August 29, 2025 • 39 mins
What happens when military wisdom meets modern marketing challenges? In this eye-opening conversation with Lee Pepper, former Army officer turned marketing strategist, we explore the surprising intersection of battlefield tactics and business success.
Lee's remarkable journey from military service through Ross Perot's presidential campaign to behavioral health marketing leadership provides the backdrop for a masterclass in strategic thinking. At the heart of our discussion is the transformative power of motivational interviewing—a technique that shifted Lee's admissions teams from simply selling services to genuinely connecting with people in crisis.
Whether you're in marketing, HR, leadership, or transitioning from military to civilian work, this conversation offers invaluable insights on the power of strategic thinking before tactical execution.
Meet the Host
Jay Johnson works with people and organizations to empower teams, grow profits, and elevate leadership. He is a Co-Founder of Behavioral Elements®, a two-time TEDx speaker, and a designated Master Trainer by the Association for Talent Development. With a focus on behavioral intelligence, Jay has delivered transformational workshops to accelerate high-performance teams and cultures in more than 30 countries across four continents. For inquiries, contact jay@behavioralelements.com or connect below!
LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayjohnsonccg/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jayjohnsonccg/
Speaker Website - https://jayjohnsonspeaks.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jay Johnson (00:01):
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where together we are shapingfuture workforce behaviors.
My guest today is Lee Pepper,and we have a really interesting
story on deck for you audience.
So welcome to the show, lee.
Lee Pepper (00:16):
Great.
Thank you so much, Jay, forhosting me this morning.
Jay Johnson (00:18):
Yeah and Lee, why don't we start with getting a
little background from you tohelp kind of set the narrative
for what our discussion is goingto look like today?
Lee Pepper (00:28):
Sure, well, I started out my career sort of my
career when I enlisted in theArmy when I was a sophomore in
college and then I parlayed thatinto officer candidate school
and eventually was commissionedas an armor officer.
And then, as I finished up myeducation at the University of
Tennessee, I had to put a plugin for the volunteers.
(00:48):
This was back in 1992.
I had the chance to volunteeron Ross Perot's presidential
campaign and then that led intoa full-time gig.
So I was one of Ross's youngestcampaign staffers and worked
with him on his 96 presidentialcampaign, eventually Perot
Systems, where I moved into moreIT and that's how I
transitioned from a politicalscience background to an
(01:11):
information science background.
And then that led me intodigital marketing.
And then that's what led me towriting my book Never Outmatched
, where I kind of encapsulateall these different military
strategies that I employed in mycorporate marketing career.
And for a lot of people it likeblows their mind to think about
how does military strategy andmarketing work?
But I think that there's a lotof good metaphors and analogies
(01:33):
that I share in my book that'llbe, you know, really fascinating
to people who maybe aren't asfamiliar with growing up in a
military family or serving inthe military.
Jay Johnson (01:43):
I love it and thank you for your service, lee.
As I mentioned, I reallyappreciate that, coming from a
family with a number of veterans.
But you know the audience mightbe going okay, well, why are we
bringing a marketing personinto this, into this equation?
But the reality is is marketingis all about shifting behaviors
and shifting perspectives,shifting ideas.
(02:05):
So let's kind of start withthat.
When we think about marketing,oftentimes we think about
external marketing, you know,trying to get people to come and
buy our products or anythingelse.
But I would venture to say thatyou've probably got a lot of
experience in the internal sideof marketing as well.
How are we creating a messageor how are we managing a message
(02:27):
internally to create theconditions for behavioral change
?
Can you speak to that at all?
Lee Pepper (02:32):
Sure, jay, I think one of the things that I'm most
well known for, especially inthe behavioral health community,
is my work with admissioncenters.
And the way that I startedworking with admission centers
in behavioral health context isthat you know you've got
thousands of phone calls thatare coming in for people that
are seeking help, you know, fordrug or alcohol treatment or
maybe a mental health, you knowcondition, and sometimes it's
really easy to look at thosesituations where it's just
(02:55):
transactional, where people arejust making the phone call and
you're going to book theappointment or you're going to
book the assessment.
But really the centers that doit well are transformational and
they're using not just salestechniques but they're using
motivational interviewing,because what you're trying to do
is you're trying to motivatethat change.
And a lot of times when you'reon the phone it can be very,
(03:16):
very difficult if you're nothighly trained and highly
skilled.
And then you know one thingthat you and I were talking
about off camera is that youknow you've really got to care
and feed for that team, becausethey're the ones that are really
dealing with a lot of thesecrises and they just keep coming
, and so that's one of thethings that I think I was well
known for at my work atfoundations and at the Meadows
was making sure that themarketing can create all these
(03:38):
opportunities and it can capturedemand.
But then what is happening onthe ground with the folks that
are actually taking thoseinbound?
You know, marketing leads.
Jay Johnson (03:47):
And that's.
It's such a good insight too,because when we think about when
we think about the level ofstress that they may be feeling
when they are taking those andI'm going to go back to
motivational interviewingbecause I think that's such a
powerful technique but, you know, when we think about the people
who are on those front lines ofwhether it's healthcare and
(04:08):
actually one of my businesspartners is in the law
enforcement world and works with911 operators you know the
stress levels and the cortisollevels that end up hitting all
of those people that areessentially managing external
emotions and managing externalchallenges and issues that can
(04:30):
be pretty devastating.
So, from your experience, howdid you create the conditions to
care for that team internallywhile still, at the same time,
making the conditions ofbringing people into the space?
Lee Pepper (04:43):
Yeah, it was kind of interesting.
This is going back to 2009,2010.
I was the CIO at FoundationsRecovery Network and we owned a
series of inpatient andoutpatient centers around the
country, and part of my role,you know, as CIO was I was in
charge of all the digitalmarketing, because back then
digital marketing was in therealm of the CTO or the CIO.
(05:03):
So as things were progressing,you know, our board said well,
listen, lee, you might as wellbe the CMO too.
I mean, all of our leads werecoming in, and part of that was
also managing the admissionscenter.
And one of the first things Idid, as I was kind of jumping
into the admissions center, is Irealized that no matter what I
did on the marketing side, nomatter what channel I changed,
you know, no matter what volumeI changed, I could not make our
(05:26):
conversion worse or better.
And that's where I realizedwe're really not in command or
not in control.
And as I started digging in, Irealized we were not training,
we were not caring and feeding,you know, for that team and
there was a lot of burnout,there's a lot of turnover, and
so I was able to partner with acompany here in Nashville that
(05:48):
came in and started providing uslike training and it wasn't
just sales training, right, itwas really this idea that if
you're if you are talking,you're selling.
If you're listening, you'recaring.
And that was a fundamentalshift in how we approached our
admissions team, because a lotof times when you're on the
phone, you feel like you've gotto talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
(06:09):
And really, when it comes tohealth care, behavioral health
care the most important thingyou can do and the same thing in
a therapeutic environment is tolisten, is to shut up and
listen, because your patients,the people on the phone, they'll
tell you everything you need toknow without you having to talk
so much.
Jay Johnson (06:27):
So true.
One of my early clients was theUniversity of Michigan Health
Systems and the patient-centeredcare area, and one of the
things that I had a huge lessonfor a number of the physicians
and nurses was we all heard youhave two ears and one mouth,
listen accordingly.
And what I would tell them wasactually you have two eyes, two
(06:51):
ears and one mouth and youshould listen according to that,
because they're going tocommunicate to you via body
language.
And this is obviously, you know, back in 2005, six, seven in
that range, so pre COVID, lesstelehealth and everything else
like that that's available now.
But, you know, a lot of timesit's that listening that creates
(07:13):
the conditions for trust.
It's the listening that createsthe conditions for connection
and, yeah, when we feelconnected, we feel much more
open.
What was the experience?
How were you able toessentially support Because I
think that this has applicationsnot just for inpatient,
outpatient, not just foranywhere else, but, like even in
(07:33):
the spaces of customer service,even in the spaces of, you know
, post-consumer, post-consumerappreciation or satisfaction of
a product how can we train ourteams to listen more effectively
?
Lee Pepper (07:47):
I think one of the key things, jay, is that in a
lot of corporate environments,one of the first thing that gets
cut when there's financialstress, or maybe the census is
not where it needs to be oryou're having some quarterly
numbers issues the first thingthat companies tend to want to
cut are training, and that's oneof the things that we realized
very early on that, no matterwhat was going on, we were not
(08:09):
going to cut our training.
We were still going to haveregular coaching and that was
not going to go away.
And I think that was critical,because now your team
understands how important it isand they also understand that
you care about them.
And I think it bled over intosome of my other corporate
adventures.
You know where we could seelike, yeah, we do need to send
(08:29):
some of our staff to someconferences.
We do need to make sure they'vegot, in some cases, a mentor or
a coach here that we're payingfor to help them along the way.
And I think that investment youget so much more out of it.
You know when you can invest inyour staff because it really
helps with retention, and a lotof times people don't realize
how effective marketing can bein solving a company's retention
(08:52):
problem, and I mentioned thatin my book.
I have a chapter called CitizenSoldier, citizen Farmer, and
it's a lost art and it'ssomething that ancient societies
realize and even going into ourfight for independence back a
(09:22):
couple hundred years ago withour Minutemen.
Jay Johnson (09:25):
a lot of companies failed to really take a coach
who has survived recession in2008, who has survived COVID?
You're absolutely spot on.
It's the first thing that getscut and it's often much to the
detriment of morale, toretention, to engagement.
So leaders and HR that islistening do not cut your
(09:47):
training budgets if you want tohave effective functional teams
prepared to do what they need todo to make your business
successful.
So I resonate with that.
I am thankful that you said it.
You know I want to dig into.
I want to dig into you knowyour experience in behavioral
(10:09):
marketing.
Can we maybe define behavioral,you know behavioral based
marketing as a concept for theaudience?
Because I think that sometimes,when we think of you know, and
there's a lot of terms that arethrown out there now
neuromarketing, digitalmarketing, social marketing, et
cetera when you say behavioralmarketing, what is it that we're
(10:31):
looking at?
Lee Pepper (10:32):
Well, my expertise has been over the last 15 or 20
years has been in capturingdemand.
It's different than creatingdemand.
It's different than creatingdemand, and so what I have
focused on is capturing demandfor people that are in crisis or
in need of behavioral healthtreatment.
So that would be alcohol anddrug rehab, you know, either
(10:55):
outpatient, inpatient, or it maybe a mental health condition.
They may have everything from,you know, bipolar, you know, to
borderline personality disorder,even down to things like, you
know, adhd, and then some of theprocess, addictions.
And I think the key is thatwe're not selling widgets, and
so that's the difference inbehavioral health marketing
(11:17):
versus other types oftraditional marketing.
And also we're not branding Mostpeople that are looking for
health care services.
They're not so dependent on thebrand because they're just not
as aware, like you know, whenyou're thinking about Coca Cola
or Target or Nike, you know theyhave a lot of need to make sure
their brand is front and center, but a lot of times in
(11:37):
behavioral health and inhealthcare in general, it's
driven by a crisis, and so a lotof what we try to do in
behavioral health marketing ismake sure that we are creating
the kind of content that isauthoritative and that is
connecting with an audience, anda lot of it is very long tail.
These are people that have somevery specific needs and you may
(11:59):
only see five or 10 patients ayear that have those specific
sets of criteria, and so it cancreate some challenges for a
company and how they develop.
You know assets and content tokind of reach that long tail.
But that's something that Iwrite about in my book called we
use this military strategycalled force multiplication and
(12:19):
it was a way that we couldcreate a lot of content on a lot
of different platforms.
That could be very niche-y butit would really speak to that
very specific client.
Jay Johnson (12:29):
You know, and I think it's so important that we
actually know who that client isor what it is that we're
looking for, and I hear thatvery loud and clear.
And what you're saying is youhad exactly sort of the either
buyer persona or the avatar ofexactly who you're looking for
within that space, creating theconditions of capturing them, as
opposed to manufacturing ormanifesting, because that's not
(12:52):
something we would want to do.
In behavioral health, marketingis manifest.
You know some kind of crisis orsome kind of a situation.
So, when you're thinking aboutwhen you're thinking and this is
where I wanted to get into themotivational interviewing.
This was actually a conceptthat was introduced to me by a
colleague and we went through anentire process of motivational
(13:15):
and can you help us define that?
What does it look like and whydo you see it as an essential
tool as part of this process oftraining your people to do that
motivational interview?
Lee Pepper (13:26):
Yeah, I think it was really super critical for us
when I was at Foundations in theMeadows, in that we needed to
make sure that the folks thatwere taking our inbound leads
and we were generating thousandsof phone calls, live chats and
email forms a month so it was alot of volume and what we needed
to make sure they understood isthat we did not expect that
(13:47):
every single one of those wasgoing to convert to an admission
to one of our programs, becausethat was going to create this
selling culture that we did notwant to, you know, be a part of.
What we, what we trained them onwith motivational interviewing
was that they needed to have theconversation and listen Right,
and the idea is getting them tomake a decision, and it's okay
(14:08):
if the decision is no and it'sokay if the decision is to go
somewhere else.
In fact, if they weren't a goodfit for our program, we wanted
to refer them out and, of course, it was okay if the decision
was yes.
But once we allowed them tohave success in a lot of
different ways, that reallychanged the dynamic that we were
dealing with, because whenyou're getting thousands of
(14:28):
phone calls and only two orthree percent can actually come
into your center because of awhole myriad of reasons it could
be insurance, it could bescheduling, it could be location
that really creates a realnegative gray cloud over your
whole operation when you feellike every hundred phone calls
you can only help two or threepeople.
So by using motivationalinterviewing techniques, we were
(14:49):
able to now start to arm ourteam and they could feel good
that they were able to helpsomebody make a decision.
And it's okay if the decisionis no, it's not for me right now
, that's okay.
Jay Johnson (15:00):
At least they made a decision and I think that that
was something that reallyhelped propel our internal so
let's watch I love that and youknow, because it is it is really
really hard, especially if youare the person.
Well, if you're theorganization and you're saying,
(15:21):
for every thousand, we'regetting two to three out of that
, that is a lot of people thatare being, you know, that are
making a decision to not gethelp from you or anything else.
And I know from our behavioraldata in the health care space
and we've got something like sixor 7,000 assessments, you know
78% or 72% of a lot of thoseindividual healthcare workers
(15:44):
show a strong drive to bond,which is a neurocognitive
oxytocin, et cetera, which ismuch, much higher in their
desire to help connect,affiliate, et cetera.
So when it seems or it feelslike rejection, that can be
absolutely devastating tosomebody.
(16:05):
So I think that it's reallyreally important.
Let's walk through this, becausemotivational interviewing is
something that I would say couldbe utilized by leadership, can
be utilized by HR, it can beutilized by those trainers and
coaches out there to get abetter understanding of what it
is.
(16:25):
So can you help us walk, walkus through the process.
What does motivationalinterviewing look like?
How would you maybe talkthrough it in a tactical sense
of hey, if you want to doeffective motivational
interviewing, here's where tostart.
This is what it looks like, andwe'll kind of iterate along the
way.
Lee Pepper (16:42):
Sure, and there's you know and listen.
You know I am not a certifiedMI, you know coach, so I would
recommend that your listeners.
You know there are a lot ofgreat resources out there online
.
But I would say, like, from avery tactical perspective, I'll
use the example of humanresources because I think that a
lot of times human resourcesare kind of left on their island
, and that's where we were ableto really partner with human
(17:06):
resources from a marketingstandpoint right, and we were
able to create kind of a culturethat not only helped human
resources with their retentionproblem, but we also started
creating content that washelping them drive.
You know, instead of justposting a resume on Indeed, like
we were actually creatingcontent and events that HR could
(17:27):
point to when they were on thephone recruiting, trying to find
providers that were coming in.
And then they started takingadvantage.
They were coming into our callcenter, they were coming into
our call center, they werecoming into our marketing
meetings and they startedpicking up on how we use
motivational interviewing and Ithink they started adopting some
of these type of strategieswhen they were interviewing
(17:50):
folks for potential hires.
And I think it creates asituation again where, just like
in marketing, sometimes we cantalk too much, I think,
sometimes from the HR teams,their recruiters, sometimes they
can talk too much and it's moreimportant for them to use MI
and, just like you mentionedearlier, you've got two ears and
two eyes and one mouth, youknow.
(18:10):
Do it in that order.
It's the same thing when itcomes to HR and recruiting, and
a lot of times they just hadn'theard that kind of speak before,
and so now we're taking kind ofsomething that is well-versed
in therapeutic world.
We've applied it to marketing.
Now we're also connecting thatover into human resources and I
think it was, you know, verysuccessful.
Jay Johnson (18:30):
Yeah, well, and and it makes a lot of sense too
because, again, when you are, ifyou're in a sales position, yes
, there are some of those thatare really driven to acquire and
they have that like strongelement of smile and dial pick
up the phone.
I don't care how many peoplechurn and burn, you know, as
long as the percentages arecoming in, but that is not a
(18:52):
sales style that I mean.
I've heard so many people go.
I'm not a salesperson and youknow the motivational
interviewing aspect, for me atleast, has really been a
powerful way to look at sort ofrelationship building,
empathetic sales.
And you know, one of the waysof doing that is really getting
that deeper response from thepotential customer, really
(19:14):
getting that deeper responsefrom the potential customer,
client, et cetera, and sometimesthat's through open-ended
questions or some kind ofreflective listening and all of
those different things If youwere to think about, if you were
to think about, say, example ofwalking through, you know we
get somebody who's in a crisisand and, and this is this is, I
(19:36):
think, where this is where Ithink the application really
does kind of hit some of thecorporate side.
We are constantly inundated withminiature crises or anything
else.
Leaders are often in this spaceof oh my gosh, I'm in a crisis.
Let's get this training oncommunication to come out, and I
think this is wheremotivational interviewing can
really become powerful.
So let's say that you know I'mcalling in and I'm having
(20:02):
whatever crisis I'm having.
Maybe it's a crisis of health,maybe it's a crisis of whatever.
What is your kind of like?
How would you look at takingthat first step?
What are you going to work?
How are you going to work withme, lee?
Lee Pepper (20:14):
Yeah, I think the very first thing that we do and
you know, and I have like anonline admissions training
course a lot of behavioralhealth companies subscribe to,
and and it's the idea of I usethis metaphor Are you at the
drive through window or are yousitting down at a restaurant
breaking bread with the personon the phone, and it's, it's.
It's a good mental model tothink about, because a lot of
times we get stuck at thedrive-thru window and we're just
(20:37):
reading off the menu, we'rejust repeating the order back,
and good motivationalinterviewing is actually sitting
down and breaking bread withthat person versus just serving
them up whatever's on the menu,right?
And so one of the first thingswe do is, no matter what they
say, no matter what the call isabout, the very first thing you
have to say is OK, can you justtell me a little bit about what
(20:59):
prompted your call today?
Or tell me what's going on andwhen you can have that mental
shift where you don't feel likeyou have to just answer back or
repeat back that now you're theand that's the whole concept of
motivational interviewing.
You're interviewing right.
You're not necessarily answeringquestions.
You're not talking about thedeal of the day.
You're not talking about thefeatures and functions you know
(21:20):
of whatever your product is.
Now, you're understanding andyou know if you look at a lot of
the stuff that's online withthe sell me this pen, you know
and you know I think there was afamous, you know, I think Wolf
of Wall Street.
They had it, but the sell methis pen a lot of people that
are training in therapy.
They will practice that,because the best way to answer
(21:42):
that is to start asking theperson well, what do you use a
pen for?
What colors do you prefer?
All these?
It's question, question,question, question.
And then all of a sudden, nowyou actually have what they're
looking for and then you canmake a decision.
Right, do I have the service orthe product that fits with what
(22:03):
their needs are?
Versus going through thischecklist mentality, which is
very poor, and I find that in HRtoo.
You know, whenever I'minterviewing a candidate that
somebody from human resourcessent to me, like I can tell if
it's just a checklist thing.
Versus are they?
Do they really know our culture?
Right, you know what ismotivating them to leave their
company?
You know, if it is, are theyjust leaving for money?
(22:24):
Okay, that may not be asinteresting to me, but if
they're leaving because theywant to come to us as an
employer of choice or lookingfor some interesting training
like that's more something thatwe can chat about.
Jay Johnson (22:34):
Yeah, well, and it's.
It is funny that you bring upthe the sell me this pen, sort
of Jordan Bell for a Wall Streetapproach, and there's a lot of
different.
There's a lot of differentsales methodologies out there
and one that's and I forget thename of it, it's any PQ or
something like that, which issupposed to be more of the more
(22:54):
of the neural approach or neurolinguistic programming type
approach and connective approach.
So how adaptive when we findourselves, and because one of
the things that happens withmotivational interviewing is it
can be, it can be reallylaborious.
I mean it can take longer, itcan be more um, it can be more
(23:18):
emotional.
Uh, and there are some peoplethat maybe are less likely to,
uh, be driven towards that style.
How are you able to shift theirbehaviors when you know maybe
somebody started thatinterviewing process and either
wasn't a great fit or didn'tquite get it?
(23:39):
What was the experience on that, lee?
Lee Pepper (23:42):
Yeah, for us, for us in the behavioral health spaces
, it's a little bit more, it's alittle easier because you know
we're looking at data.
So I we will know quickly ifsomebody gets admitted to one of
our programs, and a lot of ourprograms are 50, 60, 70 beds,
and so when you get somebodyadmitted, if they are not a good
fit for the milieu, for thatclient base that they're going
(24:04):
to be doing group therapy with,you hear about it very quickly
and then you start to.
Then you can go back and listento the phone calls, you can
look at the notes that weretaken and you can quickly
realize that you know what wedidn to the phone calls.
You can look at the notes thatwere taken and you can quickly
realize that you know what.
We didn't really practice goodmotivational interviewing
because we didn't get to theheart of the matter, and so,
whereas some people will feellike, well, I don't really want
to be on the phone for 30 or 40minutes like that, just can I
(24:26):
just close them in a couple ofminutes, but what will end up
happening is you end up doingmore work, right?
Because now you've got to goback and do all this after
action stuff and you may havecreated an issue within the
milieu, and so we were veryupfront with that and I think
people started seeing that itmay seem like it's more of a
challenge upfront, but it'sactually a better quality and
(24:47):
then it ends up being a bettersituation for the person on the
phone and the person that admits, because a lot of our companies
, you know now we struggle withpeople that can quickly get on
these online platforms and leavereviews and guess what?
People are 10 times more likelyto leave a negative review than
(25:07):
a positive review.
So if you're not doing the workup front, spending the extra
time up front, really connectingwith what's driving them to
want to come to your program orto buy your product, you're more
likely to have somebody that isnot a good fit.
And then, guess what, they're10 times more likely to want to
leave a negative review.
And then you're running aroundgoing wait, why did I get all
these negative reviews?
Well, it probably all startsfrom the very beginning, and I
(25:29):
think this is the same way in HR.
A lot of my HR clients willtalk about Glassdoor.
And how do we solve Glassdoor?
Well, you solve it in thebeginning, right when they're
knocking at the door, not oncethey're already in the door.
Jay Johnson (25:43):
You know it's funny you say that because oftentimes
I'll be having conversationswith some leaders and managers
and when they have some kind oflike problem set of behaviors
going on in the organization, Isay, okay, well, you know you to
really kind of turn that lensinside.
Yes, you either hired the wrongperson or you didn't adequately
(26:13):
onboard, train, communicate,instill the vision, give them a
sense of purpose, et cetera.
And I've had some conversationswhere it was just like huh yeah
.
Lee Pepper (26:25):
All right.
That's how we opened thisconversation.
That's how, when I, as part ofbeing the CMO, all of a sudden
took responsibility for our callcenter, no matter what I was
doing on the channel, I couldn'taffect the conversion rate.
So I knew that we did not havea good methodology right to make
it more predictable, and so wewere able to sense that right
(26:47):
off the bat now I'm going toshift and kind of take this
question.
Jay Johnson (26:55):
So I had mentioned to you that I studied health
communication and one of the bigframes and this was gosh, this
was back in the mid 2000s wasnarrative medicine, and I
remember having someconversations with different
healthcare facilities, theentire concept of like
storytelling essentially as partof the health approach, and
(27:19):
there were some reallyinteresting studies of doctors
and it's very strongly relatedto motivational interviewing,
you know, instead of a doctorwho rushes in, says Lee, what
hurts your elbow?
Ok, take two of these and callme in the morning.
It was more of well, how areyou feeling?
And and literally just gettinginto these questions and opening
(27:41):
it up.
So the difference betweennarrative medicine was 45 minute
visit with the physician versusa standard visit, which was
four and a half minutes.
Um, but the patient outcomes onthe narrative side of things
were just exceptionally better.
The big pushback, and this wasconstant.
(28:02):
How do I have time for this?
I can't see these patients for45 minutes.
I don't have time to spendinterviewing and getting to the
bottom of the stories.
I need to lightning quick, geta diagnosis.
This is not just true inhealthcare too, because this is
very, very true for leaders andthis is true for HR.
(28:23):
It's like give me the answer.
I need the answer right now andI don't have time to go around
and ask questions and getstories and do interviews with
my teams, my leaders.
Just give me the data, let'smove forward.
How did you shift that mindsetof saying, hey, you know,
because what you just said wasabsolutely spot on.
(28:43):
I agree, the time that we spendup front saves us time in the
future.
How did you get them to shiftthe mindset?
Lee Pepper (28:50):
Yeah, you have to connect the business to which
action you want.
You have to connect the revenue, and so that was one of the
things that I was able to show,because now, all of a sudden, we
can see, yeah, maybe we need tohire a couple extra staff now
to take all the volume of calls.
You know, and what ended uphappening with foundations was
(29:12):
we actually had a reduction inour call center staff and
because they were being moreeffective, and so we were able
to dial down some of the volumeof calls.
So now, all of a sudden, youknow what we can cut television
calls because they're not, asthey weren't, as good as folks
that were maybe searching on theInternet or people that were
connecting us through ourbusiness development
(29:33):
relationship.
So we were able to reduce someof the volume because now we
were giving the team timeinstead of what ends up
happening a lot of times inbusinesses it's just throw more,
more, more, even though youhave a leaky funnel and they
just want to keep filling it.
At the top.
We were able to document, andthe key was that we documented
it right and that we weremeasuring it.
(29:53):
It wasn't just a dream, like weactually made it a math problem
versus something subjective.
You know, we made it objectiveand I think that that's where a
lot of businesses they struggle,because they think they don't
have the data.
And so, if you will and that'swhat I talk about in the book is
that you got to have thestrategy first and you figure
(30:14):
out the tactics.
A lot of times in business we'rejumping tactic to tactic to
tactic.
We think, oh, these platformsyou know they've become so easy
in marketing I'll just turn upTikTok or I'll start doing reels
(30:37):
, and those are all can be veryeffective tactics, but they're
going to miss if you don't havethe strategy.
And it's the same thing withsome of the software that we
want to implement.
All of a sudden it's in a veryhumid, you know, jungle
environment.
It did not perform well, andthe reason it didn't perform
well?
Because we didn't train thesoldiers back then to clean the
weapon appropriately and we didnot ship cleaning kits with the
(30:57):
weapon and so they wereconstantly jamming.
And so it's what that that?
I use that as an example ofwhat we do today.
We will go and we'll, we'll,we'll, we'll implement
Salesforce or we'll implementPeopleSoft, and then we work
Powerful, tools Powerful tools,powerful tools, but we never
train people effectively, wedon't hire administrators to
(31:17):
support it and we typically thenjust kind of put that on top of
a poor process and we wonderwhy it's not working.
We spent all this money, it'snot working, and so a lot of
times that you know we don'tunderstand that connection to
the business.
Jay Johnson (31:30):
Well, and I think that has so much application in
so many different aspects ofbusiness.
Because if you're in the talentdevelopment space, hey, we just
spent $100,000 on this newlearning management system and
all these trainings and we getless than 7% of our population
that's actually using them.
Okay, well, what's the issue?
(31:51):
Have you trained them on how todo it?
Have you encouraged them,showed them the value, showed
them what the return oninvestment of them spending
their time there?
And the reality is is we don't,and it's usually coming back to
well, who has time for that?
Or we think it's intuitive.
And I want to stick in thatquestion real quick, because
this is and maybe I'm asking fora friend, maybe I'm asking for
(32:13):
myself here, lee, but you know,when you've been in a space for
20 years, 10 years, 15 years,whatever it is you've had a lot
of experience and a lot ofknowledge.
There's logical jumps that weend up making just because it's
familiar to us, and I've seenthat a lot in organizations.
(32:34):
Somebody with a lot ofexperience says, hey, this is
really intuitive, this makessense.
I mean, I would have neverthought about that, about the
M16, until you shared that withme.
And then it's like, yeah, thatmakes a lot of sense, but that
would have been a gap in myknowledge.
How have you maybe helped someof the administrators or leaders
that didn't have the experience?
(32:56):
How have you avoided thatintuition gap that comes with
the experience that you have?
Lee Pepper (33:02):
Yeah, I talk about it in the book.
It's what I call a cognitivebias that other departments or
other team members or staffmembers can have, and it really
shows up a lot in marketing,because everybody thinks they
know marketing.
You know, everybody's got acousin or a nephew that can
build a website, everybody's gotsomebody that works in business
(33:24):
development.
So they kind of think they knowmarketing and so, without
having really worked in it, theystart to apply well, I've got
these ideas, even though theymay work in HR or finance or
administration, and so I write.
I think one of the importantthings is I write about it in
the book and I use thesemilitary strategies.
Because when you then use themetaphor of the military and you
see how, hey, this happened,like, like the rollout of them,
(33:47):
16 happened and it failed Right,and here's what we're doing it
kind of matches that failure.
All of a sudden people startthinking about it in a different
way.
It's like, oh, I see, yeah,this is, this is how this can
happen.
If it can happen to the US Armyin a war situation, it can
certainly happen to my business,business.
(34:10):
And so that's why I am and youknow, in in only, you know, less
than 1% of the Americanpopulation will serve in the
military, and I don't say thatas a judgment.
It's just where we are, with anall volunteer army, and so that
means that 99% of people havenot heard some of these concepts
and these ideas, and theseideas are thousands of years old
.
You know, when I talk about thehammer and anvil, you know this
is something that was used.
You know the Carthaginians, andthen it was it was used most
(34:30):
recently by by General NormanSchwarzkopf.
So these, these are things thatare kind of fundamental, I
think, to the human conditionand I think it's just a way that
we, that we can.
I'm hopeful that people willread this, especially young
leaders, and they'll be like oh,let me use this as an example
to kind of inform my teams or myleadership so they know that
I'm not just stuck in tactics,like no, this is rooted in some
(34:52):
really historic strategies.
Jay Johnson (34:55):
Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Lee.
So the name of the book isNever Outmatched Military
Strategies to Lead, innovate andWin in the Modern Marketing
Battlefield.
And when is that going to beavailable, lee?
Lee Pepper (35:07):
So, yeah, it's available now to be in
bookstores the first week inSeptember.
So coming up very quickly and Iappreciate all the support.
And I'll say one last thing,jay, is that there's a lot of
veterans out there.
The Army does a great jobgetting you in.
They don't always do a greatjob getting you out,
transitioning you into thebusiness world, the corporate
world.
So if you've got a familymember, I think somebody reading
(35:27):
this book who's been in theservice, it may give them some
new language, some new ways totranslate these strategies into
mental models that might be moreeffective when they're out
interviewing, because I thinksometimes we struggle with how
am I going to take what Ilearned in training or in my
service to the business world?
And so I hope people will seehow I kind of bridge that gap
(35:48):
and maybe give them someinspiration.
Jay Johnson (35:50):
I love that and I've actually been working with
a couple of different people andsupporting that transition from
military into the actualworking world, because it is
very, very different from myunderstanding and again, I'm not
speaking from my own experience, but from the experience of
working with people who are veryknowledgeable on these things.
(36:11):
So, very cool.
And, lee, if the audiencewanted to get in touch with you,
how would they reach out to you?
Lee Pepper (36:16):
Yeah, they can go to my website, neveroutmatchcom,
and they can also, you know.
Please feel free to reach outand connect with me on LinkedIn.
I always check my messages andI'm always happy to have
conversations and share, youknow, great ideas and learnings.
Jay Johnson (36:32):
I love it.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here and sharing your
insight and your wisdom andobviously, again thank you for
the service that you've provided, both you know as a veteran of
our military, but also to theservice that you're providing to
healthcare.
That's a really important space.
(36:53):
It's something that all of usat some point in time will need
to use, and the fact that you'resupporting them and helping
them have a more behavioralapproach is really powerful.
So just want to say thank youfor that.
Lee Pepper (37:02):
All right, Thank you so much.
Keep up the great work and oneof these days I'll get back up
to Michigan and I'll look you up.
Jay Johnson (37:08):
I love it so and thank you, audience, for tuning
into this episode of the TalentForge, where together we're
shaping workforce behaviors.
Welcome to this episode of the Talent Forge,
where together we are shapingfuture workforce behaviors.
My guest today is Lee Pepper,and we have a really interesting
story on deck for you audience.
So welcome to the show, lee.
Lee Pepper (00:16):
Great.
Thank you so much, Jay, forhosting me this morning.
Jay Johnson (00:18):
Yeah and Lee, why don't we start with getting a
little background from you tohelp kind of set the narrative
for what our discussion is goingto look like today?
Lee Pepper (00:28):
Sure, well, I started out my career sort of my
career when I enlisted in theArmy when I was a sophomore in
college and then I parlayed thatinto officer candidate school
and eventually was commissionedas an armor officer.
And then, as I finished up myeducation at the University of
Tennessee, I had to put a plugin for the volunteers.
(00:48):
This was back in 1992.
I had the chance to volunteeron Ross Perot's presidential
campaign and then that led intoa full-time gig.
So I was one of Ross's youngestcampaign staffers and worked
with him on his 96 presidentialcampaign, eventually Perot
Systems, where I moved into moreIT and that's how I
transitioned from a politicalscience background to an
(01:11):
information science background.
And then that led me intodigital marketing.
And then that's what led me towriting my book Never Outmatched
, where I kind of encapsulateall these different military
strategies that I employed in mycorporate marketing career.
And for a lot of people it likeblows their mind to think about
how does military strategy andmarketing work?
But I think that there's a lotof good metaphors and analogies
(01:33):
that I share in my book that'llbe, you know, really fascinating
to people who maybe aren't asfamiliar with growing up in a
military family or serving inthe military.
Jay Johnson (01:43):
I love it and thank you for your service, lee.
As I mentioned, I reallyappreciate that, coming from a
family with a number of veterans.
But you know the audience mightbe going okay, well, why are we
bringing a marketing personinto this, into this equation?
But the reality is is marketingis all about shifting behaviors
and shifting perspectives,shifting ideas.
(02:05):
So let's kind of start withthat.
When we think about marketing,oftentimes we think about
external marketing, you know,trying to get people to come and
buy our products or anythingelse.
But I would venture to say thatyou've probably got a lot of
experience in the internal sideof marketing as well.
How are we creating a messageor how are we managing a message
(02:27):
internally to create theconditions for behavioral change
?
Can you speak to that at all?
Lee Pepper (02:32):
Sure, jay, I think one of the things that I'm most
well known for, especially inthe behavioral health community,
is my work with admissioncenters.
And the way that I startedworking with admission centers
in behavioral health context isthat you know you've got
thousands of phone calls thatare coming in for people that
are seeking help, you know, fordrug or alcohol treatment or
maybe a mental health, you knowcondition, and sometimes it's
really easy to look at thosesituations where it's just
(02:55):
transactional, where people arejust making the phone call and
you're going to book theappointment or you're going to
book the assessment.
But really the centers that doit well are transformational and
they're using not just salestechniques but they're using
motivational interviewing,because what you're trying to do
is you're trying to motivatethat change.
And a lot of times when you'reon the phone it can be very,
(03:16):
very difficult if you're nothighly trained and highly
skilled.
And then you know one thingthat you and I were talking
about off camera is that youknow you've really got to care
and feed for that team, becausethey're the ones that are really
dealing with a lot of thesecrises and they just keep coming
, and so that's one of thethings that I think I was well
known for at my work atfoundations and at the Meadows
was making sure that themarketing can create all these
(03:38):
opportunities and it can capturedemand.
But then what is happening onthe ground with the folks that
are actually taking thoseinbound?
You know, marketing leads.
Jay Johnson (03:47):
And that's.
It's such a good insight too,because when we think about when
we think about the level ofstress that they may be feeling
when they are taking those andI'm going to go back to
motivational interviewingbecause I think that's such a
powerful technique but, you know, when we think about the people
who are on those front lines ofwhether it's healthcare and
(04:08):
actually one of my businesspartners is in the law
enforcement world and works with911 operators you know the
stress levels and the cortisollevels that end up hitting all
of those people that areessentially managing external
emotions and managing externalchallenges and issues that can
(04:30):
be pretty devastating.
So, from your experience, howdid you create the conditions to
care for that team internallywhile still, at the same time,
making the conditions ofbringing people into the space?
Lee Pepper (04:43):
Yeah, it was kind of interesting.
This is going back to 2009,2010.
I was the CIO at FoundationsRecovery Network and we owned a
series of inpatient andoutpatient centers around the
country, and part of my role,you know, as CIO was I was in
charge of all the digitalmarketing, because back then
digital marketing was in therealm of the CTO or the CIO.
(05:03):
So as things were progressing,you know, our board said well,
listen, lee, you might as wellbe the CMO too.
I mean, all of our leads werecoming in, and part of that was
also managing the admissionscenter.
And one of the first things Idid, as I was kind of jumping
into the admissions center, is Irealized that no matter what I
did on the marketing side, nomatter what channel I changed,
you know, no matter what volumeI changed, I could not make our
(05:26):
conversion worse or better.
And that's where I realizedwe're really not in command or
not in control.
And as I started digging in, Irealized we were not training,
we were not caring and feeding,you know, for that team and
there was a lot of burnout,there's a lot of turnover, and
so I was able to partner with acompany here in Nashville that
(05:48):
came in and started providing uslike training and it wasn't
just sales training, right, itwas really this idea that if
you're if you are talking,you're selling.
If you're listening, you'recaring.
And that was a fundamentalshift in how we approached our
admissions team, because a lotof times when you're on the
phone, you feel like you've gotto talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.
(06:09):
And really, when it comes tohealth care, behavioral health
care the most important thingyou can do and the same thing in
a therapeutic environment is tolisten, is to shut up and
listen, because your patients,the people on the phone, they'll
tell you everything you need toknow without you having to talk
so much.
Jay Johnson (06:27):
So true.
One of my early clients was theUniversity of Michigan Health
Systems and the patient-centeredcare area, and one of the
things that I had a huge lessonfor a number of the physicians
and nurses was we all heard youhave two ears and one mouth,
listen accordingly.
And what I would tell them wasactually you have two eyes, two
(06:51):
ears and one mouth and youshould listen according to that,
because they're going tocommunicate to you via body
language.
And this is obviously, you know, back in 2005, six, seven in
that range, so pre COVID, lesstelehealth and everything else
like that that's available now.
But, you know, a lot of timesit's that listening that creates
(07:13):
the conditions for trust.
It's the listening that createsthe conditions for connection
and, yeah, when we feelconnected, we feel much more
open.
What was the experience?
How were you able toessentially support Because I
think that this has applicationsnot just for inpatient,
outpatient, not just foranywhere else, but, like even in
(07:33):
the spaces of customer service,even in the spaces of, you know
, post-consumer, post-consumerappreciation or satisfaction of
a product how can we train ourteams to listen more effectively
?
Lee Pepper (07:47):
I think one of the key things, jay, is that in a
lot of corporate environments,one of the first thing that gets
cut when there's financialstress, or maybe the census is
not where it needs to be oryou're having some quarterly
numbers issues the first thingthat companies tend to want to
cut are training, and that's oneof the things that we realized
very early on that, no matterwhat was going on, we were not
(08:09):
going to cut our training.
We were still going to haveregular coaching and that was
not going to go away.
And I think that was critical,because now your team
understands how important it isand they also understand that
you care about them.
And I think it bled over intosome of my other corporate
adventures.
You know where we could seelike, yeah, we do need to send
(08:29):
some of our staff to someconferences.
We do need to make sure they'vegot, in some cases, a mentor or
a coach here that we're payingfor to help them along the way.
And I think that investment youget so much more out of it.
You know when you can invest inyour staff because it really
helps with retention, and a lotof times people don't realize
how effective marketing can bein solving a company's retention
(08:52):
problem, and I mentioned thatin my book.
I have a chapter called CitizenSoldier, citizen Farmer, and
it's a lost art and it'ssomething that ancient societies
realize and even going into ourfight for independence back a
(09:22):
couple hundred years ago withour Minutemen.
Jay Johnson (09:25):
a lot of companies failed to really take a coach
who has survived recession in2008, who has survived COVID?
You're absolutely spot on.
It's the first thing that getscut and it's often much to the
detriment of morale, toretention, to engagement.
So leaders and HR that islistening do not cut your
(09:47):
training budgets if you want tohave effective functional teams
prepared to do what they need todo to make your business
successful.
So I resonate with that.
I am thankful that you said it.
You know I want to dig into.
I want to dig into you knowyour experience in behavioral
(10:09):
marketing.
Can we maybe define behavioral,you know behavioral based
marketing as a concept for theaudience?
Because I think that sometimes,when we think of you know, and
there's a lot of terms that arethrown out there now
neuromarketing, digitalmarketing, social marketing, et
cetera when you say behavioralmarketing, what is it that we're
(10:31):
looking at?
Lee Pepper (10:32):
Well, my expertise has been over the last 15 or 20
years has been in capturingdemand.
It's different than creatingdemand.
It's different than creatingdemand, and so what I have
focused on is capturing demandfor people that are in crisis or
in need of behavioral healthtreatment.
So that would be alcohol anddrug rehab, you know, either
(10:55):
outpatient, inpatient, or it maybe a mental health condition.
They may have everything from,you know, bipolar, you know, to
borderline personality disorder,even down to things like, you
know, adhd, and then some of theprocess, addictions.
And I think the key is thatwe're not selling widgets, and
so that's the difference inbehavioral health marketing
(11:17):
versus other types oftraditional marketing.
And also we're not branding Mostpeople that are looking for
health care services.
They're not so dependent on thebrand because they're just not
as aware, like you know, whenyou're thinking about Coca Cola
or Target or Nike, you know theyhave a lot of need to make sure
their brand is front and center, but a lot of times in
(11:37):
behavioral health and inhealthcare in general, it's
driven by a crisis, and so a lotof what we try to do in
behavioral health marketing ismake sure that we are creating
the kind of content that isauthoritative and that is
connecting with an audience, anda lot of it is very long tail.
These are people that have somevery specific needs and you may
(11:59):
only see five or 10 patients ayear that have those specific
sets of criteria, and so it cancreate some challenges for a
company and how they develop.
You know assets and content tokind of reach that long tail.
But that's something that Iwrite about in my book called we
use this military strategycalled force multiplication and
(12:19):
it was a way that we couldcreate a lot of content on a lot
of different platforms.
That could be very niche-y butit would really speak to that
very specific client.
Jay Johnson (12:29):
You know, and I think it's so important that we
actually know who that client isor what it is that we're
looking for, and I hear thatvery loud and clear.
And what you're saying is youhad exactly sort of the either
buyer persona or the avatar ofexactly who you're looking for
within that space, creating theconditions of capturing them, as
opposed to manufacturing ormanifesting, because that's not
(12:52):
something we would want to do.
In behavioral health, marketingis manifest.
You know some kind of crisis orsome kind of a situation.
So, when you're thinking aboutwhen you're thinking and this is
where I wanted to get into themotivational interviewing.
This was actually a conceptthat was introduced to me by a
colleague and we went through anentire process of motivational
(13:15):
and can you help us define that?
What does it look like and whydo you see it as an essential
tool as part of this process oftraining your people to do that
motivational interview?
Lee Pepper (13:26):
Yeah, I think it was really super critical for us
when I was at Foundations in theMeadows, in that we needed to
make sure that the folks thatwere taking our inbound leads
and we were generating thousandsof phone calls, live chats and
email forms a month so it was alot of volume and what we needed
to make sure they understood isthat we did not expect that
(13:47):
every single one of those wasgoing to convert to an admission
to one of our programs, becausethat was going to create this
selling culture that we did notwant to, you know, be a part of.
What we, what we trained them onwith motivational interviewing
was that they needed to have theconversation and listen Right,
and the idea is getting them tomake a decision, and it's okay
(14:08):
if the decision is no and it'sokay if the decision is to go
somewhere else.
In fact, if they weren't a goodfit for our program, we wanted
to refer them out and, of course, it was okay if the decision
was yes.
But once we allowed them tohave success in a lot of
different ways, that reallychanged the dynamic that we were
dealing with, because whenyou're getting thousands of
(14:28):
phone calls and only two orthree percent can actually come
into your center because of awhole myriad of reasons it could
be insurance, it could bescheduling, it could be location
that really creates a realnegative gray cloud over your
whole operation when you feellike every hundred phone calls
you can only help two or threepeople.
So by using motivationalinterviewing techniques, we were
(14:49):
able to now start to arm ourteam and they could feel good
that they were able to helpsomebody make a decision.
And it's okay if the decisionis no, it's not for me right now
, that's okay.
Jay Johnson (15:00):
At least they made a decision and I think that that
was something that reallyhelped propel our internal so
let's watch I love that and youknow, because it is it is really
really hard, especially if youare the person.
Well, if you're theorganization and you're saying,
(15:21):
for every thousand, we'regetting two to three out of that
, that is a lot of people thatare being, you know, that are
making a decision to not gethelp from you or anything else.
And I know from our behavioraldata in the health care space
and we've got something like sixor 7,000 assessments, you know
78% or 72% of a lot of thoseindividual healthcare workers
(15:44):
show a strong drive to bond,which is a neurocognitive
oxytocin, et cetera, which ismuch, much higher in their
desire to help connect,affiliate, et cetera.
So when it seems or it feelslike rejection, that can be
absolutely devastating tosomebody.
(16:05):
So I think that it's reallyreally important.
Let's walk through this, becausemotivational interviewing is
something that I would say couldbe utilized by leadership, can
be utilized by HR, it can beutilized by those trainers and
coaches out there to get abetter understanding of what it
is.
(16:25):
So can you help us walk, walkus through the process.
What does motivationalinterviewing look like?
How would you maybe talkthrough it in a tactical sense
of hey, if you want to doeffective motivational
interviewing, here's where tostart.
This is what it looks like, andwe'll kind of iterate along the
way.
Lee Pepper (16:42):
Sure, and there's you know and listen.
You know I am not a certifiedMI, you know coach, so I would
recommend that your listeners.
You know there are a lot ofgreat resources out there online
.
But I would say, like, from avery tactical perspective, I'll
use the example of humanresources because I think that a
lot of times human resourcesare kind of left on their island
, and that's where we were ableto really partner with human
(17:06):
resources from a marketingstandpoint right, and we were
able to create kind of a culturethat not only helped human
resources with their retentionproblem, but we also started
creating content that washelping them drive.
You know, instead of justposting a resume on Indeed, like
we were actually creatingcontent and events that HR could
(17:27):
point to when they were on thephone recruiting, trying to find
providers that were coming in.
And then they started takingadvantage.
They were coming into our callcenter, they were coming into
our call center, they werecoming into our marketing
meetings and they startedpicking up on how we use
motivational interviewing and Ithink they started adopting some
of these type of strategieswhen they were interviewing
(17:50):
folks for potential hires.
And I think it creates asituation again where, just like
in marketing, sometimes we cantalk too much, I think,
sometimes from the HR teams,their recruiters, sometimes they
can talk too much and it's moreimportant for them to use MI
and, just like you mentionedearlier, you've got two ears and
two eyes and one mouth, youknow.
(18:10):
Do it in that order.
It's the same thing when itcomes to HR and recruiting, and
a lot of times they just hadn'theard that kind of speak before,
and so now we're taking kind ofsomething that is well-versed
in therapeutic world.
We've applied it to marketing.
Now we're also connecting thatover into human resources and I
think it was, you know, verysuccessful.
Jay Johnson (18:30):
Yeah, well, and and it makes a lot of sense too
because, again, when you are, ifyou're in a sales position, yes
, there are some of those thatare really driven to acquire and
they have that like strongelement of smile and dial pick
up the phone.
I don't care how many peoplechurn and burn, you know, as
long as the percentages arecoming in, but that is not a
(18:52):
sales style that I mean.
I've heard so many people go.
I'm not a salesperson and youknow the motivational
interviewing aspect, for me atleast, has really been a
powerful way to look at sort ofrelationship building,
empathetic sales.
And you know, one of the waysof doing that is really getting
that deeper response from thepotential customer, really
(19:14):
getting that deeper responsefrom the potential customer,
client, et cetera, and sometimesthat's through open-ended
questions or some kind ofreflective listening and all of
those different things If youwere to think about, if you were
to think about, say, example ofwalking through, you know we
get somebody who's in a crisisand and, and this is this is, I
(19:36):
think, where this is where Ithink the application really
does kind of hit some of thecorporate side.
We are constantly inundated withminiature crises or anything
else.
Leaders are often in this spaceof oh my gosh, I'm in a crisis.
Let's get this training oncommunication to come out, and I
think this is wheremotivational interviewing can
really become powerful.
So let's say that you know I'mcalling in and I'm having
(20:02):
whatever crisis I'm having.
Maybe it's a crisis of health,maybe it's a crisis of whatever.
What is your kind of like?
How would you look at takingthat first step?
What are you going to work?
How are you going to work withme, lee?
Lee Pepper (20:14):
Yeah, I think the very first thing that we do and
you know, and I have like anonline admissions training
course a lot of behavioralhealth companies subscribe to,
and and it's the idea of I usethis metaphor Are you at the
drive through window or are yousitting down at a restaurant
breaking bread with the personon the phone, and it's, it's.
It's a good mental model tothink about, because a lot of
times we get stuck at thedrive-thru window and we're just
(20:37):
reading off the menu, we'rejust repeating the order back,
and good motivationalinterviewing is actually sitting
down and breaking bread withthat person versus just serving
them up whatever's on the menu,right?
And so one of the first thingswe do is, no matter what they
say, no matter what the call isabout, the very first thing you
have to say is OK, can you justtell me a little bit about what
(20:59):
prompted your call today?
Or tell me what's going on andwhen you can have that mental
shift where you don't feel likeyou have to just answer back or
repeat back that now you're theand that's the whole concept of
motivational interviewing.
You're interviewing right.
You're not necessarily answeringquestions.
You're not talking about thedeal of the day.
You're not talking about thefeatures and functions you know
(21:20):
of whatever your product is.
Now, you're understanding andyou know if you look at a lot of
the stuff that's online withthe sell me this pen, you know
and you know I think there was afamous, you know, I think Wolf
of Wall Street.
They had it, but the sell methis pen a lot of people that
are training in therapy.
They will practice that,because the best way to answer
(21:42):
that is to start asking theperson well, what do you use a
pen for?
What colors do you prefer?
All these?
It's question, question,question, question.
And then all of a sudden, nowyou actually have what they're
looking for and then you canmake a decision.
Right, do I have the service orthe product that fits with what
(22:03):
their needs are?
Versus going through thischecklist mentality, which is
very poor, and I find that in HRtoo.
You know, whenever I'minterviewing a candidate that
somebody from human resourcessent to me, like I can tell if
it's just a checklist thing.
Versus are they?
Do they really know our culture?
Right, you know what ismotivating them to leave their
company?
You know, if it is, are theyjust leaving for money?
(22:24):
Okay, that may not be asinteresting to me, but if
they're leaving because theywant to come to us as an
employer of choice or lookingfor some interesting training
like that's more something thatwe can chat about.
Jay Johnson (22:34):
Yeah, well, and it's.
It is funny that you bring upthe the sell me this pen, sort
of Jordan Bell for a Wall Streetapproach, and there's a lot of
different.
There's a lot of differentsales methodologies out there
and one that's and I forget thename of it, it's any PQ or
something like that, which issupposed to be more of the more
(22:54):
of the neural approach or neurolinguistic programming type
approach and connective approach.
So how adaptive when we findourselves, and because one of
the things that happens withmotivational interviewing is it
can be, it can be reallylaborious.
I mean it can take longer, itcan be more um, it can be more
(23:18):
emotional.
Uh, and there are some peoplethat maybe are less likely to,
uh, be driven towards that style.
How are you able to shift theirbehaviors when you know maybe
somebody started thatinterviewing process and either
wasn't a great fit or didn'tquite get it?
(23:39):
What was the experience on that, lee?
Lee Pepper (23:42):
Yeah, for us, for us in the behavioral health spaces
, it's a little bit more, it's alittle easier because you know
we're looking at data.
So I we will know quickly ifsomebody gets admitted to one of
our programs, and a lot of ourprograms are 50, 60, 70 beds,
and so when you get somebodyadmitted, if they are not a good
fit for the milieu, for thatclient base that they're going
(24:04):
to be doing group therapy with,you hear about it very quickly
and then you start to.
Then you can go back and listento the phone calls, you can
look at the notes that weretaken and you can quickly
realize that you know what wedidn to the phone calls.
You can look at the notes thatwere taken and you can quickly
realize that you know what.
We didn't really practice goodmotivational interviewing
because we didn't get to theheart of the matter, and so,
whereas some people will feellike, well, I don't really want
to be on the phone for 30 or 40minutes like that, just can I
(24:26):
just close them in a couple ofminutes, but what will end up
happening is you end up doingmore work, right?
Because now you've got to goback and do all this after
action stuff and you may havecreated an issue within the
milieu, and so we were veryupfront with that and I think
people started seeing that itmay seem like it's more of a
challenge upfront, but it'sactually a better quality and
(24:47):
then it ends up being a bettersituation for the person on the
phone and the person that admits, because a lot of our companies
, you know now we struggle withpeople that can quickly get on
these online platforms and leavereviews and guess what?
People are 10 times more likelyto leave a negative review than
(25:07):
a positive review.
So if you're not doing the workup front, spending the extra
time up front, really connectingwith what's driving them to
want to come to your program orto buy your product, you're more
likely to have somebody that isnot a good fit.
And then, guess what, they're10 times more likely to want to
leave a negative review.
And then you're running aroundgoing wait, why did I get all
these negative reviews?
Well, it probably all startsfrom the very beginning, and I
(25:29):
think this is the same way in HR.
A lot of my HR clients willtalk about Glassdoor.
And how do we solve Glassdoor?
Well, you solve it in thebeginning, right when they're
knocking at the door, not oncethey're already in the door.
Jay Johnson (25:43):
You know it's funny you say that because oftentimes
I'll be having conversationswith some leaders and managers
and when they have some kind oflike problem set of behaviors
going on in the organization, Isay, okay, well, you know you to
really kind of turn that lensinside.
Yes, you either hired the wrongperson or you didn't adequately
(26:13):
onboard, train, communicate,instill the vision, give them a
sense of purpose, et cetera.
And I've had some conversationswhere it was just like huh yeah
.
Lee Pepper (26:25):
All right.
That's how we opened thisconversation.
That's how, when I, as part ofbeing the CMO, all of a sudden
took responsibility for our callcenter, no matter what I was
doing on the channel, I couldn'taffect the conversion rate.
So I knew that we did not havea good methodology right to make
it more predictable, and so wewere able to sense that right
(26:47):
off the bat now I'm going toshift and kind of take this
question.
Jay Johnson (26:55):
So I had mentioned to you that I studied health
communication and one of the bigframes and this was gosh, this
was back in the mid 2000s wasnarrative medicine, and I
remember having someconversations with different
healthcare facilities, theentire concept of like
storytelling essentially as partof the health approach, and
(27:19):
there were some reallyinteresting studies of doctors
and it's very strongly relatedto motivational interviewing,
you know, instead of a doctorwho rushes in, says Lee, what
hurts your elbow?
Ok, take two of these and callme in the morning.
It was more of well, how areyou feeling?
And and literally just gettinginto these questions and opening
(27:41):
it up.
So the difference betweennarrative medicine was 45 minute
visit with the physician versusa standard visit, which was
four and a half minutes.
Um, but the patient outcomes onthe narrative side of things
were just exceptionally better.
The big pushback, and this wasconstant.
(28:02):
How do I have time for this?
I can't see these patients for45 minutes.
I don't have time to spendinterviewing and getting to the
bottom of the stories.
I need to lightning quick, geta diagnosis.
This is not just true inhealthcare too, because this is
very, very true for leaders andthis is true for HR.
(28:23):
It's like give me the answer.
I need the answer right now andI don't have time to go around
and ask questions and getstories and do interviews with
my teams, my leaders.
Just give me the data, let'smove forward.
How did you shift that mindsetof saying, hey, you know,
because what you just said wasabsolutely spot on.
(28:43):
I agree, the time that we spendup front saves us time in the
future.
How did you get them to shiftthe mindset?
Lee Pepper (28:50):
Yeah, you have to connect the business to which
action you want.
You have to connect the revenue, and so that was one of the
things that I was able to show,because now, all of a sudden, we
can see, yeah, maybe we need tohire a couple extra staff now
to take all the volume of calls.
You know, and what ended uphappening with foundations was
(29:12):
we actually had a reduction inour call center staff and
because they were being moreeffective, and so we were able
to dial down some of the volumeof calls.
So now, all of a sudden, youknow what we can cut television
calls because they're not, asthey weren't, as good as folks
that were maybe searching on theInternet or people that were
connecting us through ourbusiness development
(29:33):
relationship.
So we were able to reduce someof the volume because now we
were giving the team timeinstead of what ends up
happening a lot of times inbusinesses it's just throw more,
more, more, even though youhave a leaky funnel and they
just want to keep filling it.
At the top.
We were able to document, andthe key was that we documented
it right and that we weremeasuring it.
(29:53):
It wasn't just a dream, like weactually made it a math problem
versus something subjective.
You know, we made it objectiveand I think that that's where a
lot of businesses they struggle,because they think they don't
have the data.
And so, if you will and that'swhat I talk about in the book is
that you got to have thestrategy first and you figure
(30:14):
out the tactics.
A lot of times in business we'rejumping tactic to tactic to
tactic.
We think, oh, these platformsyou know they've become so easy
in marketing I'll just turn upTikTok or I'll start doing reels
(30:37):
, and those are all can be veryeffective tactics, but they're
going to miss if you don't havethe strategy.
And it's the same thing withsome of the software that we
want to implement.
All of a sudden it's in a veryhumid, you know, jungle
environment.
It did not perform well, andthe reason it didn't perform
well?
Because we didn't train thesoldiers back then to clean the
weapon appropriately and we didnot ship cleaning kits with the
(30:57):
weapon and so they wereconstantly jamming.
And so it's what that that?
I use that as an example ofwhat we do today.
We will go and we'll, we'll,we'll, we'll implement
Salesforce or we'll implementPeopleSoft, and then we work
Powerful, tools Powerful tools,powerful tools, but we never
train people effectively, wedon't hire administrators to
(31:17):
support it and we typically thenjust kind of put that on top of
a poor process and we wonderwhy it's not working.
We spent all this money, it'snot working, and so a lot of
times that you know we don'tunderstand that connection to
the business.
Jay Johnson (31:30):
Well, and I think that has so much application in
so many different aspects ofbusiness.
Because if you're in the talentdevelopment space, hey, we just
spent $100,000 on this newlearning management system and
all these trainings and we getless than 7% of our population
that's actually using them.
Okay, well, what's the issue?
(31:51):
Have you trained them on how todo it?
Have you encouraged them,showed them the value, showed
them what the return oninvestment of them spending
their time there?
And the reality is is we don't,and it's usually coming back to
well, who has time for that?
Or we think it's intuitive.
And I want to stick in thatquestion real quick, because
this is and maybe I'm asking fora friend, maybe I'm asking for
(32:13):
myself here, lee, but you know,when you've been in a space for
20 years, 10 years, 15 years,whatever it is you've had a lot
of experience and a lot ofknowledge.
There's logical jumps that weend up making just because it's
familiar to us, and I've seenthat a lot in organizations.
(32:34):
Somebody with a lot ofexperience says, hey, this is
really intuitive, this makessense.
I mean, I would have neverthought about that, about the
M16, until you shared that withme.
And then it's like, yeah, thatmakes a lot of sense, but that
would have been a gap in myknowledge.
How have you maybe helped someof the administrators or leaders
that didn't have the experience?
(32:56):
How have you avoided thatintuition gap that comes with
the experience that you have?
Lee Pepper (33:02):
Yeah, I talk about it in the book.
It's what I call a cognitivebias that other departments or
other team members or staffmembers can have, and it really
shows up a lot in marketing,because everybody thinks they
know marketing.
You know, everybody's got acousin or a nephew that can
build a website, everybody's gotsomebody that works in business
(33:24):
development.
So they kind of think they knowmarketing and so, without
having really worked in it, theystart to apply well, I've got
these ideas, even though theymay work in HR or finance or
administration, and so I write.
I think one of the importantthings is I write about it in
the book and I use thesemilitary strategies.
Because when you then use themetaphor of the military and you
see how, hey, this happened,like, like the rollout of them,
(33:47):
16 happened and it failed Right,and here's what we're doing it
kind of matches that failure.
All of a sudden people startthinking about it in a different
way.
It's like, oh, I see, yeah,this is, this is how this can
happen.
If it can happen to the US Armyin a war situation, it can
certainly happen to my business,business.
(34:10):
And so that's why I am and youknow, in in only, you know, less
than 1% of the Americanpopulation will serve in the
military, and I don't say thatas a judgment.
It's just where we are, with anall volunteer army, and so that
means that 99% of people havenot heard some of these concepts
and these ideas, and theseideas are thousands of years old
.
You know, when I talk about thehammer and anvil, you know this
is something that was used.
You know the Carthaginians, andthen it was it was used most
(34:30):
recently by by General NormanSchwarzkopf.
So these, these are things thatare kind of fundamental, I
think, to the human conditionand I think it's just a way that
we, that we can.
I'm hopeful that people willread this, especially young
leaders, and they'll be like oh,let me use this as an example
to kind of inform my teams or myleadership so they know that
I'm not just stuck in tactics,like no, this is rooted in some
(34:52):
really historic strategies.
Jay Johnson (34:55):
Yeah, no, I appreciate that, Lee.
So the name of the book isNever Outmatched Military
Strategies to Lead, innovate andWin in the Modern Marketing
Battlefield.
And when is that going to beavailable, lee?
Lee Pepper (35:07):
So, yeah, it's available now to be in
bookstores the first week inSeptember.
So coming up very quickly and Iappreciate all the support.
And I'll say one last thing,jay, is that there's a lot of
veterans out there.
The Army does a great jobgetting you in.
They don't always do a greatjob getting you out,
transitioning you into thebusiness world, the corporate
world.
So if you've got a familymember, I think somebody reading
(35:27):
this book who's been in theservice, it may give them some
new language, some new ways totranslate these strategies into
mental models that might be moreeffective when they're out
interviewing, because I thinksometimes we struggle with how
am I going to take what Ilearned in training or in my
service to the business world?
And so I hope people will seehow I kind of bridge that gap
(35:48):
and maybe give them someinspiration.
Jay Johnson (35:50):
I love that and I've actually been working with
a couple of different people andsupporting that transition from
military into the actualworking world, because it is
very, very different from myunderstanding and again, I'm not
speaking from my own experience, but from the experience of
working with people who are veryknowledgeable on these things.
(36:11):
So, very cool.
And, lee, if the audiencewanted to get in touch with you,
how would they reach out to you?
Lee Pepper (36:16):
Yeah, they can go to my website, neveroutmatchcom,
and they can also, you know.
Please feel free to reach outand connect with me on LinkedIn.
I always check my messages andI'm always happy to have
conversations and share, youknow, great ideas and learnings.
Jay Johnson (36:32):
I love it.
Well, thank you so much forbeing here and sharing your
insight and your wisdom andobviously, again thank you for
the service that you've provided, both you know as a veteran of
our military, but also to theservice that you're providing to
healthcare.
That's a really important space.
(36:53):
It's something that all of usat some point in time will need
to use, and the fact that you'resupporting them and helping
them have a more behavioralapproach is really powerful.
So just want to say thank youfor that.
Lee Pepper (37:02):
All right, Thank you so much.
Keep up the great work and oneof these days I'll get back up
to Michigan and I'll look you up.
Jay Johnson (37:08):
I love it so and thank you, audience, for tuning
into this episode of the TalentForge, where together we're
shaping workforce behaviors.
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