Transcripts for Episode 103

These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.

Stacy: Welcome. I am so excited today to share with you David Morales, to introduce his story, his book, and the profound impact that he is having on the world. Before I officially say hello to David, I want to read you his bio. Growing up in a poor, mountainous region of Puerto Rico, david Morales had no idea he would end up where he is today, an executive shaping the future of healthcare and public policy in America, and a father dedicated to faith, family, and community. His story is one of faith, family, grit, integrity, and gratitude, all tenets of the American Dream and the American Promise. His story is also about self agency, faith and resilience brought him off the streets and out of poverty and shaped who he is today. David is the author of American Familia a Memoir of Perseverance. David, welcome. Welcome.

David: Thank you, Stacy. It is wonderful to be here and truly an honor. So thank you for having me.

Stacy: I’m really excited for this conversation. And as our listeners will learn and as they continue hearing from you today, you have an amazing story. And when I read your bio and I mentioned that you’re shaping the future of health care and public policy, it was not an exaggeration. You really are making a true impact, not only in your state, the broader nation, but also within your family, in your community. But you also decided to write a book that had nothing to do with health care, with this professional life that you lead. I’d love for you to tell me a little bit about what inspired the book and drove you to set out on this other mission.

David: Sure. Boy, that is a long story. I’ll try to be concise. The book was originally an idea that, frankly, surfaced from my wife and my journey with Christ. Samantha woke up one morning and said, I think God wants you to write a book. And I thought she was crazy. I mean, I thought, who cares about our story, our family? What’s the point?

And it began a mission, a journey, partly introspective about who were as people, who our family was, where we came from, but also, frankly, a journey within myself, about my values and who I am and what God’s purpose is for me. So essentially, the book has four purposes. The first one is a legacy for my children. My two sons are my jewels. They are my legacy. They are what we leave behind, Samantha and I. And so I wanted them to understand our family’s journey from humble beginnings to a wonderfully, blessed life. And I wanted my sons to know that. But I also wanted other children to know their journey and to start that curiosity as part of our legacy. The second reason was because we as Hispanics, especially Puerto Rican Americans, our narrative has been extremely victimhood poverty. And that is a narrative that I want to counter to show that is not the case. Right? That is not the majority. The majority of Hispanic Americans are Americans who come here to persevere, to contribute, to do powerful things. And so that’s the second purpose. The third one is I wanted to have families start a conversation at home about who they are, their children, their parents, their history, their grandparents, what brought them to America, what brings them and inspires them to greater things and to have those conversations at home. My view is that strong families make a strong America. And so I want to start those conversations at home. And then, finally, the book is truly meant to inspire young people, young adults, young professionals that are wondering, who am I? What’s my identity? What’s my purpose here on Earth?

 

What should I be doing to contribute to the greater good of humanity? So that’s sort of the why behind the book.

Stacy: I’d love for you to tell a little bit of your story just so that viewers and listeners can get a better sense of why it was so important for you to share it. Maybe you could anchor us in your childhood, tell us a little bit about your upbringing, and then perhaps you could also, without giving too many spoilers in the book, give us maybe a juxtaposition to later in your career as an adult and kind of finding yourself in these executive situations, private jets. I mean, it’s just such a difference between the two worlds that you’ve lived in. And then I’d also love for you to just pull the thread on. What was it that enabled you to go from this poverty and what could have been a life of hardship into not really that the executive piece is all that matters, but I think that’s just such a crisp juxtaposition, but also now having a beautiful family that is your world making a real impact on this world.

You could have gone such a different direction, and you didn’t. So give us just a little highlight of your story so that people can understand where you’re coming from for the rest of this conversation.

David: Sure. I’ll start from roughly 2018, go back and then forward again.

Stacy: Okay.

David: So I was an executive at a. Very large hospital company, and it felt.  As though materialistically and financially, I had achieved the pinnacle of what I believed at the time to be the American dream. Financial success, materialistic success, to the point where I was flying around in private jets, had a lot of materialistic goods, and frankly, it was empty. It was not my purpose. And so I went flying around the United States, building hospitals, negotiating contracts, leading organizations around South America and a bit of Europe, and frankly, it was a dead end for me. It was empty and little by little, I started realizing through God’s grace and my wife and family that was not my purpose. But I had sort of, again, mentally thought that I had achieved the pinnacle of my success, and that was totally not right. So let’s go backward. My earliest memories are in Puerto Rico. Growing up very humble, we lived in a mountainous area of Dorado, which is by the water, but across there’s a road, la Numerolos. The number two highway crosses the beach in the land. And so I lived on the land side the mountains. And so were pretty poor from a materialistic standpoint. As a child, I thought I had it all. We slept on beds, on the mattress, on the floor. We lived right next to the mountain so we could go back and dig yams and get bananas and plantains off the trees. We had chickens in the back. My parents were hardly around because they were always working, trying to put food on the table. So I grew up with my sister and my two brothers. That was sort of my life. My grandparents visited us, or we visited them every Sunday, but that was my life. My life was surrounded by running around barefoot or in the backyard or in the mountains in the back, which my jungletas who rubber sandals, basically, and then eating what was on the table, which was typically yams, batatas, platanos, plantains. Once a week or so, we’d have like, corned beef from a can. And that was kind of like, wow, that was like a big meal. But typically it was eggs or chicken whenever they were ready or whatever. Seafood my dad brought from once a week from the sea, which was eel sometimes shark, sometimes crab. So materialistically, were very poor. But spiritually, I felt like I had everything because I had my family. I slept in a house, as dungy as it was, but I thought I had it all. And so my father left Puerto Rico after terrible bout with his profession and his income. And when I came to the United States is when I realized that materialistically, were poor. We landed in Lyn, Massachusetts, lived on a triple decker in a really tough area of Lin, Mass. And that’s what began my journey with, oh, boy, why are we here?

We’re here to try to figure out. How to get out of poverty. And I live in a dump. And so it started this journey of discovery and wanting better for myself and for my family. So I grew up in a really tough neighborhood, and I grew up brawling on the streets. I grew up seeing really bad stuff, murders, crime, prostitutes. And so I’ll spare that part of the story. A lot of that’s in the book. But the juxtaposition between grown up urban poor, mountain poor, versus 20 plus years later, having this incredible career as a healthcare executive was just I never, ever thought as a child that I would ever do that, never in my wildest dreams. But what it led to fast forward to today, was a journey to understand that A, money was not the solution or the answer to happiness. Number two, my relationship with Christ was the most important thing ever, and it continues to be. And B, my family, my wife, my kids, my parents, my brothers and sisters, they are the foundation of our strength. They’re the foundation of our spirit. They’re the foundation of why I do. What I do today, which is to.

Essentially advance, of course, some healthcare stuff professionally, but personally, to teach my children, my sons, and my nieces and nephews that there is a way to be a good person. There is a way to be successful, not professionally so much, but spiritually and mentally and physically as a person who embodies kindness, empathy, respect, peace, self control in a world that otherwise tells us to be individuals rather than family people.

Stacy: It’s such a beautiful story and I think we need to dig a little deeper in the middle of that story, because what inspires me so much about you over the years that we’ve gotten to know each other, I think also coming from homogeneous Idaho, in the most middle class community ever, your story is so interesting to me. And just learning how you went through what you did, overcame what you overcame. But the data says that most people in your situation don’t end up where you are. They end up in a completely different life. And what I’d love to hear from you, whether we have people listening who have had similar backgrounds or haven’t and can learn like me from your story, what are some of the things that got you from A to B that helped you journey through that? Because, as future readers will learn from your story, it was not a clear path.

You had many struggles along the way, including going to college and not having any clue what you were doing once you arrived at this mostly white campus and didn’t know how to fit in, essentially how to do college. I mean, you had so many obstacles along the way. What got you through that and then also helped you reorient later in life when you realized that the target that you were aiming for was not actually the right target for you.

David: Yeah, boy, we could be here months, I will say. Stacey, a few table setters first is you’re. Right. My story is not linear. My career has never been linear. My life today continues to not be linear. Number two, everyone’s journey is different and unique, and so what applies to me may not apply to other people. Then finally, before I answer, understand that the context here is that I was built for a purpose, and every one of us has a unique purpose. But my purpose ultimately today is to be a good person and a good role model for my children and others, right. My purpose early on in life, I like to say that there’s been two stages of my life so far. Early on, my purpose with my parents and my brothers was to help my family out of poverty. I’ve realized that the new purpose that God has put in my life is to be a good person, a good role model for my children and my family. So that’s the table setter now. The what the context here as to what drove and what drives me early on was poverty. I was running away from poverty. And for those people who have a deep desire to exit poverty, that is a powerful force that you can either use for good or you can let it reclaim you and it’ll sink you toward bad. I chose to do good. I chose to say there is a path, and I’m not going to let anyone stop me from living a better life.

At the time, it was a materialistic better life. But nonetheless, I sort of talk about self agency and self empowerment, personal responsibility as some of the key ingredients that I had to leverage. Right however, there were other important factors. There were people I still believe that.

God put people in my life, angels that I call in my life. You’re one of them. To essentially make me a better person. And at the time, my high school football coach, my teachers, they served as people who guided me through that early stage of my life. College. Same thing happened. There were people that were teaching me without even understanding that they were teaching me. Hurley, Roseman’s, another one in college, one of my peers, they were teaching me. And so I had to be open minded. So I was resilient and tough, but I had to also be open minded to learn, to ask questions, to be inquisitive, to understand that the best way for me to have a better life, whatever that looked like, was to be adaptable, malleable, and open minded about other people and about my own circumstances. As far as my career and how I sort of have pivoted through that lots of factors.

I’m a person that tries to very quickly understand the value proposition in everything. What is the value proposition for the company? Okay, if this is how the financial model works, then let’s enhance it or find ways to enhance the financial model. So professionally, I’ve had a life and a career professionally, where I focus immediately on what is the objective, what’s the mission, and then B, what is the financial proposition or the value proposition so that we can enhance that and make it better faster. And so the point there is professionally Stacy, that I hear a lot of people say, follow your dreams, for example. And while I appreciate that, I tell people, well, that’s okay but understand very quickly, if your dreams are not going to enable you to have a good financial life or productive life or to put food on the table, you’re going to need to pivot fast. Because I wanted to be a singer, but guess what? That was not going to put food on my table fast.

Stacy: You are an amazing singer, by the way, just so everyone listening knows that about you, I mean, a musician. So I can see why you wanted to pursue that direction. But to your point, you were so motivated to find something that was going to set you up financially.

David: Exactly. And so the final thing I’ll say in terms of the professional side is understand your own persona, your self awareness.

Be humble. If you’re in a room with executives and you’re sort of like ten tiers down, well, understand how to create value quickly so that the executives say, we want that person in the room. The higher up you go. Frankly, what I’ve learned is that I am a servant. I’m not a leader. The higher I go in my career, it is literally clear to me I am here to serve people, and it has enabled me to create incredible teams of successful people that, frankly, I serve. I’m not their leader, I’m their servant. And it has had incredible results, at least in the last several years here.

Stacy: I love that perspective of just service. I think that’s how you approach most of your life, including your family life. So I’d love to dig in a little more on this fact that you’re an executive in healthcare at a healthcare company and working within the industry, but you’ve also built a personal brand or you’re building. Right. You’ve launched your book in February, and you’ve been sharing on social media and getting your ideas out there and doing podcast interviews and really sharing this message that you have your story and inspiring people with your story. And I know a lot of listeners aspire to write a book, or they maybe are aspiring to write another book or build a brand. Maybe they’ve launched a book, but it hasn’t maybe been successful because they haven’t done the stuff that needed to build their brand and get their message out there.

And some of that, I know, has to do with the fact that they have jobs and they’re not sure how to balance. This is the thing that I do during my nine to five and sometimes more, and then this is my mission. And I’m not sure how to hold both of those and not have one threaten the other. So talk to me a little bit about how you’ve approached that with your professional work and your mission. You have a nonprofit we’ll talk about too, as well. So tell me a little bit about that journey in sharing your message, but also the reality of you have a professional life. Too.

David: Yeah, it’s a really great question, and there’s a lot of dynamics here. So let me try to peel that onion. So, first and foremost, understand your purpose. I am very clear on my purpose, Stacey. My purpose is not to be the best healthcare executive. My purpose is to be a child of God and to be a role model for my family. What that means for me is that every day I want to do something that my children and my family see and understand that helps them to be inspired to do greater things. That’s, number one.

Why that’s important is because I understand what my objective is. It leads to the second piece, which is next to that personal who I am as a person. There’s this professional box. I don’t ever want to be put in that box as he’s a healthcare person. I am not a healthcare person. That is what I do. It is not who I am.

So my identity and my purpose rest here. I am a child of God, a father, a husband, a son, and that’s what I want to be every day. What I do is healthcare and so one of the things that. You and my wife Samantha, helped me to understand several years back was I need to navigate, first, my purpose. I need to do that. I need to live it. And then second, I need to balance that with what I do as a profession, healthcare. So the way that I’ve been able to do that is, first of all, I work in a very supportive company. This company has been wonderful to work with. They have accepted my style, my approach. We’ve been very transparent about what I do after hours, and they accept that and support it. So that’s, number one, have a very transparent conversation and understanding with your employer or your company about what you want to do. The second thing is we’re very clear I don’t do this stuff during work hours. And if I’m going to do it’s got to be during a time where I take that hour away from lunch, for example. So you’ve got to balance that tangibly really intentionally because you don’t want to miss work. Right. Work is how you produce and earn income. And then the third thing is I try to marry every day the values that I live by as a person, as David Morales at work. What does that mean? Well, at work I’m a servant.

Number two, I am caring and empathetic, and I lead with kindness. And I want my team to see that the stuff I do after hours professionally is what I do during work hours. I care, I work hard, but I strive to be the best person I can be at work. And so how you marry those values from your personal life to your professional life has to be carried throughout 24 hours a day, and B has to be intentionally and tangibly clear to your company, but also to your life, so that you’re not in conflict with either.

That’s such great advice. And one of the points that I want to pull out of that is that you did a lot of intentional work to deeply understand your mission, your purpose. You knew it, but you took time to reflect and clarify that, and then that made it so much easier for you to disseminate that in the different areas of your life, right? Yes.

Stacy: One thing I would love for you to share to the level that you’re willing is how you practically make this happen, because you have a demanding career, you have teenage sons, you have a marriage, a healthy marriage, and you are very involved with your family, your extended family. I know you have lots of friends like you have a lot going on. And what have you done to be able to begin to get your message out there? You’re building your social media presence, you’ve released a book. What are some of the things that you’ve done on a daily, weekly, monthly basis? How are you creating content? What are some of the things that other people could learn from you?

David: I’ll do my best. So first, I don’t recommend this to anybody. I have a pretty intense day and night. I wake up every day at five. In the morning, and that’s my first hour is partly with God, with my Bible, and then the rest of it, maybe 30 minutes or so, doing exactly what you said, meditating and think about, okay, what’s today’s message? What inspired me from the Bible or whatever to do X, and that’ll sort of lead to the next thing, which is prep for whatever post I’m going to do that week, et cetera. So every morning. I’m doing that intentionally, an hour to myself. The next hour, believe it or not, becomes getting the kids ready. So I do a lot to get the kids ready. I prepare them breakfast, I get them ready for school, we spend time chatting while they eat. And once I do drop off, that’s the next of that time, about almost an hour or so I try to spend with Samantha.

And that is my way of sort of dedicating time in the morning to our relationship doesn’t always work every day. Let me be very transparent. I don’t want to make this sound like it’s perfect, not at all. Every day is different. But that’s the intentional approach to my morning. And then the rest is work. Work is really intense and I drive a very intense schedule at work, high performing to get as much output as I can during the day from roughly eight in the morning to essentially 06:00 at night. Around 6630 I go back to a dinner with the family. And then around 08:00 I take an hour to think about, okay, did that post from this morning that I was thinking about doing tomorrow makes sense? If not, I do something different for the next morning. And then by 10:00 at night I am relaxing with Samantha for about an hour. Kids go to bed and I am. Getting ready for bed at so that’s.

 

It’s an intense schedule, but it works for the purposes of driving a highly intense and productive day, both personally, professionally, but also from a family perspective.

Stacy: That does sound intense, but I can also see how you’ve actually worked rest into it in different pockets. Like there’s nourishing self rest and then there’s rest with, your know, with Samantha and then now are you only sleeping 5 hours a night? Did I hear that right in your schedule? So do you catch up on the weekends, is that what’s happening? Weekends I sleep an extra hour, so weekends I wake up at six, but in the weekends I have 2 hours to myself. Saturdays and Sundays. Look, honestly, I don’t recommend it, but it goes back to the self agency point and personal responsibility, right? I had a conversation with a young man last week, not this week, last week, who said the same thing to me, but that doesn’t make sense. You need rest and you need health. And things should be easier. And my response was life’s not easy. And so if you want to pursue greater things, you have to pray about it, but B, you have to earn it and work for it. And if you’re not willing to put in the time and the work and I said, very candidly, I said don’t complain. I have gone from zero to a blessed life. Not financially, family, health wise, et cetera. But I’ve intentionally done that through a lot of work and a lot of intentional dedication to where I want to go.

Stacy: Yeah, well, it’s important to talk about this too, because earlier you were mentioning this idea of go for your dreams. But it’s almost like without a plan or without an idea of how that’s going to turn out for you from a practical standpoint. And the reality is that every single person I know who has reached success of some level have very intentional schedules. And I would add my schedule like yours, not as intense by any stretch, but I’m very intentional with how I block my time and energy. I have 3 hours of focused work every single day and I exercise every day and I eat really healthy and those types of things that it’s just that I think we don’t talk enough about the discipline aspect of reaching the thing that you want to reach. And it’s the same with when I’m coaching authors on their books, that discipline piece, the person that shows up with discipline will finish and the person who doesn’t will be another statistic.

That is just not a fun thing to say to people. But it is so true and I think that’s really true across the board.

David: Yep, I totally agree. Look, we are living it at least here in the United States, we’re living during a time where people the narrative, at least in social media that I see and my kids tell me about is that you deserve things. Government’s bad, America’s bad. And my answer no. You have to earn and work for something. You have to have the discipline and the personal responsibility if you’re going to take on a project or work to do it the best possible to be the best person in the room, to compete to the greatest level of ability you can. And so I agree with you, there has to be a grounding back to how do you get things done? How do you achieve? You achieve by intentionally dedicating your time energy to doing wonderful things. And that requires a lot of work.

Stacy: Work and that discipline, just the discipline of self. And I think you do such a wonderful job of that. I think in my life I’ve reflected it differently. I think also in this stage of life I need more rest than I did before. My kids are young and I don’t know, I’ve just found that some of the I would say you talked about your intensity during the day and I would say my days are very similar. I’m like all in. But I have found as I I don’t know, get into different life stages and maybe this is a maybe there’s an ebb and flow. I’ll be curious to see once my kids are older that I’m kind of just exhausted. 08:00, I’m like done. I’m over it.

David: Let me say this. I am not saying that I am perfect after 09:00 at night, okay? Because there is like this big up and down for the next 3. Hours of, oh, man, I’m exhausted. But I would say it gets better. Like, my kids are now 16 and 14. It gets better because I remember during your years, samantha and I were tired.

Stacy: Yeah, it’s a lot. I mean, every stage, I think, has its own challenges, but it is interesting to see how all of that ebbs and flows. All right, I don’t want to end before we get some good space to talk about Aura, your nonprofit that you co founded with Samantha. Tell me about guys. I respect and admire your mission so much, and it’s such a beautiful extension of the impact that you are having through your book and all the things that you’re doing to share your ideas with the world. Tell us about your nonprofit.

David: Thank you Stacy. Ahora, which means now in Spanish, is a financial coaching platform. It was my wife’s idea, frankly she left her career first to take care of our kids. And B, during that time of reflection, she took on a lot of our money management, managing our money, and she got a lot of certificates on financial coaching, accounting, and all this good stuff. And Samantha is a financial wizard. So during the same sort of journey of evolution since 20, 18, 17, when I was starting to write the book, god put in her heart, how do we teach people to use their money to build wealth? And it married perfectly with what were trying to do inspire people, enable people toward personal responsibility, self agency, self empowerment, as well as the healthcare world, because almost two thirds of people’s health issues stem from financial stress. So it brought together all these wonderful elements of our personal life and our professional lives. And so we built a platform with a developer, what we call a financial health tool that pulls in all your financial pieces your income, your debt, your credit, et cetera.

And essentially, it’s a platform of financial coaches that will guide you and coach. You through your financial plan, help you to build a plan. So, David, there’s stuff like that already. Well, not really. For people with money and assets, there’s financial advisors. And for people who are lower income or lower middle class, no, there’s financial insurance products, right? They’ll sell your insurance products, but there’s no financial coach that will take you on in a very modest financial way. In order for you to have a financial coach, you’re going to pay a lot of money. Well, we wanted to build a low cost, affordable model that had it’s a proprietary financial health tool supported by a full time financial coach that you could talk to whenever you needed to. You want to buy a car and you want to decide between a lease or an outright buyer loan, you better talk to your financial coach. You want to think about how to save for your house? Well, talk to your financial coach.

Don’t get into a mortgage. Before you do that, you’re not sure how to think about investing for your kids college or financial future. You want to talk to your coach. So we built a affordable model for people to tap into for those who want to build financial wealth. Well, what do I say for those who want to build financial wealth, Stacey? Because I’ve learned that unless people want to do something for themselves, you can’t help people need to want better for themselves in order for them to actually seek the services or to be responsible or to use your word, discipline to leverage the service. So the service is there. It’s WW dot outamoney.org. My wife is a CEO, she has a team of coaches. It has been life changing this year, the changes we’ve seen in people, but it’s for people who want to take their control of their finances and say, I want to build wealth. We started out with nothing. We started out living our lives in a 400 square foot apartment. When we first got married, we had no money in the bank. Samantha was a saver and a smart investor, and it propelled us to be able to have financial power to do the things we’re doing today.

Stacy: I love that you meet people where they are and you don’t presuppose that they’ve had exposure to financial habits and strategies, because I think that’s a disconnect that a lot of the programs and services have is they’re built for people maybe that were in a community or a family where they at least kind of knew the basics. Right. And then they screwed up, and so they’re kind of trying to dig themselves out. But you are providing it’s like democratizing, essentially, the access to wealth building. And I think that’s so beautiful.

David: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. And look, I take no credit. Samantha is the brain trust. She’s leading.

But for those that want to learn more, check it out. Out of money. It’s a powerful service.

Stacy: Okay, last question for you. When I was on your podcast a little while back, I hope I’m getting the exact question right, but you asked me something along the lines of what advice would you give to yourself back when you were twelve years old? And so I’d love now that we know a little bit of your story, anchor us at twelve and share. If you could talk to little David, knowing what you know now, what would you say to him?

David: Yeah, I’m not sure I would get little David’s attention, little David, but it’s a powerful question I like to ask people. Stacey and I’m sitting here oh, what did I say? I would say, first and foremost, don’t wait as long as you did to understand the power of faith. I regret not tapping into Christ earlier. So that’s number one. Number two, don’t ever abandon your family. Your family will be your anchor. Your family will be the source of strength. Your family will be your channel for success, for joy, for sadness, for happiness. So channel and anchor hard and keep them close. And then the final thing I think I would say is tap deeply into your resilience and always be inquisitive. Learn the logic behind issues, behind problems, behind why things run, why they work, why they don’t be inquisitive and use your logic to find solutions that other may not think about and drive really hard with resilience. Those would be my three pieces of advice.

Stacy: Powerful. Thank you, David. This has been such a great conversation. I appreciate your time and sharing more about your story. Please tell our listeners where they can learn more about you and follow your work and also learn more about oura sure, absolutely.

David: So, first and foremost, for anyone who is interested remotely, even in writing a book, my first piece of advice is call Stacey Ennis. That’s not a plug. I’m not pitching, I’m being blunt. It was a life transforming experience, and frankly, I could not have done it without you. So that would be my first piece of advice to anybody. In terms of my book, check it out on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, any online bookseller. It’s called American Familia a Memoir of Perseverance. It is a conversation between a father and his two sons about poverty and about wonderful challenges and perspectives of the life. And then the other thing is, anyone interested in financial wealth, financial wellness, financial health, check out Aodamoney.org. AODA. Ahora, money. For those of you who truly want some support and want to think differently about how to use your money, go online and reach out to the team. It is a life changing experience. And then finally, check out Stacey Ennis’s podcast. I secretly listen when I have time. I have gotten a lot of tips, even from my own professional career. So don’t hesitate. Check it out. So that’s it.

Stacy: Thank you, David. Thanks for your time. Thanks for sharing your story with us.

David: You’re awesome. Stacy, thank you for having me, and I hope you have a credible rest of your day.