Michael Gorton, 15x Founder incl. Teladoc

Episode Transcript

David Pardo (00:37.646)
Michael Gordon, welcome to the show.

Michael Gorton (00:46.061)
Thank you.

David Pardo (00:47.598)
I can’t tell you what an honor is to have you here. I’m gonna jump in. I usually, I ask something, you know, this is a podcast in the healthcare space and most people don’t grow up saying, when I grow up, I wanna be a nursing homeowner. So I think it’s always curious to find like people’s paths, but you have an unusual story where you want to grow up to end up on Mars. So can I ask you to share that story with us?

Michael Gorton (01:11.565)
Yeah.

Sure. I think I was, well, I don’t remember exactly, but my dad was Air Force. We were stationed in the Philippines, not living on base because my dad was a sergeant. So we were kind of in the jungles and the tough part of the Philippines, but I was a Boy Scout. My C -130 pilot, Boy Scout leader was an Air Force Academy grad. And I watched Neil and Buzz step out on the moon in the middle of the night in the Philippines and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it. And I told Colonel Talley about it and he said, make a life plan. And I did. And I stuck to that life plan until I was 30. I was so determined I was gonna be the first person on Mars that I didn’t really give up on the idea until I realized we weren’t going to Mars when I was young enough to be the guy.

David Pardo (02:12.654)
You actually sat down on a piece of paper and wrote, I need to be an engineer by this date. I need to be a doctor by this date. And you pivoted because you realized that the technology was just a couple years off and your calculations. So it’s important to iterate.

Michael Gorton (02:19.181)
That’s exactly right. Yep. Yep.

David Pardo (02:42.272)
How do you feel about the theory that Elon is actually a Martian trying to make his way back home?

Michael Gorton (02:50.189)
We didn’t get Elon Musk soon enough. We should have gotten him in the early 70s, and then we’d be on Mars. We’d populate the entire solar system by now.

There was a great movie during the early 70s that David Bowie played in. Are you referencing that?

David Pardo (02:57.134)
No. No, I’m not.

Michael Gorton
The Man Who Fell to Earth. You and your listening audience should watch that movie because that character is totally Elon Musk. But no, I think Elon is really from South Africa.

David Pardo (03:16.046)
Okay. He’s a good guy. Have you met him?

Michael Gorton (03:20.077)
I have not met him yet, but I…

David Pardo (03:22.414)
So when we have him on the pod, I’m going to make sure to set that introduction up for you.

Michael Gorton (03:25.741)
Okay, well, one of the co actually two of the co founders of SpaceX are very close to me and I and I just recently joined their team as strategic as Chief Strategy Officer, a company called Phantom Space.

David Pardo (03:44.014)
Phantom Space, it’s company number 15.

Michael Gorton (03:46.925)
No, no, no, I didn’t start that one. No.

David Pardo (03:49.294)
Okay, you just joined it as the as a CSO.

Michael Gorton (03:51.917)
I joined it as the chief strategy officer because I love what they’re doing and I had a strength where they didn’t have one. So it is not a full -time gig. I give them one day a week.

David Pardo (04:10.926)
Okay, one of your days I’m sure is worth a lot of people’s months. So I’m not worried about the exchange rate.

Michael Gorton (04:16.813)
Tomorrow, actually, so, you know, we were talking about the astronauts behind me and so this is clearly Buzz Aldrin. I think that’s one of the most reproduced copies on the planet, right? This one is Charlie Dew. He was the lunar module pilot on Apollo 16 in 1971. And this is Walt Cunningham who flew the very first Apollo mission.

David Pardo (04:32.494)
Cool.

Michael Gorton (04:42.989)
So all of them are very, well actually, unfortunately we lost Walt last year, but Charlie and Buzz are good friends. And Charlie is going to be in North Texas tomorrow. We’re hosting him for a Phantom Space event. And so it’s fun knowing these guys well.

David Pardo (05:04.334)
Do you still find yourself driven by, motivated by the idea of space exploration or has that, yeah, that’s the core motivator?

Michael Gorton (05:10.125)
Yes, I do.

Well, I would say, David, it’s a little bit more what’s the impossible? What is everybody saying is impossible? How do we turn it into day to day stuff?

David Pardo (05:27.822)
So I wanted to ask you about 15 companies, right? That you’ve started. You’re not a space explorer yet, but you’re an avowed entrepreneur. You’re driven by entrepreneurship. What is the common thread between those companies? Could you talk about that?

Michael Gorton (05:31.117)
Yeah, 15.

Michael Gorton (05:37.741)
I am.

Michael Gorton (05:46.829)
Sure, yeah, I think it is, is there something here that can change everything? And if the answer is yes, then build it.

David Pardo (06:02.766)
Do you, so I’m gonna ask you, I skimmed digital medical home for this interview. Literally wrote the book on telemedicine. So clearly, by our normal standard that makes you an expert in telemedicine, do you find that you’re an expert in all of the fields you jump into? Are you an expert in the business of business? How do you find yourself navigating fields with a lot of expertise?

Michael Gorton (06:31.373)
Well, the secret to building a business is not necessarily being the expert. It is finding the experts, surrounding yourself with them, and not bringing your ego into the room. You know, you have opinions. They could be right. They could be wrong. But if you bring experts in, listen to them. And I think that’s the way you build great companies.

In the 90s, I was building a company called Internet Global. And we were kind of a ragtag, dirty dozen bunch. Nobody was a Wharton scholar. Nobody was an MIT person. It was just people who believed. And we woke up every day believing we were going to change the world. And we did. And later in our development, we brought in a mentor named Nathan Morton who had built great things. He had been, you know, one of the founders of Target Home Depot and one of the founders of CompUSA. And he made that comment. He said, Michael, you’ve managed to take people who nobody would pick first or second in the lineup. You’ve turned them into A plus people and everybody’s inspired. Nobody quits work on Friday. Nobody wakes up dreading Monday mornings. And I think that’s what it’s all about.

David Pardo (08:05.294)
It’s about a mission. It’s about driving towards something, which I kind of connect maybe to your father’s career. That’s a piece of military motivating that doesn’t always make it to business.

Michael Gorton (08:16.333)
Could be, as Air Force brats, we don’t really think about those things. The fundamental things, if you’re living on base or if you’re on base and they’re playing taps at the end of the day, you stop. Your hand is on your heart, right? And it’s just a reaction. You answer the phone and you say, Sergeant Gorton’s quarters, Michael speaking. You’re six years old when you do that, right? So.

David Pardo (08:45.326)
So I definitely want to talk more about that. I also want to transition to telemedicine and to telehealth. And you kind of founded the field, I think, when we’re going to write the books about it. So can you tell that story, how that happened?

Michael Gorton (08:59.021)
Well… I’ll give credit to, sure, I’ll give credit to founding, that goes back to Jay Sanders, who was the co -author of that digital medical home book with me. It’s right there. And, yeah, but.

David Pardo (09:16.11)
We have props. We have the story.

Michael Gorton (09:19.949)
So I am, it’s late 1999. I’ve just seen a liquidity event for my internet company. And I call some of my friends, one of whom is Byron Brooks, a medical doctor, electrical engineer. And I tell these friends, I’m going to climb Kilimanjaro. And I’ll pay for all your expenses. I’ll pay for all your equipment. I’ll pay the training, everything.

And so who would say no to that? And while climbing Kilimanjaro, Dr. Brooks and I sort of created the idea of Teladoc. An electrical engineer.

David Pardo (09:59.566)
Was there something on Kilimanjaro that triggered that for you or it was just?

Michael Gorton (10:16.589)
Yeah. Well, so it was Kilimanjaro that triggered it for Byron. One of the comments he made to me was, I don’t get it. I’m an electrical engineer, MD, and you made more money in one transaction that I’m going to make my entire career. And I said, well, you know, let’s build something. And and so, you know, he was talking about this crazy telemedicine idea where you go to a building and you’d put a vest on and a doctor would remotely diagnose you. And I’m like, that’s crazy. And we’re we’re at. I want to say 18000 feet camped out night before our summit, and he’s using my satellite phone to talk to people. And I said, why are you wasting my critical dollars? And he goes, I got some patients in Houston I have to take care of. And I said, wait a minute, you can talk to patients on the phone? And he said, yes. And I went, there’s a business idea. Let’s do that.

David Pardo (11:04.206)
From Kilimanjaro. So you took this big bet that medicine is going to be distant, that we’re going to be able to leverage technology to bring down costs and connect the best people to the people who need it the most. Would you say that we’re driving towards that norm? What are the widespread adoption? What’s in the way?

Michael Gorton (11:04.749)
Yeah.

Michael Gorton (11:28.493)
Well, it was an overnight success, right? We did this the summer of 2000. Nobody knew what telemedicine was until the spring of 2020. So that’s 20 years of overnight success. There’s my sarcasm. So I think, I know.

David Pardo (11:49.422)
You know, I like that. I caught that. I think that happens a lot with success. Whenever at every stage someone says, wow, crazy that this was overnight. And you’re like, the last guy said that too, three years ago.

Michael Gorton (11:57.165)
Yeah, yeah, right, exactly. So coming into COVID, not many people knew what telemedicine was. Coming out of it, there was a great study, the survey that was done, and 87 % of the population would prefer to do a telemedicine consult over going into their doctor’s office.

And what that did, and they were not generally asking, you know, when I feel bad for my checkups or whatever. It was a general answer to all medical types of consults. And so what that means is the cardiologist has to get better at telemedicine. The dentist has to get better at telemedicine.

And how do you do those things? Because you certainly can’t drill into a tooth remotely. But there are things that you can do. And it got me thinking as I was watching this evolution happen, I was thinking, everything we thought we were going to accomplish with Teladoc did not happen. I thought the costs would go down. I thought people wouldn’t get sick as often and neither one of those two things happened. And what occurred to me when I was sort of thinking about this during COVID was the real answer is something that Ben Franklin said, which is an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

And the best medicine, in spite of all of the technology we’ve created, the best medicine is right here. It’s the human immune system. And if the human immune system has the opportunity to stop something in its tracks, it does. But sometimes we have stress. Sometimes we have too many things hitting us all at once. And the human immune system gets overwhelmed. And so how do we keep this thing’s strong, how do we catch things early? So it is an ounce of prevention rather than a pound of cure. And so, you know, the analogy that I always give here is if you catch cancer coming into stage one, it’s a lifestyle change. If you catch it coming into stage four, it’s chemo, radiation, surgery, it’s gonna change your life, may kill you. And so there’s the ounce of prevention. Catch it early and prevent it.

David Pardo (14:37.23)
Is Teladoc succeeding in prevention and preventative care? Okay.

Michael Gorton (14:39.085)
No, no. What Teladoc is succeeding in doing is getting a doctor to a patient when they’re already sick. So pre -Teladoc, I want to talk to a doctor. What do I do? I get on the phone. I talk to an admin. We compare calendars. I’m going next Thursday to see the doctor. Post -Teladoc, I use my app. I log on to the computer, click, click. A doctor calls me and… 12 minutes. And if the doctor takes 20 minutes, I’m looking at it going, this thing sucks. I’m getting another telemedicine provider. That’s how much we’ve changed. That’s that overnight success, right? 2020 changed everything. Everybody now knows they can get a doctor in 10 minutes or so.

David Pardo (15:29.294)
Have you seen a lot of this is we’re in the long-term care space post acute a lot of our listeners are owners and operators and specialized nursing assisted living America have you seen a lot of Partnerships there with long -term care spaces if not, you know, what do the listeners need to know to sort of bring down costs and increasing quality of care?

Michael Gorton (15:40.429)
Yeah.

Michael Gorton (15:52.941)
There’s a company that I really love called Carealoop. And the Carealoop people say, nobody should have to go through the process of caring for a loved one alone. So, okay, so what does that mean? I find out my sister has cancer. What am I doing? I’m at my computer searching, trying to figure out, okay, what can I do? How can I help her? Where can she go? Who’s the best? And that’s… That’s a lot of time because I don’t know what I’m doing. So at CareLoop, they have all these coaches who already know the answers to all those questions. So you click to them and they go, okay, what’s the problem? Where does she live? Boom, boom, boom. And they give you answers. And they’re not, they don’t have a relationship with a long -term care facility or this doctor or that. They’re trying to find the best answer for their client who is the person.

David Pardo (16:47.95)
Is this sort of the patient advocacy space that’s emerging?

Michael Gorton (16:50.029)
Yeah, kind of, kind of, yes. But it’s patient advocacy without a dollar linked to anyone except the person who’s trying to help.

David Pardo (17:05.134)
So that’s, that’s CareLoop.

Michael Gorton (17:06.541)
Yeah, that’s CareLoop. But but I, you know, I’ll go back to the Ben Franklin thing again, because catching things is part of the process. But we start getting gray hair when we’re old enough to have watched Neil and Buzz walk on the moon. We’re starting to think about other things like, OK, I’m having so much fun in this lifetime. How can I stay healthy in my 90s and past 100? And that’s a whole other version of care. And there are people like Dave Asprey and Jeff Gladden who are thinking about that ounce of prevention pound of cure, how can we use the ounce of prevention, keep healthy people healthy into their nineties, past 100. And there is so much technology going on to do that now. And, you know, I would say to the long -term care things, when did people start entering them sometimes in their sixties and seventies? You know, what if we, if those people are instead, still productive, happy workers into their late 70s and 80s. In fact, I mentioned this guy right here, Charlie Duke is coming. He’s coming to Dallas tomorrow. He’s 88 years old and he will outlast most of the younger people. We’ll have an evening event and I’ll probably bring him to his hotel at 11 o ‘clock. And he’s getting up at 4 AM to fly here. You know.

David Pardo (18:30.19)
Right. So that’s a great pitch for staying healthy, for exercising, for… But you talked about the vigilant sentinels, right? In the book, that’s what Teladoc could become. Do you see that happening?

Michael Gorton (18:59.789)
Yeah. I, okay, well, you know, I am working on something that I’m not, I can’t talk about yet, but I wish, maybe in a few weeks we can announce it. But if you think about the giant engines that are touching healthcare and you ask yourself,

David Pardo (19:13.39)
This could be when you announce it. This could be… Cool, we could come back here, no big deal.

Michael Gorton (19:29.869)
Why is it really not a healthcare system? It’s a sick care system. And I say sick care meaning this. I don’t mean because people are sick. I mean, it doesn’t really do anything. Nobody makes money until you get sick. And what are the engines out there that really can make a difference and drive a new process where we catch things before you’re sick?

And I think if we want to be capitalists, we have to figure out how can you make money, you know, if you’re doing that. And it’s got to be a, there’s got to be a definition, but a lot of the mainstream entities in healthcare right now don’t make money until you’re sick. That’s their business model. And like it or not, that’s where they make money. And so they stay in that group. There was a lot of opposition to Teladoc.

David Pardo (20:04.462)
Someone’s gotta pay for it.

Michael Gorton (20:26.221)
And people who have heard me talk before know this. I mean, I had 17 states tell me I was going to go to prison in their state. And I’m like, get in line. There’s 16 other states behind you. And that’s telemedicine, which right now it just makes our head explode to think they wanted to put you in prison for having a doctor talk to somebody via video conference or on a telephone. Yes, they did.

David Pardo (20:39.086)
They’re competing with each other.

Michael Gorton (20:56.429)
and they believed what I was doing was criminal.

David Pardo (21:02.254)
Are you working on figuring out a way to monetize preventative medicine? And what’s the big obstacle to that? Insurance companies, is it culture? Is it regulations?

Michael Gorton (21:06.477)
Yes. Yeah, I think when right now when we’re under the radar, it’s everybody says, okay, that’s kind of cool. But once you really start making an impact, all those companies that are making money and seeing 10 % increases in the cost every year, they’re not going to be happy about what will they do? I don’t know your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they’ll jump on board. Eventually, they’ll jump on board.

David Pardo (21:44.014)
So you’ve climbed 43 mountains in the US. Is that right? 43 mountains in 43 states? Seven left. First off, have you identified the next seven? Do you have a plan?

Michael Gorton (21:49.677)
Yeah. That’s correct. Correct.

Michael Gorton (22:00.397)
Well, you and I have a mutual friend named Aaron Blackman. And I was talking to Aaron over the weekend. He goes, I want to climb one of the mountains with you. What’s next? And I said, California. It’s a three day hike. And he said, I’m getting in shape.

David Pardo (22:19.63)
Is that in Yosemite?

Michael Gorton
And so no, it’s not. It’s Mount Whitney.

David Pardo (22:28.75)
Okay. What drove you to make that your goal? 50 mountains, 50 states.

Michael Gorton (22:32.909)
You know, John Kennedy, we choose to go to the moon and do the other things, not because they’re easy, but because they’re hard. And, you know, climbing Kilimanjaro was part of, you know, it’s an adventure going to another country, learning Swahili with the guides and the porters that you’re hanging with for a week. But it’s also something that’s really hard.

I, in my early marathon days, I had a female friend who got stopped at the finish line by a local reporter and, and the reporter asked her, why do you do this? And she said, cause it’s hard because what else can I do? That’s this hard where people will stand on the sidelines and cheer for me. And, and I thought, wow, that’s really cool. And so when I got back from Kilimanjaro, and started raising kids, I thought: you know, I want my kids to do something that’s hard. And, and, and so we said, let’s just climb the highest point of elevation in all 50 States. So what’s the highest in Florida? It’s a roadside park. It’s 345 feet. There’s a picnic bench there that you climb up on top of. So you can say, Hey, I’m the tallest person in Florida right now.

David Pardo (23:49.358)
Yeah, it’s pretty flat here. It’s a great state for biking, not for hiking.

Michael Gorton (24:00.269)
So it turns out to be a really great family adventure and, and, and some of these mountains are very, very hard. you know, the highest point in New Mexico is Wheeler peak. And if I say Wheeler to my daughter, it is an indication of how to overcome something that seems almost impossible. I mean, we had a point on that mountain where she just sat down and started crying and I just sat down and waited and when she was done crying, I said, okay, what are we going to do? And she said, we’re going to figure out how to get off this mountain. And I think she was maybe a sophomore in high school. And so she wrote a paper, you know, how in high school you say, what did I do during my summer vacation? She wrote a paper about that and it just sort of became a mantra for her. Wheeler peak was a hard mountain. And she figured that that whole, we choose to go to the moon, not because it’s easy, but because it’s hard.

David Pardo (25:02.99)
You spoke at Aspire Summit earlier in 2023. You mentioned that you went on a private tour of your own interviewing some business leaders and finding out what their mistakes were. But you did not mention what your big mistakes were. So I would like to ask you, what’s the big list?

Michael Gorton (25:21.093)
My gosh, I have made so many, I have made so many. You know, I think the one thing that I still haven’t completely figured out is ethics. So I will fall on a sword, I’ll let my head be cut off for ethics. But when I’m surrounding myself with these people who are smarter, I think, okay, this person has ethics, I can trust them. And then, you know, you get into a difficult situation and there just aren’t ethics. And I feel like I’ve just made this mistake over and over again, you know? And people ask me, you know, why did you do whatever you did at this event? You could have been super wealthy if you’d have just stayed on this path.

And, you know, I’ll give you an example without saying any names, but in Texas, we have a line that people say all the time. And I’m not born Texan.

David Pardo (26:30.67)
Converted, sure.

Michael Gorton (26:43.053)
I just came here and I like the philosophy here. But the saying is dance with the one who brung you, which means now let’s say you’re building a company, all the people who supported you, funded you, you get to a point where there’s big capital. And the big capital wants you to crush all these people down so they can have more. You can’t do that. You know, there was a company where I was being offered a great seat on a board when it was time for me to leave with lots of money, new stock every year. And I just thought about, you know, the mansions I could live in and the jet planes I could own. And then I thought about the ones who brung me. And I went, I’m not going to do that to them. I’ve got to support them. And even it means I’m getting my head lopped off, I’m not going to get wealthy. Some people will, but I got to protect them. But how many times can you do that before your spouse says, OK, this time let’s us be the ones?

David Pardo (27:38.254)
Is that a mistake? Do you regret that? Or is that a badge of honor?

Michael Gorton (27:39.661)
It’s a, it is, it is a mistake because I didn’t figure out when I was bringing people in if they were going to be the right people.

David Pardo (27:55.022)
Hard to read.

Michael Gorton (27:57.197)
Yeah, no, David, you nailed it. I call it a badge of honor because you know when you get knocked down and kicked in the teeth and you get back up, you either say I’m done with this stuff or you go, okay, what did I learn? How can I turn it into a positive?

David Pardo (27:59.374)
But your wife knows.

David Pardo (28:15.15)
So I watched, I’ve seen a couple of your talks. I know that you talk around the country. You’re brought in as a keynote speaker to a lot of different places. I’ll share with you an interesting tidbit. There’s a foundational book of Jewish wisdom called the Mesilat Yesharim that in the introduction, when I say foundational, it’s a big deal. In the introduction he says, “I just want you to know, I’m only coming to tell you things that you already know. There’s nothing new in here.” Just a bold claim for a foundational book. But the bold claim there is that the most important things in life people already know, they just have a hard time facing and facing down and acting on. So in your experience, your career, what are the things that people know but just cannot face down?

Michael Gorton (28:52.333)
Yeah. I think the most important one is you don’t fail till you quit. And there’s a great quote by Calvin Coolidge, former US president, on persistence. And it’s too long to go into right now, but everybody should just go to their Google or whatever they use for search and type in Calvin Coolidge persistence. Because he makes points like, you know, at the end of the day, it’s persistence that defines success. Genius doesn’t do it. All these talents don’t do it. It’s persistence.

David Pardo (29:46.336)
“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talents will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts.”

Michael Gorton (29:57.741)
That’s right, that is it.

David Pardo (30:02.926)
It continues: Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan, press on, has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

Michael Gorton (30:10.157)
There you go.

David Pardo (30:13.998)
Underrated president, in my humble opinion.

Michael Gorton (30:14.573)
Yeah, very underrated.

David Pardo (30:19.694)
So how do you know when to press on and when do you know that it’s time to close this thread and move on to something else?

Michael Gorton (30:28.077)
Sure. I think that as entrepreneurs, we need to know our starting point and ending point. When I left Teladoc, it was time for me to leave Teladoc. We had overcome the problems. There were no states lining up to put us in prison anymore. We had about two million lives. And what we really needed was somebody who knew mainstream health care.

And Jason Gorevic was totally that person. And I like comparing the battles we went through to get to 2 million and the battles he went through to get to 92 million. He just left. So some people are picking on him right now, which I think is just people who aren’t thinking straight. Teladoc is a world power because Jason figured out how to be persistent. A different kind of persistence. It wasn’t innovation like we applied, but it was, you know, just mainstream business. But I think the point to your question is we have to know our starting point and our ending point because our companies become our children.

And if we always think of them like our children, we have to know at some point those children are going to grow up and they’re going to move away. That’s when you let go, right? And you have to be thinking that way with companies that you build also.

David Pardo (32:04.622)
You can’t, if you’re always parenting, then at some point you fail the parenting, need to actually let go, let them grow up. That’s how you feel about your businesses.

Michael Gorton (32:07.149)
Yeah. And I think, by the way, when I look at Teladoc right now as the parent, I think, okay, I need to get in there and do some tweaking and help people and turn that company around.

David Pardo (32:27.918)
What’s your level of involvement with Teladoc now on a week to week basis?

Michael Gorton (32:33.229)
It’s not a whole lot, but it’s one of those things that maybe we talk about in a few months. Right now is the turnaround time. If you think about where Teladoc is today, I think let’s celebrate all the accomplishments that Jason Gourvick made and all the other people that he brought in. And then let’s figure out how to take his legacy and bring it to the next level.

David Pardo (32:38.382)
You’re still in there. Okay, okay, got it.

Michael Gorton (33:02.509)
Let’s see if we can turn Teladoc into the ounce of prevention.

David Pardo (33:13.294)
Okay, we’ll definitely be asking the question in a couple of weeks, tough question. Since we circled back to Teladoc, just a sort of broad question, what do people in the long -term care space, what do they not know about Teladoc and telemedicine and they should know more of? Or what’s a big misunderstanding?

Michael Gorton (33:15.181)
Yeah. Well, I think that if we’re really, Teladoc telemedicine is now just a tool, right? But with that tool, we can get the best of the best into any long -term care facility. And we’ve been thinking a lot about problems with rural care.

The same things might occur in any facility anywhere in the country.

How do we solve the problem with some 3 % of rural care facilities closing down this year? That’s just insane, right? And so what’s happening out there? A lot of the providers are moving in the city because they can make more money, because they can solve more problems. All right, so what do we leave behind? An empty shell? No, let’s use telemedicine. Let’s use remote patient monitoring all this technology we have, artificial intelligence, and throw them all into a toolkit where we can go into a long -term care facility, put the best doctor in the world in that facility, even though that doctor may be in London right now, and use the technology. Telemedicine is one of the pieces. It’s the delivery vehicle. But there’s so many things that we can put on top of that telemedicine delivery vehicle.

David Pardo (35:27.534)
That’s great. I want to, I know that we’re reaching the end of our time together. I have a couple fun questions I like to ask all of our guests. Number one, what is the most life -changing under $150 purchase?

Michael Gorton (35:45.069)
I bought a book, a friend told me to get this book. It’s called In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day. This probably cost me $12.95, I don’t know. And it’s somewhat of a religious book, but I consider it to be a business book. And the reason is because the book is about this young kid 3,000 years ago who lived in a small village of sheep herders. And the sheep are being attacked by a lion. And he wakes up one morning to take over on his shift. There’s snow on the ground. And so it’s the Middle East. Nobody’s seen snow before. He’s distracted. He’s walking out to where the sheep are, holding onto his spear. The next thing he knows, he comes face to face with a lion. He should have died. And you know, back then, you go die. The lion goes, OK, human, that tastes good. I’m going to eat it. You could turn and run and extend your life by two seconds, but the lion is going to run you down. What he did instead was he raised his spear, screamed bloody murder, and ran straight at the lion, which startled the lion.

The lion falls into a pit, now he should leave, but instead he jumps in the pit, kills the lion. Okay, so this kid is a nobody. He should have died that day. Instead, he raised a spear, ran straight at the lion. And next thing you know, King David is looking for a bodyguard. So put King David in the modern parlance, right? He’s going through these resumes and he goes, okay, this guy studied at the military academy and this guy fought in this war, and, this guy, okay I want to meet him. So this kid becomes David’s personal bodyguard.

Michael Gorton (37:46.957)
It never would have happened if he hadn’t been faced with that lion. And by being faced with a lion somewhere where he should have died, he attacked. He turned the worst possible scenario into something positive. And that’s why it is a business book to me, because turning every time something really terrible happens to us, we should get up, look at it and go, okay.

How do I turn this into something great? Like Benaiah was a nobody sheepherder becomes personal bodyguard to the one of the greatest kings in the history of mankind.

David Pardo (38:33.614)
Great story. It’s under $150. It’s definitely better than like a some kind of ridiculous massager. This isn’t a question but maybe an observation. You can tell me if I’m wrong. I feel like people talk a lot about work -life balance and where work ends and life begins, and people have a philosophy of work and a philosophy of life. And I feel like Michael doesn’t. I feel like Michael makes business decisions the same way he makes life decisions. Is that a fair assessment, or do you have two totally different spheres?

Michael Gorton (39:00.589)
Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think that, you know, it’s part of that whole surrounding, your family becomes sort of the mirror. And we have a friend who has triplet daughters. He was spending time with them this weekend, right? And there was a little bit of commentary back and forth that, you know, the things that we’re trying to accomplish in the business world are critical, but the triplet daughters are more critical. And there’s the balance, you know, you got to know when to drop this one to focus on that one. And when you do, you have balance and when you have balance, you perform so much better.

David Pardo (39:51.822)
If you had a billboard that you knew a million people were going to see, what would you slap on that billboard?

Michael Gorton (39:56.141)
“Help me fix healthcare.”

Michael Gorton (40:04.109)
You know, I think everybody knows what telemedicine is right now because of COVID. You know, I don’t want to create a pandemic to solve a problem. But getting in front of a million people helps you solve the problem because they’ll all see it and they’ll go, what is that? How is he going to do that? How can I participate? Because everybody wants to fix it.

David Pardo (40:04.174)
How can they help you fix it?

David Pardo (40:34.51)
In a couple of weeks, there’s going to be a lot of bandwagons to jump on, it sounds like.

Michael Gorton (40:38.381)
Yeah. Yeah.

David Pardo (40:43.31)
Last question is where do you get your news and how do you stay on top of the trends?

Michael Gorton (40:48.621)
Friends. Now, the first part of the morning every day, I use my iPhone. They’ve got a great little news tool. And so I try to be non-political, try and get to the center of the aisle. But there’s lots of good health care news there. There’s lots of good science. All the space stuff, I love that. It’s all there too. But I find that the best place is talking to my friends and hearing what they’re thinking, seeing.

David Pardo (41:30.886)
You’re very lucky probably to have a lot of interesting friends including some of the guys on the wall there. So there is that.

Michael Gorton (41:34.765)
Yeah, I am. I am very lucky because I grew up a sergeant’s kid.

David Pardo (41:43.662)
This is a charge to everyone listening to find the “Buzz Aldrin” in your life. And, and run from there. How do people learn more about you? How can they find your books? Where should they go online to find more about Michael Gorton?

Michael Gorton (41:45.613)
Yeah. Yeah. I actually have a website. It’s michaelgorton.us, not dot com dot us.

David Pardo (42:06.67)
Okay, so from there and then they can find you on a whole variety.

Michael Gorton (42:08.653)
And LinkedIn, you know, David, we love LinkedIn. It’s such a great tool these days.

David Pardo (42:18.08)
I do. Michael, thank you for coming on the show.

Michael Gorton (42:18.989)
Thank you, David. I appreciate it. It’s been fun.