Skot Waldron:
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So what can a 20 year veteran in the military/stuntman/phlebotomist teach us about scaling our businesses, about investing in our people? A lot. You know why? Because this guy has climbed that ladder, right? He has proven himself, his thought process, everything he's doing to be where he is in a very short period of time and helped this company scale from eight people to 50 people. Chance has a smart operational brain. And I want you to pay attention to the way he talks about things. He's very transparent. He's very open about the rawness and the issues that happen when growing a company. And I really, really appreciate that. So get ready for an awesome interview. Chance is awesome. He's on his phone because where they're at, they're building a new office right now and he is in the midst of building out that office. They don't even have internet yet. So he was doing this from his phone, but please take to heart the things he's talking about. It's really, really important. I appreciate him. I appreciate you. And let's do this.
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to an episode of Unlocked. Today I've got a special guest. Chance Butts from Vestra Labs and you are now the chief operating officer of Vestra Labs. And it has not been a slow journey for you to say the least, right? I mean, the company-
... Company's exploded and your journey with them was just kind of like, "Oh, I'll just start out with a phlebotomist. I'll just kind of draw some blood." And now you're the chief operating officer in about nine months. So what's that about? Unpack that whole journey for me. What's going on there?
CHANCE BUTTS:
Yeah. So I've been a combat medic pretty much my whole life. Joined the army at 17 and just kind of patient care was my passion. Joined the army, did that for the last 20 years, got out of active duty in 2016, kind of did a couple of different jobs from corporate head hunting to film and television as a background and stunt guy in film and TV for a while too. And I just couldn't find my home. Started doing government contracting overseas. So I was a high threat security medic in Afghanistan. And I came home on leave. COVID hit and I needed something to pay the bills until I went back and I started working with Vestra just drawing blood and COVID hit and wouldn't let me go back. So I just kind of leaned into the company and loved their vision, loved their motto.
There is eight of us at the time working out of the office and we had some great connections with some great labs to do COVID testing and we just started offering it. And next thing you know we're a government contractor and we got four offices in four states and we're just servicing thousands of patients a day and all across the country, we've literally tested patients in all four corners of the country, just a little startup that just blew up overnight.
SKOT WALDRON:
That is awesome. I know that there's probably a lot of people out there listening right now that would love to experience that type of growth. Of course with that comes some pain in all ways, shapes and forms. You have an interesting dynamic with your leadership. So you moved into this spot pretty quick as a chief operating officer. And there was a lot of trust that came with that. And there was a lot of proving yourself that came with that. But talking about your individual roles was really interesting. Explain that. How do the three of you work together? What do you bring to the table? How does that work?
CHANCE BUTTS:
Yeah, so it kind of starts with me and the CEO, he was my boss when I was a phlebotomist, I was just doing concierge phlebotomy, drawing people's blood in their house. And me and him would have talks after work about kind of what we could do with this. Because he's got a great formula. His passion is all about patient care, which that's the big thing. If you provide a great service and you have passionate people, the business is going to blow up. So I was like, "We have an opportunity to do something awesome." And him and I just had some talks and I'm like, "Hey, if we took some of my military operational ideas and applied them to this COVID pandemic, we could get a lot of people tested really quickly. And it's just, we just got to take that military approach to it."
He liked it. So the CEO is very much of big visionary. He knows what's coming, he has big ideas. He's an interesting person to say the least. He's got a physics degree, has been in the lab world for 10 years, but was a car salesman and mortgage broker before that. So he's a jack of all trades, but I don't know, he's just the visionary that I couldn't be. I'm an operations guy. I'm a driver. You tell me where we're going and I'll get us there. I just don't know where we're going unless you tell me kind of thing. The co-owner of the company, laboratory sales for 20 years. The CEO was his easy button when he was with his former lab. So they decided to go into business together and they started this little mom and pop shop.
They're just going to draw some blood, make a little bit of money and the CEO was going to retire basically. And then I came into the mix and brought this kind of military precision and operations piece to it. And the three of us got together and decided we were just going to run this thing and make it as big as we could and make it kind of the best laboratory service company that's out there. And that was seven months ago. And here we are today, four offices, four states and just huge growth.
SKOT WALDRON:
And going from eight to 50 people. I mean, it's that scale. And you talk about the visionary. You talk about you being the operations. I love this analogy of, "Tell me where we're going. I'll get us there. I just need you to tell me where we're going." And that is the way that we have seen companies operate and function in a beautiful way. When you have the visionary and you have the day-to-day grind person that has the operations background and that you can both appreciate and value each other. Because what we find a lot is that the visionary is out there spouting out vision all day. Then you got the operations guy saying, "Nah, dude, I don't, I'm not buying that. I want to know how you plan on doing that." But they're like, "Just trust me, just trust me."
And the operations person is like, "No, I don't trust anybody. I want to plan. I want a system for how to get there." And when you truly both identify that, there's so much power. So how do you guys communicate with different personality types? Because you're different. You have different ways of thinking. How do you guys communicate well with different personality types?
CHANCE BUTTS:
So from the leadership standpoint, like us in the office, there were some growing pains, definitely some growing pains because the CEO was everything when I got there. In an eight person shop, he made all the decisions, not only to decide where we're going, he decided what we're packing, what route we are taking. He was very hands-on. And when I came in and started doing the operations piece for him, it was, there was a lot of push and pull where it didn't look the way he envisioned it in his head. And we just had to work that out and go, "Hey, you tell us to take the hill and then get out of the way. Let me decide the tactics, let me decide what we're taking. Let me decide who's going. And you just decide that that's the hill we're taking."
And I brought in a lot of, like I said, my military operations background and analogies, and then we kind of had to convert that to the corporate world speak. So that was one of our big roadblocks. But now we just kind of realized that's how we communicate, right? The CEO will say yes to everything. A client calls and says, "Hey, I need to test 400 people in Hawaii next Tuesday." He's going to say, "Absolutely, we can do it." And by that, I mean, my operations will get it done. And he just passes it off and it gets out of the way. But to get to that point, there were some growing pains we had to go back and forth. And it's just a matter of kind of trusting people and really realizing that you don't hire smart people to tell them how to do their job. You hire smart people because they can figure it out. And sometimes they surprise you by coming up with something that even I wouldn't come up with.
So we just really pushed for that kind of decentralized decision-making and trusting the people under us to operate with the company's best interest in heart and mind. And if things go awry, we just adapt and fix it and keep going forward.
SKOT WALDRON:
Right on, man. You said something before we got on the call, when we were talking about the heartbeat of a company, quote that. I don't want to steal your quote. What is that?
CHANCE BUTTS:
Yeah. So it's the heartbeat of your company is the hearts that beat in your company. That's regardless of, if it's in my years in the army or corporate America, you can't accomplish your mission, you can't meet your sales objectives, you can't meet your whatever it is, manufacturing, I don't care what industry you're in. You can't do it without those frontline employees. And that's really your most valuable asset you have in the company. It's not your software, it's not your equipment. It's not your manufacturing process. It's the people that are doing it and turning out that product. That's what really is going to get your company to where they need to be.
SKOT WALDRON:
So you talked also about a big problem that companies make. And I would say this probably in the military as well, you spent a lot of your career in the military. And you say that it's saying the right things, but doing the wrong thing. Or you say, people talk a lot of big, pretty words and no intention of changing or taking action on those things. So what's your experience with that? Why'd you bring that up as you feel like that's a problem?
CHANCE BUTTS:
So one of my positions in the army was just a First Sergeant. So I was the senior enlisted advisor to the commander and my entire career... In the military we have a saying, we train to standard, not to time. So if a class is scheduled for an hour, but it takes two hours for everybody to understand the topic, we train to standard, not to time. But it never went the other way. So if everybody did what they had to do, and we were done at early, nobody would be released early, even though we met the standard. At that point, it switched and we went to time. And that was something that I really, really tried to change when I was a First Sergeant. If we were done at one o'clock, I talked to the commander, I said, "Hey, we've met the standard. Everything's done. Training's done. Paperwork's done. Motor pool squared away, supplies are squared away. We've accomplished our training. Let's go home."
And the commander, I've had a couple of great commanders that agreed with me and we actually were able to do what we said we were going to do. And we didn't find a got you or a reason to keep everybody there longer. And that kind of extended into my corporate world where it's like, "Hey, if I say that we're going to do this, let's do this. If I say we're going to focus on building a great culture in this company, but then I don't do anything to build that great culture, I'm just being that person that I despised so much through my military and corporate career."
We just really focus on if I say that, "Hey, we're going to do this." We're going to go out and do it. And if we are done early, we're done early. If we got to work late, yeah we got to work late. But it's that consistency of saying what you're going to do and then doing what you say. So, and that's just a big thing where people get wrapped up around the, "Well, I pay this person to be here from eight to five." If they're done at three, I send them home like, "Okay, cool." Either that or I'm like, maybe we need to do more business where they work till five. But if they're done at three and they've done everything I've asked of them, I can't really just keep them sitting around just because I pay them till five.
SKOT WALDRON:
So we all get how important culture is. You hear about it all the time. Especially now you hear about employee engagement, employee satisfaction, employee experience, and company culture, and team communication and leadership development. You hear about all these terms. And in my experience, when I go out and say, "Hey, how much would you spend on creating a healthy company culture?" They're like, "Oh yeah, maybe $3,000 a year." And it's like, "What? What are you going to pay one trainer one time to come in and do some fun assessment for a day and consider that your company culture training?" So why don't people invest more in your eyes? We all understand how important it is. Why is it so hard to change it?
CHANCE BUTTS:
So for me, it's not even because there's companies that have paid big money to do this. They send their employees off to retreats. They send people to go do these trainings, but nothing changes because somebody comes back and says, "Hey, I got this great idea. Let's try this communication model, or let's try this agile leadership style or let's do this or do that." And the people that have done things a certain way are just going to resist it. And I think the biggest thing is people just embracing change and being okay with change. Regardless of where you are, the only thing that stays the same is change. Continuous improvement, everything, metrics are going to change, goal lines are going to change, but we still are so stuck in our ways that we don't want to change or embrace the change.
And I think that's kind of one of the biggest problems is you can invest all the money you want into trainings and employee engagement. But if you don't really care about your culture, nothing's going to change because you don't care to change. Which is again, I think one of the biggest problems we face.
SKOT WALDRON:
It is. There's a lot of comfort that comes in and what we're doing and who we are, and yeah maybe uncomfortable, but we're comfortable in our discomfort. And with a little bit of fear of what it's going to take to actually make a change happen. And sometimes our personality types prevent us from actual improvement in what we're trying to do. And that's a big problem.
You guys have grown fast. Again, 13 months, you go from a small, tiny office to having four locations. You have eight people to 50 people. You've moved into operations from a phlebotomist in nine, eight months. Growth and scale is difficult for companies. There's pains that come with that. So how do you make sure you don't lose your family feel? How do you make sure you don't lose that closeness and that culture that you've had as a small company, as you grow and expand into a larger company?
CHANCE BUTTS:
So one, there's a piece of engagement that has to happen, right? So our corporate office is in Phoenix. We have office in Oceanside, Las Vegas, and now New Mexico. In today's day and age, video conferencing although we hate them can go a long way in making those outlying offices feel like part of the family. Looping them in on the trainings or video conferences can make them feel like part of the family. But it's also, you got to believe it. It's got to be the truth. When we say, we're a family company. We really are. Sometimes we're dysfunctional family, but we're still family. We fight, we bicker. We disagree. You have that weird uncle that you don't like, but he's still family. And that's just what we do. And we believe it.
And that's just, there is no, I guess we don't accept anything but that. So the New Mexico office, same thing, they're a tight knit group, but they belong to the big family. And each office kind of has their different culture and different nuances and different personalities, but they're still part of the family and we're still going to treat them like family. We're still going to be loyal to our people as if they're family, which is a big thing for us, at least in our company.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's fantastic. I assume that's part of the vision that has been brought in from the CEO, having the vision of what his company wanted to be, but bringing in like-minded people like you to help carry out that vision of what that is. And how important is communicating that vision to the rest of the company? What value do you guys put in there?
CHANCE BUTTS:
So we kind of beat that drum all day, every day. Everything I do, we kind of beat the company motto, which is patience over profit. We beat that drum all day every day. We live it. Even with our growth, we still, I mean, we give away tens of thousands of dollars in laboratory tests a month for low income, people who can't afford it. Employees, families they need lab tests done, just go get it, get it ran, and don't worry about it. But it's that piece that we don't just say we're a family, we prove it. If that makes sense. So let's say you were my employee and you said, "Hey, my mom has to go get all these labs done." I would say, "Okay, go draw your mom, get the tubes, send it in. And let's see what's wrong with her. And let's take care of her."
And it's that proving that we're family is a big thing. I could say, "Oh, we're a family." But then I go charge you retail price for our lab services, that doesn't really show you that you're family. So it's little things like that where you kind of prove to your employees that they really do mean a lot to you is kind of how you create that family feel. You got to put your money where your mouth is sometimes. And sometimes it's just taking the time because you notice an employee's attitude or behaviors off and saying, "Hey, come on in, sit down, let's talk. What's going on, something's off with you." And just taking the time to get into they got some personal stuff at home that you can totally fix by giving them some time off or helping them out. It's just that piece and that dedication to really caring about your employees that is going to build that for you.
SKOT WALDRON:
And I appreciate the transparency and I think you've been pretty vulnerable. And I don't know if it's your military background of just being raw and being who you are and being true or just personality style. But that's awesome because what we've heard is, is it's been painful, right? There's different personalities and it's not always beautiful. You're not trying to paint the picture of this has always been super smooth and never any rocky and never any bumps along the road. You've been real and I appreciate that. And I think that that's what you're talking about is that transparency and communication with not only the leadership, but with the whole family and the whole company and making sure everybody feels included and involved. So I appreciate the conversation today. What can people do if they want to get in touch with you, whether it's a company, concierge phlebotomy services or the COVID stuff that you guys have just started ramping up hardcore on? How can people get in touch with you guys?
CHANCE BUTTS:
Yeah. So they can go to vestra-labs.com and then pretty much just we have our Phoenix office number on there, our toll free number is on there as well as you can just, if you need your company tested, you can just fill out the information, send it out, and somebody will give you a call and get you scheduled to get out there and get your whole company tested. If you want your uncle tested, just give us a call. We'll get it done. If you're a doctor and you want your patients to have a great phlebotomy experience and have their blood drawn in their comfort of their home in the home, we can also do that for you too. We have a wide array of services that we offer. And it's always with that kind of patients over profit mentality that's our whole goal in here is taking care of patients. That's why we're here. And that's why we continue to do what we do every day.
SKOT WALDRON:
Rock on, man. Well said, thank you very much. I appreciate you. Good luck in everything. Thank you for your service, your 20 years of service. That's a huge thing, a huge part of your life I'm sure, but we appreciate you. And if there's anything else you need reach out to me. I'd be willing to help you guys out in what you need, so.
CHANCE BUTTS:
Awesome. Thank you very much.
SKOT WALDRON:
All right, buddy. Thanks.
CHANCE BUTTS:
All right. Thank you.
SKOT WALDRON:
The heartbeat of every company are the hearts that beat inside that company. Yes. I love it. Chance, thank you for that word of wisdom. That phrase of wisdom, those words of wisdom, whatever you want to call it. I really, really appreciate that. I also appreciate, like I said, the rawness, the transparency and what that brings to the table. We need that more in our teams and the way we communicate with each other, we need honesty, transparency, and commitment to our overall vision.
I love that you guys reemphasize that vision constantly with your employees that you try to keep that family together. Helping people feel involved, helping making the intentional effort to bring everyone together. So good, congratulations on your growth and the way you guys are building that company. And good luck in this monster we call COVID. So if you guys want to find out more, hear more of those interviews, you can go on my website at skotwaldron.com. You can find more of those interviews on my YouTube channel, please like, subscribe, share, all those things that you need to do to make sure that this gets out there. I really, really appreciate you. And that's going to be it for today. Thanks a lot. I will see you next time on Unlocked with Skot Waldron.
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