Continuous Improvement Culture with Johnny Owens at Owens Recovery Science

When leaders value innovation, they often have a value for a continuous improvement culture. If you look at the products and services of your company, they have evolved over time. You might want even more innovation. You can be intentional about creating a continuous improvement culture when you understand how others do it. My guest today is Johnny Owens, Founder of Owens Recovery Science. His company was ranked #136 in the 2019 Inc 5000 list. Johnny shares his wisdom about continuous improvement. We look at the importance of a continuous improvement culture when you want your company to grow fast.

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Johnny Owens: The Transcript

Target Audience: Johnny Owens is the Director of Clinical Education Owens Recovery Science. The Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the Advancement of Military Medicine is a global nonprofit organization created by Congress in 1983 to assist in accelerating the progress of military medicine. Our unmatched experience in military medical research makes us uniquely qualified to assist investigators and clinicians in managing scientific research.

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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

Johnny Owens
If you ever see a crack in what you feel that culture is, and I think most of us know it, we’re just too slow to react. Cut it out like cancer. And that could be people. It could be a customer. It could be your processes suck, and your people are drowning because they just can’t get answers to things. And so, you know, I, we sniff these things out sometimes and we ignore them. And so we we had a couple of hires that just didn’t fit and it really started to send our culture down this this tailspin. And so we were acting quickly like okay, we just got to make a change your real quick, so don’t ignore it. It doesn’t go away swallow the frog.

Intro
Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Jean Hammett. I hope leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow?

Gene Hammett
Culture is very important to your business. You’ve heard this before, you’ve probably even known that it’s important. But why is culture important? Why must we pay attention to the employee experience? Why must we, as leaders, be proactive about creating a place where people can perform at their highest level? Well, it’s very simple, our people are our most expensive resources. I haven’t met a business yet where people weren’t the most expensive resource unless they were selling some products and marking it up. But our people are very valuable not only to the business as far as we know what we spend, but also how the business grows. And so if you really value people, then that’s the reason why culture is important.

I’m Gene Hammett. I’m excited to talk to you today about culture. I’m talking about leadership and about how do you create this culture. I went out into my network and I found a company that I feel like is really doing something special. They’re number 136 on the Inc list. And that’s at 5000 companies, it’s pretty amazing. They only have about six people, but that six people was so important for this owner to create the kind of culture that really drove value and drove growth, that they did over 5 million in sales in that first three years.

Now, I share this with you without telling you who it is. It’s Johnny Owens, founder of Owens Recovery Science, they create some really amazing products that are getting a lot of buzz in the marketplace. And I’ll let him tell you a little bit more about what they’re doing. But just know that Johnny is talking today about culture about why it’s important about why as leaders even with as few as six employees, we should be paying attention to culture, and we should be really creating that kind of place where people love to come to work. They give their all and they feel that sense of ownership.

Commercial
Before we dive into the interview, I wanted to remind you that you can actually get a tool that I’ve been working with clients with. For the last couple of years, I’ve refined this tool this gone through several iterations. Now we have it completely automated, you can actually go online and fill out the leadership quiz. To get the leadership quiz. Just go to theleadershipquiz.com. That’s pretty easy, right? theleadershipquiz.com what you will get when you do that, you will answer a few questions, you will see where you rate based on the core principles of fast-growth companies. If you’re ready to grow your company or you want to see where you are, then make sure you go to theleadershipquiz.com inside it you will get insight into where you are, understand where you want to improve. And you will get them mapped into the 10 areas that are most specific to fast-growth companies. Again, go to theleadershipquiz.com and you can get that right now. And now here’s the interview with Johnny.

Gene Hammett
Hey, Johnny, how are you?

Johnny Owens
I’m good Gene. How are you, man?

Gene Hammett
I’m Fantastic. Glad to have you here at Growth Think Tank. I want our audience to know a little bit about the company. So give us an idea of your company and what you do.

Johnny Owens
So we are a medical device and medical research and medical education company. So basically my profession is I’m a physical therapist by trade I was with the Do for 11 years during the wars. And so this is kind of a spin-off of some of my research that I did with combat casualty care. And now we’ve moved into the civilian medical space, primarily orthopedic and rehab and work a lot not only with a DOD but professional teams, college teams, large healthcare systems, US Olympic team, etc.

Gene Hammett
Is this a SaaS product?

Johnny Owens
No, it’s just it’s an actual medical device. So it’s a tourniquet system with a Doppler built-in.

Gene Hammett
Oh, that’s right. So, when you talked earlier, you are, you know, 136 on the Inc list with, you know, fast growth over a short period of time. You thought culture was an important piece to that. Why is culture so important to your company?

Johnny Owens
Well, I think I learned a lot from the culture that we had in the god during the war. And I think if you think of the big bureaucracy that is the God in any government agency, there’s a lot of downside to those cultures. But there’s a lot of really positive that comes from that when you’re in these wars. And so this whole kind of mission, you know, maybe use another word besides culture that we’re all in this for this specific goal. Made it where, you know, there were all the attitudes were checked at the door, all the titles were checked at the door. Everyone knew what our mission was our mission, you know, medical was to help the combat casualty get back to his highest level of function. the highest level of function, you know was it was always can we get them back to redeploy or stay on active duty?

Or if unfortunately, they’re too injured? Can we at least let them have a hobby successful functional life? So that culture for us then here is we all understand our mission and we look at that is okay, we know why we’re doing this. And every day we kind of have this cliche, but this team approach.

Gene Hammett
So when you are bringing in people to, you know, match the culture, what are the things that you do and to make sure that someone’s aligned to a culture that’s going to fit for you?

Johnny Owens
That’s one of our hardest things. That’s why we’re so small size-wise with full-time employees right now is, you know, basically my wife’s an employee, one of her good friends who worked with her for years at a prior firm that she was at, is an employee, her cousins and employee, my old into He’s a physical therapist as employee and my old research consultant and my, my assistant at the Center for the intrepid, which was where I was with God is an employee. So we’re very insular and really like, you know, we’re talking about bringing on new people. And the first thing we said is, you know, who does anyone know or has a family member that first that we think would be a good fit?

So for us, it’s like, we want to bring people in, we have a role no assholes, you know, so even if you aren’t highly trained in what we do, as long as you your personality jives with our personality, and you’re in this for the reasons we’re in this, we feel like we can we can train you up and having a good fit. And that means our whole team gets together and, and kind of sits with you and decide, you know, is this a good fit and with our contractors now that we’ve brought on, same thing most of them have been working with us for for several years now. And we finally get to the point like okay, this person’s going to take a bigger role

Gene Hammett
and you’ve got a lot of contractors Give me an idea of just roughly how many that is.

Johnny Owens
I think in the US we have probably 5, one in Canada, we have several in Asian adding more in in Europe now. I think we’re at around like five to six, we’re starting to add some more in Australia. And those are kind of exponentially growing.

Gene Hammett
You get you get a quite a bit of production out of a handful of people. So how does how does that work? How do you make sure that you’re getting close to almost a million dollars in revenue per employee?

Johnny Owens
Well, we all cross train so we all know each other’s jobs and what it takes to do it maybe it’s a past military thing, but we’re pretty lean and understanding what it takes to get the job done with what we have. And understanding that sometimes we can get a solution and systematize so we’re, you know, we’re small, we’ve only been around for you know, four years now, but you know, we have that Sophie’s in place. Very systematized processes and, you know, these kind of after action reports. So when we do things, even if they’re successful, you know, we meet weekly and we’ll break down what was good about it and what was a fail point. And a motto is always fell better. And so the fail points are usually what we learn the most from and see if we can fix it. So we’re always trying to make what we do is kind of straightforward and as easy as possible.

Commercial
Hold on for a second. Johnny just talked about failure. Let me ask you a question. What is your relationship with failure? What is you? How do you react when something goes wrong? You don’t get the expected results, you don’t get the deal? Do people worry that their job is at risk? Well, your relationship with failure can really set the tone for how everyone else thinks about failure. Many people think failure is the end Others think that failure is a learning opportunity. And really, you know, ask you to accept the second one here, this failure is a learning opportunity, it’s a step forward, it may not be the step in the right direction, but it does. It’s better to take a step forward and get feedback than to be worried about not taking those steps forward. If you create the kind of culture that is okay to fail, and even celebrates failure, you can create a place where people are willing to keep pushing forward and grow as fast as you all can handle back the interview with Johnny.

Gene Hammett
Well, we talked about culture being number one, so how does it really drive the business to operate at the current level of growth and continue beyond where you are today?

Johnny Owens
Well, I think it starts from the top so my job is to make sure that my staff contractors all know that I’m there for them. So I come in and I and I basically know that I will worked for them and whatever I need to do to support them, I think lets them know I have their back and also that I can help them get to solutions. If they’re banging their head against the wall. And then if they feel supported, then it really seems like it carries over to they’re trying to help and support our customers. So we really, really pride ourselves on being the best elya our products in our in our research and our in our training, but in taking care of our people, we have no marketing dollars, we have no salespeople, we just take care of our customer. That’s it and we’ll bend over backwards and do whatever it takes, and they all have our cell numbers and our emails, and it just grows, you know, so they talk to each other and we’d rather get a customer from a referral than we would from some click thing.

Gene Hammett
So, I want to dive into that a little bit because I want to make sure I understand it correctly and I here to talk to a lot of leaders Just like you, you talked about I work for them. So that’s kinda like a servant leadership model for. Is that correct? In your leadership?

Johnny Owens
Yeah.

Gene Hammett
And that comes from the army.

Johnny Owens
Yeah, I mean, that’s what should be in government services. So I wasn’t active duty but but that really is the, you know, you always see like, yeah, I’m going to salute the officer above me. But at the end of the day, that person above them is needs to serve the lowest level inventory person, because they’re the ones who are having to get the job done. So I think understanding like who who are the ones that are actually in the trenches, getting the job done, you have to support them or you’re going to lose the war. And that’s where I come from. This is my folks in the trenches, if they’re not being supported in whatever capacity we’re going to lose this war.

Gene Hammett
And you’ve got a company kind of motto of customer, you know, centric, right? really adding value creating products that the customers want. And that’s really your sense of referrals. So those those things are great. But as a leader, and I don’t even know what you would say on this, but as a leader, what’s more important your employees, those team members are your customers, my boys so when you say that you say it pretty quickly, I want to make sure I understand this because I actually, I had a debate the other day with a very high level respected CEO of a Fortune 50 company. I won’t mention who it is, but you know, it really kind of caught me off guard because he said I was wrong. When I reported that many companies that are growing fast like yours, Johnny that they put their employees first. So what is it and why is that matter for you?

Johnny Owens
It’s much easier to replace a customer than it is to replace one of my team who’s part of you know, my family and so, you know, there’s always going to be another customer and And usually, if your cultures right and your missions are Right, that if there’s some sort of breakpoint or something that’s going wrong between an employee and a customer, it’s usually the customer that’s being the pain in the ass. And they’re the problem. And so those are the people we don’t even want, you know, we want to choose our customers and get the right one. So I’d rather have 100 customers, I love to help, then 10,000 customers that are a pain in my ass. And so my folks, I trust them if they’re like, this guy is just being a total jerk. And, you know, I’m happy to jump on a call and say, Hey, what’s problem and what can I do to help resolve this? And if we can’t, then we’re done.

Gene Hammett
You know, I had the debate and I didn’t really take a strong stance on it because I was, I was actually kind of told how many different ways that was wrong, and samples of why it’s customer first, and I think bigger companies and older leadership still believe that that everything that the company’s doing is customer first and I don’t mean the company shouldn’t put the customer first. I’m just talking about leaders, what is leaders there to do? And I’ve always thought leaders were there to grow and develop the people so that they can put the customer first. Right?

Johnny Owens
Right.

Gene Hammett
When you think about that, what does that mean about the way you lead day in and day out?

Johnny Owens
Well, again, I think I’ve said I’m leading to to lead my team by serving my team, and in them knowing that I’m going to have their back. And they understand, you know, our mission is we want to be the best at what we do. And they know exactly kind of what our business is and what our model is. That if I’ve trained them up well enough, and that I don’t need to worry about this, this whole customer issue. It’s a non issue and we I mean, I can really tell you, we almost never have a problem. I never really deal with it. The only the biggest customer problem I get is like Hey, why are you 60 days past due time, but other than that, You know, I think if you set that groundwork up right at the start, and you, you know, if you have employees that aren’t happy, and it’s probably your leadership that’s not doing it, then you’re probably gonna have customer issues and they’re leaving. And that’s a that’s a huge problem. That’s not a customers right problem. And if you watch movies, that’s the big running joke. You know, you see these kind of shows where the employee, you know, the customer is being a jerk off, and then the boss comes over and berates the employee and fires on, you know, just like, Man, what a jerk. I don’t ever want to be that guy.

Gene Hammett
Yeah, it’s hard because I think a lot of people grown up, you know, my dad worked for the same company for 31 years, it was Delta Airlines. The sense of loyalty he had growing up was completely different, like polar opposite to because he didn’t even think about working anywhere else. He had a sense of ownership and pride about his company because that was his identity. Yeah, but I think now we’re employees don’t typically get that leaders have Have a harder job that if we do don’t really pay attention to the small details of putting in place first, we miss out on those opportunities to build that connection and loyalty.

Johnny Owens
Yeah, well, and I think business is more than profit and that’s where these big companies now it’s always been profit driven and I’m sure your guy in the in the in the top 50 would call me an idiot for that. But if it’s all about profit, then you’re always going to take the customer side your your employees are probably not going to be in it for the real reason that you got into this thing. And so you know, I think that’s the disconnect if this goes away tomorrow, I’m cool. I met my mission it was the get this you know, thing out that was something I thought was incredible. And I feel like we’ve done that and so if, if it’s all about profit, that I’m frickin miserable, I don’t want to come to work anymore.

Gene Hammett
Well, for those that are in the growing a fast growth company, and You know, trying to put attention to culture, what advice would you have for those leaders?

Johnny Owens
So I think understand what culture is, you know, it’s such a common word now and such a buzzword now that I think people are confusing, I got a ping pong table or allow dogs to come to work as culture, you know, those are just aesthetics. And those are things that, you know, I think sometimes make these companies feel good about themselves. So first understand what does culture mean to you? Like the military culture is very rigid and strict and it’s harsh, you know, it is and during most times, especially in these times, you’re like, this is a pain in the ass. But if if the shit hits that I’m sorry, I cut sometimes. If you know if, if everything goes to hell in a handbasket, all of that culture that you were taught to follow these rules don’t step out of line to understand that you stay in this quadrant, they’re going to save your life.

So that culture is way different than maybe some silicon Valley culture that’s like we got to recruit people that want to play video games at the same time they’re coding. So I think understand, like, what’s your culture and mission is ours is to not only you kind of serve each other, but to, to serve this, this whole business that we built, which is around this buffalo restriction rehab technique. And we’re understanding like, that takes research that takes training people that takes selling it and that takes supporting our customers. And then we get these testimonials back from patients and providers that are like, this is the best thing since sliced bread. You guys are like amazing. And it makes us feel good. So I think for someone starting out, figure out what your culture needs to be.

Gene Hammett
And when you think about that, what’s the next step after that you would tell someone

Johnny Owens
if you ever see a crack in what you feel that culture is and I think most of us know it, we’re just too slow to react. Cut it out like cancer, and that could be people. It could be a customer. It could be your processes suck and your people are drowning because they just can’t get answers to things. And so, you know, we sniff these things out sometimes and we ignore them. And so we we had a couple of hires that just didn’t fit. And it really started to send our culture down this this tailspin. And so we were acting quickly. We’re like, okay, we just got to make a change here real quick. So don’t ignore it. It doesn’t go away, swallow the frog.

Gene Hammett
You know, I talked to a lot of leaders that maybe they avoid confrontations. And they feel like maybe someone else is supposed to take care of that they want to empower their people. But what you’re talking about is different than avoiding confrontation. You’re really like, hitting confrontation head on. Am I reading that right?

Johnny Owens
Yeah. And it’s usually out there. You know, if you put it out, it’s, you know, we had a meeting it was I wasn’t able to get some solutions to these questions I had and this this problem kept going and going and going. I didn’t know the solutions. So I had to figure out, you know, where we’re going to get an answer real quick so we can make our people not miserable. So that was confrontation to a problem. But it could also be, hey, this employees showing up 30 minutes late every day and it keeps getting worse and worse. Let’s nip this in the bud because it’s making the other folks around. You’re kind of upset. So, yeah, it’s just going at it. It’s not like, Hey, I’m dropping the hammer on here. Because I’m a math guy. It’s like, this is a problem. Here’s why it’s a problem. Let’s cut this cancer out.

Gene Hammett
Now, as hard as you seem, and you have this, this military, static, I bet there’s a caring side behind you because you don’t put in place first without that sense of caring. How far do you take it as a leader to truly care about your employees.

Johnny Owens
I try and take it as far as I possibly can. So I’m medical. So you know, and I think if you’re going to be in medical and and you’re going to be successful in it, you have to want to help others. care for others. And so I’ve been a clinician for over 20 years now and I love helping people and treating patients and so that that’s in me and and the same thing with my folks. You know, I, I want to see the people that work here I would love to see them grow and go start their own thing or or, or feel confident enough if they wanted to leave they could tell me because they’ve got some great new things that some other company wants them to do. But I I’m going to be that guy they remember that I supported them and I tried to help them grow and and not only what we do here is a business but you know, how to how to work as a team how to have fun as a team, how to do training together for stuff outside of this like you know, understanding our 401 Ks and savings and things like that.

Gene Hammett
Fantastic. Well, Johnny, I really appreciate you being here at Growth Think Tank. One last thought for you. Share with us one defining moment you’ve had as a leader that you felt like you learned the most from.

Johnny Owens
Yeah. So I, you sent this question at a time and I thought long and hard I you know, I’ve got a lot of failures that I learned for sure. But I hate to keep going like back to military but I think just working there during the wars, I learned so much and so you know, I really one moment I remember I came in and you know, when you’re working with God, you have meetings about meetings in and you have all these trainings and just so much crap to deal with and I was just really all worked up and kind of pissed off and we’re not remember what it was and one of our guys center for the intrepid the God is kind of leading site for amputee care and limb salvage.

So the blast trauma is the worst of the worst. And the young kid was a bilateral above knee amputee. So he’s in a wheelchair, and his arm was in one of these frames. He was trying to save his arm. And he asked me what my problem was. And I said nothing man just pissed off at that much stuff. And he told me, you know, it took me almost two hours hours to get ready to come in here today and catch a bus so I can see you. So he said you really need to check your priorities here and why you’re here today. And so that was like a kick in the in the you know what, for me and I kind of stepped back and said you know everything in life you’re there for a moment and it could be when I’m with my kids or whatever but when I walk into here at work that’s what I’m here for is to lead this business and to serve and put a smile on my face as soon as I walk into the door no matter what’s happened and and get this day off as good as I can now that was trying to be as Frou Frou and fluffy as I could as I can but but that that’s just a redirect when you come in this is your mission and treat it like a like a mission. Not that this is just a job.

Gene Hammett
Well, I appreciate you sharing that with us, Johnny. Thanks for being here. GrowthThink Tank. Thanks for sharing your wisdom.

Johnny Owens
Yeah, thanks, Gene. I appreciate it, man.

Gene Hammett
Wow, love that interview. Really appreciate you tuning in here. If you’re hearing my voice Now you’ve listened to the all the way to the end. One of my favorite pieces about what Johnny talked about was the the failure inside the organization and how they failed forward, each iterative step to this process. A lot of companies aren’t growing as fast, really avoid failure. They’re really trying to mitigate those risks. And I get that we need to put boundaries around it, but we also need to be okay, with a little bit of failure. And really helping that go along is what Johnny has created inside the culture.

So thank you for tuning in here to Growth Think Tank. Thank you for sharing this episode with one person that you know, wants to create a culture that they’re proud of and they want to be a leader that is evolving every step of the way. As always, lead with courage.

Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.

 

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