Nancy Temple of Katten & Temple Interviews Scott Becker on the Concept of Motivation 5-16-24

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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Private Equity and Business Podcast ORG. I'm thrilled today to be joined by a close colleague and a long-term colleague, a brilliant lawyer who has worked with Supreme Court ORG brief, been a leader, the managing partner of Law from Katten Temple ORG, as a brilliant, brilliant leader, Nancy Temple PERSON. I've known her literally from college and law school at Harvard Law School ORG.I know it's so embarrassing to say that, but from University of Illinois and Harvard Law School ORG. We're going to have a fun time today, or at least I hope so. Nancy is a close colleague forever, and she's going to interview me today in the way that I typically interview other people. I'm privileged to have Nancy PERSON do so. Nancy, let me ask you to take a moment and introduce yourself and then go ahead and tee it up and let's get after it.

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Sure. Thanks, Scott PERSON. Yes, as you mentioned, we've known each other for over 40 years for better or for worse. I'm currently a lawyer, partner, Katten and Temple in Chicago, practicing in a boutique law firm. And in my spare time, I'm a hockey mom to three boys. So that kind of sums it up right then and there.

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And not a lot of spare time, quite frankly, when you've got three boys playing serious hockey, one is an all-state hockey player, the other two are on their route. I mean, there's not a lot of free time with the amount of travel and time that goes into being a hockey mom, plus managing partner of a law firm, plus a spouse, and an amazing career. Nancy PERSON, I'll turn it back to you.

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Well, Scott PERSON, most of your audience probably knows a little bit about you, but I thought it would be interesting to hear directly from you. You know, as you know, you're a lawyer, a CPA, extremely successful and driven, founder of a global leading health care law law practice and then also founder and publisher of Becker's Hospital Review, Becker's Healthcare ORG, and then more recently this particular podcast. And on top of it, I know personally your outstanding father, partner, brother, son, in front of many, many longstanding friends. So, you know, I just wanted to hear from you.How do you stay motivated and driven over the past four years and 40 years and so and looking forward to maybe the next 40?

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Well, I think another 40 would be wishful, I think. But I think this, this concept of, I've had two primary careers that I've struggled forever, which is building a health care law practice at McGuire Woods ORG, a magnificent firm with great, great partners, and then building a media company, Becker's Health Care ORG, again, with great, great partners and team members. And so much of everything is we think about intentionality, but we also think about really three things constantly, is this concept of great teams because there are so many great thoughts in this,but you could do so many things with great teams that you can't do by yourself. And there's so many different great, you know, cliches and idioms about and so forth. But I think it's the most true thing in the world. You can't really do anything without great team members. And I remember first starting the media business and really doing almost everything but outsourcing a couple things.And that just was very, very, very challenging. Once you build great teams, just so much freedom to do so many things. I've been particularly fortunate in the media business. Scott Cole became my teammate and partner really 20 years ago now, just a magnificent leader. She's now the CEO leads the company day to day, really runs everything. I still serve as chief content officer, but really there's still that really do a large part of what was once my job. Soit's very manageable. Then the law from the same thing. I was gifted to have great team members, great partners that really were able to, if I was able to start fires and get things going, they were able to really grow and drive the practice. People like just, the same a few, Amber Walsh, Holly Buckley, Bart Walker, David Pivnik, Jeff Cockrell PERSON. There were a bunch of people that really took the whole thing to hold different level than I was able to.And that was evident in last week's 20th annual health care private equity meeting. I often say about entrepreneurs, two different things. First is you need to have a team, passion, and drive, and then find a product and market fit, which for me has always been around niches. That's one thing we always say about founders and drivers is, ultimately it's a team, passionate drive, and finding a product slash market fit.The other thing I think about entrepreneurs is there's three stages of an entrepreneur. First stage, you do sort of things yourself. Second, you hire people that aren't necessarily better than yourself. And then finally you get to the third stage where every role that you once had is generallydone better by people that have joined the team over time and then lead the team, quite frankly. So there's these three evolutions and you try and get to the third stage where everybody's better than you are at the jobs that you used to do. And it's, that could be emotionally challenging. It could be ego challenging, but it's really where you want to be to build sustainable organizations.We also think about founders. Do they bring in other great leaders when they're no longer is involved? Is the organization better off than they were before? Is it going better than it was before them? So you look at people like the people that run Microsoft and Apple today. I mean, it's a real tribute to the gates of the world, the jobs of the world, that thosecompanies do better pass them than they did with them. In terms of, if you asked a question, I've talked, which is on motivation and drive, and I think it's very hard to figure out where that all comes from. And then over time, trying to maintain that drive and focus, for most of us, there are ebbs and flows in it. You go through periods of time where you truly find your passion, you find a structure that works for you, and it just finds you, and you're driven and motivated and things go.You go through other periods of life where you're not quite as motivated and driven, and it's more challenging. You have to create and lean into those passions to try and cultivate that driving motivation. I think it ebbs and flows over the period of time, and you try and keep, you know,when it comes easy, and you find yourself very clearly motivated. I found it very clearly for a period of life. We're building the media company, building the law practice, and raising children. It was very easy. It was very compelling. Different periods of life, it's more the media company, building the law practice, and raising children, it was very easy.It was very compelling. Different periods of life, it's more challenging to find that motivation and drive and focus. Nancy PERSON, then we turn it back to you before I just keep on talking and talking.

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Well, I was there. I remember when you hired Jessica Cole PERSON and how, and I've met many of your lawyer, colleagues who have taken over the McGuire Woods ORG healthcare practice and they're fabulous. How do you go about recruiting these talented folks and what are you looking for? What do you recommend that people look for to help develop

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the teams around them? Yeah, I think there's multiple different pieces to that. I think when hiring, you try and start with, you know, estimates and probabilities, which is, you know, did they do well in school? Are they not job hoppers? Do they take things seriously? Have they engaged themselves?Do they keep themselves busy? You know, have they shown leadership potential? You know, obviously, in the law from hiring, it was very much about grades and schools and those kinds of things. And in some ways, it was a very reliable indicator really starting out because people that made the effort to be diligent in school and do well in school would typically take the jobseriously, too. What I found in hiring and so forth is that you have to recognize every time you hire somebody, it's an educated guess and it's a gamble. So what I've found over the years is, you know, you'll hire somebody and people immediately perceive, well, this person's going to be fantastic and in the second coming, it's just fantastic, and half the time they're not. And a different person who people did not have those expectations of end up being just fantastic.And I think the reality is once you hire is when it really starts. I mean, you hire first, you hire for certain criteria. Do they seem stable, hardworking, bright? All those things may be entrepreneurial, depending on the job. And then it takes time to sort them out. And I think it's very important to sort of, you know, view it as when you see talent, when you see terrific people, you have to double downand triple down and load up the bus behind them. So like early on, and Jessica was working for me when she first started out of college, and I had 10 people working for me, and she was a young, you know, person in the big scheme of things, and she still was a young person. But she was so outperforming everybody else that we, a couple of years in, I was running the law practice. We put her in charge of everybody, and everybody sort of, some people sort of, like,for lack of a better word, freaked out about that, but she was just so outperforming everybody else. Now, in a million years, would I know that she would outperform everybody else so intensely and so well and handle herself well? I didn't know that. And so she was with us for some time. But I think a lot of hiring and building teams is you hire as well as you can.It's a guesstimate type thing. Then you have to sort people out and really double and triple down and the people show promise and show, you know, drive and motivation and personal skills. We just talk about people as having intelligence, drive, and personal skills. That package. Obviously, other things go on as well, like integrity. Are they good people? Are they a pleasure to work with? But a lot of those might finish the category of personal skills, but personal skills drive and intelligence. And it's not very different with some of theother people that have grown to lead the things that I used to be in charge of that now do a better job with them. Like Amber serves on the executive committee of our billion-dollar law firm, McGuire Wood, not mine. The firm itself is a billion-dollar law firm. And she just has done a magnificent job. And it's sort of recognizing people, giving them opportunities, and then continuing to double down on them. They just don't know what the people really start working with you. That's when you really know what you have. And then you have to be willing to, you know, take gambles and take bets and double down on people.Holly Buckley PERSON's the same. She wants the national health care practice. Just fantastic. And you wouldn't have known it. I mean, she's one of these people that graduated high school at 16, started college at 16. So obviously very, very bright.But wouldn't have known she'd be such a dynamic, motivated leader until you're with her for a period of time. And then you see it, and you have to double down on people like that.

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And in your managing of these people that you hire and take a gamble on, what do you do to support and mentor the people reporting up to you to get them to the next level of leadership? Yeah.

Speaker 0681.18s - 743.6s

So I view it as I have several cliche things about this and it's somewhat trite, but I often say it's easy to be a great manager if you recognize and see great people. And so, like, I almost joke. It's great to be a great coach if your athletes are fantastic. And it's very similar with management. If you have great people, it's easy to be a great manager.And then beyond that, there's a couple other lessons that I've grown to over the years. It's very important that people are working with you, not for you, and then in the long run, they thrive and you thrive, or they thrive in the organization thrives. We talk about that Venn diagram. We've all had bosses where they thrive and it doesn't matter if you thrive.And the problem with that model is that's not a sustainable model in most organizations for the long run because the people that are great won't stand for being, you know,

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being subordinate to somebody else.

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It really has to become over time side-by-side relationships. I mean, I've had this remarkable partnership side-by-side with Jessica PERSON, we've probably, you know, had disagreements a handful of times, but she really runs things. I don't run them.She really runs them and it became clear. You have to let people thrive and find opportunities for them, and it's very similar with Amber and Holly. You have to end the same with Bart Walker PERSON, one of my great colleagues and some others. They have to thrive independent of you. Jeff Cockrell and our firm, you know, work side by side of these for a long time and then built this magnificent healthcare private equity practice that I might have feed it a little bit, but I was going nowhere under my leadership, and I can't be zealous of thator jealous of it. I have to be, he's got to thrive. They thrived and built this fantastic practice that I might have had some early, early inspiration and insight into, but it was going nowhere with me being the leader or top-down leader. It just doesn't work. So our belief really is, you know, it's easy to be a great manager if you've got great people. And I say that's so much jokingly, but I think it's very true. It's very hard to be great manager for the micromanager, everybody. And second is you really haveto have the perspective, they're thriving and you're thriving. I remember a boss one time we used to joke about, you know, a penny to him was more important than $10,000 to me. And you have to stand that notion on its face. You have to turn that upside down. It's just as important that your partners are thriving, that you're thriving.I mean, in all my organizations today, the people that at one point worked with me or started subordinates me. I don't like that term one bit, all make more money than I do say in those organizations. And that's a huge win. The people that lead those do better than I do. And that's where we want to be. And you can't be jealous of that. You have to embrace that and say it helps all of us and it works for all of us. But that's the mindset we try and take, you know, and I've beenfortunate, but it's really fine great people, double down on those great people. They thrive, you thrive. It's not you thrive. They don't thrive. It's, you know, that's how we view it.

Speaker 1881.02s - 927.8s

And you mentioned looking for people who have loyalty and stick-toitiveness that aren't necessarily job hopping a lot. And I think there's people have observed that some of the younger folks out there in the workplace have more job fluidity and switch jobs. And how do you recommend that managers or the younger professionals in the workplace focus on the values of loyalty and sticking to an organization and not job hopping just to try something different every 12 months or so DATE. Sure.

Speaker 0927.96s - 1120.58s

I don't know that the term loyalty is the one that I think about. I think about stability, centeredness, goals,ness, those kinds of things. I think in all these organizations, like what I would say to my children is, you've got to say it's a place a few years to really start getting the benefit of it, to really understand it, get the full experience of it. And then you could start to figure it out.I would say with people working at firms, it goes back to this thrive, thrive mentality. The people that are working with you have to thrive and you have to thrive. It can't be the other way around or it's not going to be an enticing place to be for the long run. I mean, the fact that people are much more mobile today than they were years ago in the workforce and they switch more is obviously more complicated. Like we always say about people joining a team, there's about a two, three year period where the team might decide are they right for the team, but far more important, does that person decide that this is theright place for them and what they want to do for the long run? And, you know, and it's a constant evolution of these relationships. You know, I don't think there's anybody that's worked with me for a long period of time where you've not been through some ups and downs with the relationship, there's lots on the workplace, thoughts on this, those things. It's a natural part of long-term careers and relationships that there's going to be someups and downs with them, and you sort of have to, you know, embrace that, that there's going to be some of that. I think of it less about loyalty and more about stability and thrive, thrive. Are you creating an environment or the culture as they thrive and you thrive? And do they decide? This is what I want to do for the law when this works for me. And that's, you know, that's, you know, you're talking about people. I've been at the Woffham for 30 years nowbetween this firm and the predecessor from that merged into this firm. I've been at the media company for 30 years now, too, founded it more than 30 years ago. And that just is unusual today. I talk to people once in a while. They're in the same ways for 30 years now too, founded it more than 30 years ago. And that just is unusual today. I talk to people once in a while. They're in the same ways for 30 years. We don't like that in our employees and our team members and our staff.Some of the people that have been with me at the law firm and at the healthcare business. The media business has been with me for 20 plus years. You know, but it's got to be thrive, thrive. That they're thriving and you're thriving. It works for their life.It works for your life. And as a leader, as a manager, as a, you know, as somebody who runs something, you have to be so sensitive today to and tuned into, how do we make this work for them? And I think one of the great, you know, lessons I had years ago was we started to have people in our group, you have to move to other placesfor family reasons, for other reasons. And way ahead of the curve, we embrace the fact, I don't care if they're great, they're great, I don't care where they work from. They can work from Mars LOC as far as I care as long as they're doing a great job, you know, and I know it's hard to work from Mars LOC, but the reality is we, you know, we had the rule changed at the firm a long, long time ago to allow some of our people to work in remote offices because it was more important. Once you have great people, you have to double and triple and quitful down on them because it's not that easy to findgreat people. I don't, I think that's the hard part. Right. Yeah, you have to invest in them.

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So you talked about the ebbs and flows of passion, motivation, and drive. And when you reach an ebb, do you reflect internally? Do you reach out externally for motivation or support? How do you manage that? And what do you recommend to people who, you know, maybe hit a wall or an ebb in their practice or a professional career? And how do they regenerize themselves and get back into it?

Speaker 01156.96s - 1232.42s

Yeah, no, I think it's a great question. And I know that through time I've done it, and it really depends on the person of what works for them. I've done it, I think, sometimes the wrong way. I've gotten very good advice to make course corrections over time. The wrong way for me, who's a natural, energized forward person is just to double and triple down on what I'm doing and try and get through it.And sometimes that leads to, you know, very bad spots as opposed to the success that we want. In contrast, you know, over time, I've gotten better at, you know, working with an executive coach. I do that, you know, I talk to this executive coach every few weeks now, and I find it helpful for keeping myself centered and thinking about how I want to direct myself, what I want to do. Over time, for sure, talk to therapists, plenty, and so forth, I think there's different ways about it. You know, I view this sort of like ebbs and flows is, I view it again.We try and categorize and simplify everything. We view it as there's three stages of things. There's being not busy, which for me

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not being busy is unhealthy and could be depressive. There's being busy, which is better than not

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being busy. Of course, within reason, not insanely busy. And then there's busy with purpose, which I think is from Maslow PERSON's hierarchy perspective, where we all aim to be as busy with purpose. Sometimes in life, it's very easy to find that purpose. Sometimes it's not. And I think, you know, when it's, you know, when it's not easy to find,it's both keeping busy, at least reasonably busy, and then constantly working with therapist, executive coaches, colleagues to try and clarifying, define that purpose. I think all of us go through different stages of life where that's more complicated for us than others. I don't think there's any easy answer to it. I know when I screwed up on something early on in my life, I had got great counsel from somebody at that pointwas at the University of Illinois, Vice Chancellor of Senior Affairs, this guy, Stan Levy PERSON, who had given me fantastic advice about just don't die forward. Take some time to reflect and think about what you're doing and how you want to do it versus just attacking forward, which is my natural instinct. And so trying to balance that with staying busy, but therapy, executive coaching, and so forth when you find those challenges. Well, I think you hit on it.

Speaker 11305.34s - 1346s

It's that balance. And how do you manage to balance your professional careers? I mean, most people don't even achieve the level of success in one area, and you've been able to do it in both law and the media world and as an author and publisher. And then how do you balance your professional life with your family life and your personal, you know, personal physical and mental health and things you like to enjoy and do? No, I think it's a constant evolution.

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You know, there's a period of life, most of our professional life, and this guy, Professor Galway, Scott Galway PERSON, talks about this well, and Ben Stein just talked about, others talk about it. There's some period of your life where you better be very focused on a core couple of things. And for me, it was the businesses and the children. It made life very simple because that was what I was doing was hard, but simple.That's what I was doing is a very focused period of life. There's another period of life that's more of a portfolio of life where you're trying to make sure you're doing multiple different things, whether it's, you know, for me, fitness, golf, tennis, business investments, friendships, relationships, you know, there's obviously Liz PERSON, family, et cetera, and trying to hit them all. But I think a lot of it is, you know, and it's just through periods of life, you're very focused.So through those periods of life, where I was hyper, hyper focused, there wasn't guys nights out, there wasn't golfing, there wasn't other stuff. I probably didn't do as good a job as I should have taken care of my physical mental health. I'd encourage anybody to take care of your physical mental health in the get-go all the way through, make that a priority. But as, you know, as you get older, it becomes more sprawling than so focused.The thing that I constantly come back to is this intentionality. You know, and so you have to be sort of, to go with sprawling and doing a lot of things, you have to be very intentional about what you want to do. You and I happen to enjoy two very close group or friends. I mean, we enjoy our gloss group of friends. I enjoy my group of friends of people that I grew up with.And there's a variety of other close friends. You have to be very intentional about how you spend energy in your time so you're not all over the place. You know, I constantly said yes to another speech I'm giving in this fall and I have to go back to my list, which is say no to business travels, so have more time to focus on, you know, kids and family stuff and visiting the children and stuff like that. So it's a constant effort to sort of balance and rebalance and come back to it so that you end up keeping yourself centered and focused and not all over the place. But it's trying to be very intentional.You know, it's like, you know, there's a great editing business that your real business world is not built around thousands of hours. It's built around 10 close relationships. And I think most great lives are built around X numbers of great relationships versus versus hundreds or thousands. So you're very intentional about staying in touchand staying close to those that you want to stay close to and be close to. So it has to be this great mix of intentionality with enjoying it, you know, but it's sprawling and intentional is how I view it. Earlier on in life, it was focused and intentionaland now it's a little bit more sprawling and intentional. But it's constantly come back to list and intentionality about what you're trying to do. Same thing with charities, same things with where we're putting energy into. We're trying to grow to be just much more intentional about all of it. Obviously, you and I've got this great lesson from a close colleague of ours, Bob Bernstein PERSON, who has passed away from pancreatic cancer. It's been a very sad thing, but he's been a fantastic example to us of intentionalityand how we approach things. And I think that's, you know, I mean, for me, having a full business life was all about having great teams. Having a full personal life to go with it was about intentionality. Well,

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it's amazing how you are a master of using your time to stay in touch with all your close friends and be such an inspiration and still manage to volunteer to be a high school tennis coach and among other things. And one last question from our mutual friend, Bob PERSON, he wants to know why is it you hate University of Michigan so much? Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 01565.54s - 1748.1s

When I was growing up on the world we grew up in, it's a great, great question. So Bob PERSON is one of the great ones. The University of Michigan, I've got this complicated relation with because now we've had a daughter and a stepdaughter to go to University of Michigan ORG. So I've had to grow to love the school, the school itself. You grew up in the area I grew up in, which is, you know, near north side of Chicago,we grew up in a community called Skokie GPE. The two things you grow up around are a lot of Notre Dameers ORG that went to the local Loyola High School or Notre Dame ORG high school that were so full of Notre Dame and so full of themselves about Notre Dame ORG. The other thing you grow up in our area is an alumni base that went to Michigan that thinks the world starts and ends with,you know, the phrase go blue. And what happened over the period of my life is the Notre Dameers ORG became incredibly likable and more humble and just a pleasure. And in the Michigan GPE alums, and the Michigan parents of alums got more and more go blue about everything and had a level of arrogance about them that was impossible to stomach. So what happens is I've had a sort of measure my thoughts about University of Michigan ORG athletics. You know, all this Jim Harbaugh stuff and thank God for this John Howard PERSON who totally did a run his job with the basketball team.But if you went to University of Illinois like we did, you think of Michigan GPE as a rival. If you go to the University of Michigan, you think University of Illinois is irrelevant, which adds to this umbrage of thinking of the Michigan GPE people is tremendously arrogant. So we've grown to love Ann Arbor GPE, the community. I absolutely love more than anything visiting Chloe and Jordan at the University of Michigan ORG. Just a wonderful, wonderful campus.Everything about it is perfect except for the older alumni, because now that my kids are young alumni, I can't say them. But everything is perfect about it other than all the alumni that went to University of Michigan ORG. And often the parents, especially the second, third generation parents that think everything revolves around the University of Michigan. And often the parents, especially the second, third generation parents that think everything revolves around the University of Michigan. I mean, it's, you know, one of my closest friends is a guy named Jim Keller. Oh, my goodness. And I have to listen to this Michigan GPE stuff or any of them talk about it anymore. It's enough to make one absolutely, you know, insane. In contrast,the Notre Dame ORG people, after growing up playing sports against Loyola and Notre Dame and so forth and the level of everybody wearing the Notre Dame jackets and my buddy talked about, oh, I'm a double domer. I'm a triple domer. How many domes can you have? But the Notre Dame people got more humble over life, the more likable. And the Michigan people, other than Chloe and Jordy, have become just more challenging over time. I mean, it even comes from the nicest people. There's a friend of ours that you and I know, Eric Cobb PERSON, as nice a person as they get. And even he has that arrogant Michigan GPE look to him. And he's as nice as they come. He doesn't even add to him.He's just a nice, nice guy. But he can't help to grow into that Michigan GPE type of attitude. So it's easy to hate the University of Michigan ORG, particularly the sports. It's easy to love Ann Arbor GPE. And, of course, my kids that went are the best of the best.So it's a complicated relationship, Nancy PERSON, like most things in life.

Speaker 11749.1s - 1780.24s

Oh, I totally agree. And, yes, Go Blue ORG will have to be subject of a whole other podcast, I would imagine, at some point. But there are some great alums we both know, both younger and older, and always makes for good jokes among our friends. Thank you, Scott PERSON, for sharing your insights and wisdom and keep up all of your podcast interviews of all these great celebrities and other knowledgeable people so that we can continue to listen.

Speaker 01781.7s - 1806.14s

Nancy, thank you so much for interviewing me today. It's always a great pleasure to visit you again. One of the best people I know, Nancy Temple PERSON, managing partner for a law firm and just a wonderful, wonderful close colleague. I know that you're a couple days younger DATE than me, so I'll give you advice from time to time. Thank you. My birthday is April 14th, Thursdays is April 16th.So if you ever need advice, I'm here for you. I've got two days on you. Thank you for joining me today.