors and elderly folks and have some great conversations
and just be there as a sounding board, that in itself is priceless.
So there's no shortage of ways to help, whether it's time or finances or support any waythat they want.
(56:19):
Easy to access us through our website.
at Northwood.com and happy to have any conversations with anybody about people who want tomake an impact in this area and how we can do it together.
So if you guys want to help, want to volunteer, you can go to northwood.com and you'llfind more information there and how to contact them.
(56:43):
Well, thank you very much, Charbel.
This has been a very insightful conversation and I'm just so impressed and I admire you alot today.
I I've just, I think I've met you once or twice while you were in a, during a call withDoug, but this is,
I agree, you're one of the top five nicest, smartest, wisest people so far.
(57:09):
We need just one more.
Anyway, we appreciate your time.
Thank you, Mohan.
We will see you again.
You know what?
Before I close this, I want to take this opportunity to invite everyone to attend theVisionaries Roundtable.
Go to www.visionariesroundtable.com.
(57:31):
All right, so we will see you again in the next episode.
I'm your host, Jen Crow, and my co-host.
Good morning and thanks again.
It's a pleasure.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
Oh.
I think somebody.
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