Name: Doug Frederick
Title: CEO
Organisation: HealthCues
About:
Health Cues is a group healthcare management platform, that has a limited benefit health insurance policy, with defined preventative health care benefits for employees.
The program implements a Section 125 plan, which may reduce taxable income for employees and creates payroll tax savings for the employer. The program has no out of pocket monies from the employer or employee and is not replacing any current coverages.
1. What have you found most challenging (and exciting) as a CEO or senior leader?
The most challenging has been to focus my time on prioritizing the most important projects for the company. I do a lot in the sales department but at the same time I have a company to run and need to balance the two. Sales makes the company more profitable but you also have to provide leadership.
The most exciting is seeing how we are helping companies and employees at the same time.
2. What was your journey to becoming a CEO executive or entrepreneur especially in the last decade? Please briefly tell your story?
Originally I was looking to be a salesperson for a similar program to what we have built our company around. I was not looking to run a company, put a company together, or financially support a company. After relying on a few different companies to be the backbone and support for my sales pipeline, I realized the old quote, “If you want things done right do them yourself.” I decided to put a team together and create our own program. Our program is very new to the market and has taken awhile to catch on. It took a lot of legal work, time, and financial commitment to get the program to where it is today. With the pandemic we found who our niche market is after a few years of going down a dead end road. It now has proven to be worth all the time and effort we have put into it.
3. What’s a most recent significant leadership lesson you’ve learned which transformed the way you lead/operate?
Everyone in the company needs to have clarity on what you are currently doing, why you are doing what you are doing, what you plan on doing, and the end goal. Everyone in our organization should be able to relay this to anyone.
4. What is your secret to organising/managing your work, your role (or portfolio of roles) and your personal life every single day from waking up moments to bedtime?
Discipline is the secret. You attract by who you are and what you do. You can control the talent and clients you attract. You need to make championship decisions in all areas of your business. Epic years are built on consistent days. None of this can be accomplished without discipline. Show up every day.
5. What are the important topics and trends on your mind these days, that you feel impact business, the leaders and their journey and areas they need to focus on?
Our big push in 2023 is employee engagement. How do we get employees engaged in their health and all around well-being? What are employees really wanting from a company? How do we get true feedback from employees. How do we keep employees and recruit long term employees?
6. What is one book or film that has had a significant impact on your leadership (both personally and in business) so far?
I would say a podcast I saw by David Meltzer. He went from $100m in net worth to $0. He has turned it back around and is very successful again. He did it by asking CEO’s or people running companies what they were in need of or what was the most important thing for them to accomplish. He wasn’t selling anything to them but trying to find answers for them.
7. How do you build leadership capacity and embed growth mindset in businesses and people?
By being very transparent on your vision and end goal. Letting leaders know that by them having something to say in a way that people want to hear is true talent. Everyone in the room should know exactly what your company stands for and does by the time you leave the room, event, lunch, etc. There should never be a question of what you are doing. If you sell Cadillacs, no one should be asking you if you sell Ferrari’s when you are done.
8. What is an experience or story you can share that comes to mind from your time as a senior leader/executive that resulted in a highly positive outcome ?
You can’t be everything to everyone. One of my business partners commented in a meeting, “If you are everywhere, you are nowhere.” This really helped me personally to focus on who we are, what we do, and what companies do we add value to. This added a lot of hours back to my work week and helped me to say no more.
9. What is one piece of wisdom you would like to share?
Making the most of your health, time, and humanity/people is what really matters. We all have one life and we don’t get a second one. Make the most of it.
Don’t just talk about change, be about it!
