Team engagement podcast episode - 75 with CEO, Vinod Sankaran & Shawn Richards

Every day, Shawn Richards, of Blue Sky Biz Consulting interviews leaders from the industry to get perspectives on leadership, entrepreneurship, and building great teams. In episode 75, Shawn Richards had a conversation with Vinod Sankaran, Founder and CEO of Medical Billing Wholesalers. Watch this podcast on Blue Sky Biz Consulting’s site.

Transcript:

Shawn Richards, Blue Sky Biz Consulting :

Welcome to the team engagement podcast where leaders of teams share their insights. We discuss six questions in nine minutes because leaders know how to be concise. We’ll go ahead and get started today. First question in a few sentences, tell us who you are and what you do.

Vinod Sankaran, CEO, Medical Billing Wholesalers:

Thank you. Thank you, Shawn. Thank you for inviting me to the podcast. I really appreciate what you do and the effort it takes do it. So really appreciate that and thank you for your time today. Thank you.

My name is Vinod Sankaran and I also go by Vinny, some people have a tough time saying Vinod, so Vinny is also there. I grew up in Chennai, South India. I did my bachelor’s in mechanical engineering, and then I moved to the US in 2001, actually, July 2001. I did two Master’s in Industrial Engineering and Finance from Oklahoma State University. And then I worked in Sprint for a couple of years as a financial analyst. And then I moved to the New York City in 2005.

Today, I’m an entrepreneur. I actually run a couple of companies, but I’m the CEO of Medical Billing Wholesalers. And that actually is a full service revenue cycle management company. We have about 300 plus employees, five delivery centers and clients across the US. And I’m also a CEO of a company called Acrodocz. That’s a medical records retrieval and assembly company and the clients data, personal injury attorneys and law firms. There’s an interesting story about how I become an entrepreneur. If you’re interested. We’ll take like 20 seconds. (Please.)

So in 2005, when I was at Sprint, that was in Overland Park, Kansas, that was their headquarters. My my girlfriend, and my wife now, was in New York City, and it made more sense for me to move to New York than asking her to come to Kansas. So I moved to New York City and I got a couple of offers from insurance companies and finance for them. And there was one ad in Craigslist, which was a smaller company in Brooklyn. I met that person he was an attorney, but also an entrepreneur and he basically told me, I have some ideas. If you join me, we’ll try to do something. I don’t know where it will go. But we can try something together. If you’re looking for something in the corporate world, this is not the right thing, go take up something an Amex or you know, anything like that. That’s what I got an offer before. And I said, Okay, why not? I was almost 25 years old. I’m like, why not give it a shot? And he’s my mentor, even till today. And yeah, we had a couple of businesses that didn’t do well. It actually failed. But we learned valuable lessons. And yeah, this was 15 years ago.

Shawn Richards

Wow. Thank you for sharing. I always love to hear (no problem) how entrepreneurs get started. So thanks for sharing that. Well, second question. What’s the best thing about working with a team?

Vinod Sankaran

Okay, there are definitely a lot of things. Many times people ask me, you know, they want to create a business or they want to become an entrepreneur. I mean, everybody wants to be successful. So the first thing I asked them is, who’s in your team who’s part of your team? Because that’s the most important thing that I’ve learned in the last 15+ years is who is in your team. And also, you should have a vision that you should share with them. Only when everybody is clear on the same page, can you have a common purpose. And together you can achieve, you know, something bigger than all of you together, maybe as some of them will be bigger than what each individual can do. So that’s the best part of working with a team, because each one comes with different values, ideas. And if you can actually first make a common purpose, a goal and then work together, you can achieve something bigger and seeing what you have, you know, envision, and fulfilling them together is the best part of working with a team.

Shawn Richards

That’s great. Thank you. Question number three, I hear from other leaders of teams, that it can be a challenge to get team members engaged. Tell us your thoughts on that.

Vinod Sankaran

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. It is very challenging. We have you know, people come from different walks of life, different life experiences, aspirations, viewpoints. And don’t forget, this is a global world. We have delivery centers here in the US., in India, it’s all remote. And with COVID-19, it’s even crazier. So there are a lot of things. When we try to hire people, there’s no like a magic wand, right? Like you say, Okay, get everybody who exactly thinks like me, and line them up and I can hire them. That’ll be great. But it doesn’t work like that. So there’s a few things right, we can do that. A person, whoever the leader is, right? He could have could be really talented. But they can’t do anything alone. They have to be good team player. Right?

The first thing is, like I mentioned before, you have to engage the team, tell them what your vision is, and tell them I help you. You help me get into this together. That’s the first thing. The second thing would be to measure the engagement, like you said, How do you measure engagement, you need performance metrics for everything. So first, if you tell the employee, I hired you for marketing, this is what I expect from you. Many times they don’t do that. There’s a job description that is posted and nobody follows up on that. So you expectation of what you expect from the employee is very important for every level, beat, a data entry person, video, HR, the salesperson. So once that expectation is done, then you can actually measure them and see what it is. And if they don’t meet that expectations, we retrain them work with them. If not, you know, we they are filtered out. But on the same time, the people who actually go over and above and we have many of those, make sure you recognize them, appreciate them on a daily basis. If you do this, it gets a little easier. It’s still tough, but I think these are the keys we could do that.

Shawn Richards

Those are great insights. Thank you. Question number four. I think we’re up to four. Yes. Question number four. What other piece of advice would you give to leaders and teams?

Vinod Sankaran

Okay, first and foremost, be a nice person. Don’t try to lead with fear, because I don’t think it ever works. And especially when you’re running a company with 10 employees, hundred employees, thousand employees. They’re going to be crisis. in chaos in our day to day life, that’s what happens one day it will be operations one day, it will be sales one day, it could be it. And if you have no issues in your office admin, somebody is not telling you something. They’re afraid. And they’re not telling you stuff. They’re just telling you everything is good, right? So you want to be open, you want to be nice. And you want to be honest and get an honest feedback from them. Right? And they’re going to be a problem, your client is going to have an issue, there is going to be an issue. Make sure you don’t play the blame game. This should not never be don’t judge your team.

And if a client complains, right, I’ve seen all hell breaks loose. And the first reaction is let’s try to find out who’s to blame. Never do that. Try to understand the situation. If it’s your mistake, accept it, and figure out how you can fix it. First thing, never insult or you know, shout at your team, especially in front of a client, if not do it even without but especially in front of a client. This is your team, you created it, you’re responsible. So that’s pretty much it. You have to keep control of your emotions. And that’s pretty much it. If you if they trust you, they will open up and tell you what the issues are before it comes from the client. And then you can actually address them.

Shawn Richards:

Great advice for leaders because I completely agree that fear based is not a good solution at all. So thank you for bringing that up. Now, question number five. What other successful leaders of teams such as yourself, would you like to recognize that have had a positive influence in your life?

Vinod Sankaran:

Okay, that’s, that’s great, Shawn. I mean, a lot of people I’ve interacted a lot of people starting from, you know, college professors, to friends, to business leaders. And I had to pick a few. So I have like four names for you today. One is actually our CEO is the chief operating officer. I met him about 10 years ago. And he’s been with us since then. And that’s one of the reasons I left him in charge of the operations and I’ve been able to focus more on marketing and sales. So his name is Melvin Miller. And he’s been with me for 10 years. So he’s one of them, I will send you his details. And the other one is, again, all of them. All these four of them are good friends, and they’re on the top of their game in their respective fields.

The other one is my good friend. His name is Vijay Palliwag, he’s actually the VP of Customer Service for ABD, which is a medical device company, a big one. I’ve known him since school, and then we actually worked in Sprint together. He’s another guy who’s really grown through the ranks and he’s a great leader. And the other one is a buddy of mine, Kenny Klein. He’s an entrepreneur, he runs a couple of companies, social media, and other one is a website actually has multiple companies that he wants and yeah, I’ve known him. I met him first time in India, when he moved to India to do some project. He was there for a year. So yeah, we’ve been friends since then. And the last one I would like to say is Pat McDonald. He is the CFO of DNA Companies, and I’ve known him for a few years. We worked in different he was a client of mine and then we became friends and he’s moved on to different companies, but he still stayed in touch.

Shawn Richards:

Well, thank you so much for those names and, and for your generosity in praising them. They sound like great people. So thank you. Well, final question. Tell us about your first job.

Vinod Sankaran

This is a fun one. The first job that I actually received paycheck was in Oklahoma State. I was a student janitor. And Oklahoma State has one of the biggest student unions in the world is a but definitely in the US. And so when we’re doing my master’s, my girlfriend then, my wife now, we were both kind of working in Student Union. And you know, our supervisor there a lady called rosemary, very nice lady. She knew we were dating. So she would align us together. So eight work. Eight hours, we would actually, there were 30 restrooms, both men and women, and we were assigned to clean them together. So that’s kind of what we did. And the good part was after you finish, you could actually sit and do your schoolwork. She was very nice about it. So we would go do that. And now that my wife knows I clean bathrooms pretty well, I’m in charge of cleaning and scrubbing the shower area and my house a ventilate. So that’s pretty much what I did. And having said that just reminds me I mean, to be successful in business, I think your physical, your personal life is very important. And your physical and mental health goes hand in hand. Because if you’re not happy in your house, it’s very tough to go and get work done and focus on what you need to do. So that’s what I would say.

Shawn Richards:

That’s a great insight. Thank you for sharing that because you’re right, so many people get caught up in the business part that they neglect other parts and their lives become very tilted one direction or incomplete. So thank you for sharing that. That was great insight. And, Vinod, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. How can people find you?

Vinod Sankaran

Oh, thank you. Thank you, Shawn. They can find me on LinkedIn or by email at vsankaran@scopsys.com. And there are a couple of other two websites for the companies. One is the medicalbillingwholesalers.com. The other one is acrodocz.com. So these are the two websites.

Shawn Richards:

Great, thank you. This is Shawn Richards with the team engagement podcast where leaders and teams share their insights. For more ideas. You can find us on LinkedIn by searching blue sky business consulting. Thanks for joining us have a great day.

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