00:00:05:16 – 00:02:23:22
Mara Shorr
Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The podcast. I’m your host, Mara Shorr. I’m a partner in the medical practice management company. Yes, Shorr Solutions. Who’s the other partner, you may ask? Easy answer. That would be my father. Our founding partner, Jay Shorr. Together, we now have an amazing team and clients across the country. Listen as I chat, converse, strategize and commiserate with brilliant guests, colleagues, friends, clients, and influencers, it’s time to listen, learn, and be inspired. Welcome to Shorr Solutions: The podcast
So welcome to Shorr Solutions: The podcast. And with me on my very, very first episode here of Shorr Solutions: The podcast, I am absolutely honored to have my partner in crime with Shorr Solutions, our consulting company. And not only is Jay Shorr my partner, he is the founding partner of Shorr Solutions, our very own consulting company. But as you can tell, we share a last name and there’s a very good reason for that.
That is because we are a father daughter duo and Jay truly was the one that founded our consulting company many, many moons ago. And we are nearly a decade in the making. And he has an absolutely incredible background that we are going to get into as well as truly a story as far as how we came to be and quite honestly, what it’s like working with a father daughter partnership.
So with that, I want to introduce Jay Shorr.
Jay Shorr
Well, hello to the world of Shorr Solutions: The podcast. I hope that I can bring some real interesting information of how we got this consulting company started and what our current direction is and what the future direction is.
Mara Shorr
And it’s really just us being able to do this together. So it’s incredibly exciting. And so, you know, I always people ask me all the time, wait a minute, so he’s not your husband? And I say, no, I call him by his first name in a business setting, but obviously in personal setting, you’re still dad to me. And you’re just that’s who you are.
00:02:23:22 – 00:16:52:00
Mara Shorr
So I think Jay/dad. Can you talk a little bit about your background? Because you from a very, very young age, from the time you were like an older teenager, you are already in the medical field as a paramedic. And so it’s like it was in your blood to start. So can you tell and talk a little bit more about that?
Jay Shorr
Sure. Depends on what time of the day you and I both have a conversation. It is whether or not I’m calling dad or I’m calling Jay. All right. So I’m going to assume that for the purpose of your podcast that you’re speaking to Jay versus Dad.
Mara Shorr
Even though It is a Saturday morning. So even though we’re recording on a Saturday morning.
Jay Shorr
But Saturday morning doesn’t have any day in our work week anyway because nor does the time of the day, because that’s just what we do for our client base. But let me try and share a little bit about my wonderful interest in medicine from a very, very young child. I always had an interest in some form of medicine, and at one point in my life I thought that I would become a physician.
And if I would have had my choice of what type of a physician that I would have become years ago as a young adolescent, it would have been an orthopedic surgeon, sports medicine because I’m I’m not a jock. I’m very athletic. And there’s a difference. Okay? Anyone that knows me knows my build. I’m not a jock.
I’m just a very interested athlete that has participated in athletics, all of my young adult life and my adult life until I had some injuries. However, I always had an interest in medicine, and in my late teens I went and got training to become an ambulance technician and then an emergency medical technician, level one and two, and then went on to paramedics.
And it was very interesting because I always had a love and because orthopedics was a lot of trauma, my love and passion became emergency and I stuck with emergency and trauma because I just loved the idea of helping people. And at that time it was all voluntary. Now today it’s all paid. And then through my younger adult life and as I got older, instead of actually continuing to be on the front line as an immediate first responder, I still had my interest in safety and health and became a senior manager with a major Fortune 100 company based out here out of South Florida and as a senior manager in safety, health, security.
And it was always about safety, safety of the staff and safety of the people and the customers, clients, whatever. And I always maintained an interest in the medical community and I had the wonderful opportunity towards the end of around 1998, 1999, I had the wonderful opportunity to retire at a younger age from corporate America. And I immediately at that time went into a dermatology facial body, plastic surgery, cosmetic plastic gynecology practice.
And the medical director was my late wife at the time. We were not married. We had subsequently gotten married and this was back around the turn of the century. It seems so old when I say that, you know, in late 2011 practice was rocking and rolling. We had multiple offices, and I’m not going to get into revenues for the sake of this, but we were we tripled revenues plus and we were in dermatology and it was more of a medical than it was aesthetic.
And I just felt that the fee for service was not, you know, the insurance was not the route to go. It was best that we converted to a more aesthetic cosmetic, which everybody wants to do today. But we did that. We had our own operating room. We had a 7200 square foot facility here in South Florida. So we had three components.
We had the medical derm side, we had the med spa side, and we had the surgical side. Well, my dreams of what I wanted this practice to become all went up in a bundle when late in 2011, the medical director was diagnosed with stage four cancer and her eight month battle ended in June of 2012 with a multi facility, multimillion dollar facility.
And that bubble burst because she lost her battle with cancer and I won’t get into all the subsequent laws. That’s for another podcast. Hence, back in 2011, my dream was I’ve always been an educator. When I was with this Fortune 100 company, I traveled around the United States teaching and I was teaching in safety. So what I wanted to do.
Mara Shorr
and what’s funny is that to me, you’ve always been the safety guy. And you and I joke about this all the time. Now we, you and I in non-covid times spent probably more time together than any other adult daughter and father that I know. We traveled around the country together. We go into practices together and you take it upon yourself not just to look at, you know, we divide and conquer when it comes to marketing, when it comes to HR.
When it comes to all the nuances of a surgery center. But you are the guy that’s making sure that people aren’t sitting on faulty office chairs and that their emergency lights work in the practice. And, I mean, I’ve literally seen you change exit sign batteries before and look at when an elevator had its last inspection because safety is so important.
You look at fire extinguishers and expiration dates and to you it’s just part of how your brain operates, which is probably probably why one of your very first email addresses had the word safety in it. So it had the word safe in it. And it’s just that’s that’s what I’ve always known of you, you know, growing up, not only as now my business partner, but as my dad. You are the safety guy.
Jay Shorr
You know, I laugh and I call myself Jay the safety guy. And Mara, you’re correct. My first two AOL addresses going back to the AOL Days were Please be safe. Please be safe. plsbesafe And when I needed another one, I used, please be safe plzbesafe. And it’s just that I don’t just talk safety. I live safety, you know.
So let me get we’ll get back to that in a minute. But what happened was, in 2011, I felt that I had this innate ability to teach, which, you know, we’ll get into I teach at the university here in south Boca Raton now. But what I wanted to teach was the idea of practice management. And it was a side hustle that one day when my late wife and I retired and I joked, I said we would buy a Winnebago and travel the country and work when we want, not work and we didn’t want and we would just, you know, market ourselves and speak.
We were on the faculty a couple of different conferences at that time, but my dreams went awry. I had a couple of clients back in 2011, and when she got diagnosed, I completely stopped all of the consulting. Actually, I put it on hold. And at that time is when you came in, you had your own boutique, your company, and we were a client of yours.
You were helping us with marketing in the medical practice. You were helping us with marketing in our little side hustle of the medical practice consulting company, which was then known as The Best Medical Business Solutions, which is still actually our corporate name.
But when my wife passed away, Mara said to me, Dad, take as much time as you need because she had been there. And during this whole time between November to June 12, crying with me at Cora’s Coffee Pot in the morning before we went to hospice into the hospital. And when the demise finally came, she said, Dad, take as much time as you need.
I wasn’t sure whether or not I really wanted to come back to work. I was kind of burned out at that point from traveling around the country at the Mayo and MD Anderson and all the different cancer clinics. But let’s get past that. I got tired in months, subsequent months, I got tired of golf and fishing. And I know the listenership out there is saying, Jay that’s impossible.
Mara Shorr
And I feel like If you were to say this now, you are no longer tired of golf and fishing. I think now you could probably use a little more golf and fishing.
Jay Shorr
I live here in south Florida, and right now this is in the midst of the pandemic, and I haven’t gone golfing or fishing. So back to square one. But what ended up happening is later Mara said, take on what you want and let’s reapply for an abstract to one conference and two conferences. And it grew from there. And one more client and two more clients.
And a couple of clients were very nice and they waited until I was ready to come back before they allowed us to do consulting again.
Mara Shorr
Yeah. So, you know, with that, I remember so clearly all of that, you know, and I remember that from my side and watching you go through that and, you know, years later as an adult, I would go through all sorts of other things on my end, and I see now how that must have been for you to have your whole world changed.
And I think looking back, it was something that you and I truly went through together. We went through it before we were business partners. We went through it as a as a father daughter. You know, we went through that together as a family. And I think that helped shape the foundation of both of us. Really took a nice hard look at what it is that we wanted for the next step, because our world had changed.
And so when we then decided what is our next step going to be, you said to me, I’m too young to retire and I don’t want to retire. And but you also said, quite frankly, I’m too old and experienced to go work for somebody else. So let’s give this a shot. And what was a tiny little side hustle really turned into a nationally known, internationally known really, if we’re being honest, because you in 2019 started lecturing internationally and spent time all over the world to be able to really lecture.
And so we are now an internationally known team duo consulting company. And it just it was forever at that point that we shifted. And I don’t know that I ever thought growing up that this is what we would be doing. I think if you would have asked the Mara of 15 years ago, she would have said, You’re absolutely crazy.
But the Mara from 15 years ago also was working in radio and now I’m on a podcast, so, there’s something to be said for that. So one of the things that I wanted to to touch base with you about is we’ve now been doing this together for almost, almost a decade, just shy of I mean, you’ve obviously been in the industry so much longer than I have and that we’ve been doing this together, but we’ve had our consulting company for almost a decade now and we’ve been doing this together.
So what have you learned along the way as far as working with family? We’ve worked with other family members from time to time and we work together on this. And what have you learned about working with family that you think has made us really strong and succeed?
Jay Shorr
Well, let me start out in how this whole thing really, really started. And as we regrouped back in 2012, the business was not generating a lot of revenue. So Mara joined and she still had her boutique PR firm. And then finally she comes to me one day and she says, We need to talk. All right. And that’s not ever good for a man to hear. Ok.
Mara Shorr
We say that all the time. We make this joke.
Jay Shorr
And in the beginning I said, look how about since I had already started it? You come in and I can’t afford to pay you what I know that you could earn in a corporate America or even in your same business. But come in and I’ll give you a 10% partnership. All right? And then a little while later, it started to grow, and I still couldn’t afford to pay you much money.
So I said, I’ll give you a 25% partnership. And you said, okay. And then as we started to grow and get bigger and started to double our clients and double our conferences, I said, I don’t know that I can now pay you that big income that you were looking for and that all of your professional colleagues are making.
But I’ll make a deal and we’ll go 5050 partnership. And the one thing that I taught my dear old daughter is anything you do, you get in writing. She said, Fine, let’s go to a lawyer. And I’m going, Oh boy. So what we did.
Mara Shorr
You told me everything has to be in writing and hey.
Jay Shorr
Well, it does, because I wanted to make sure I went to a Wills Trust and a state attorney because of what I had been through in the past. And I wanted to make sure that I had a will and I had a trust. And that, you know, Mara is my only surviving child. So therefore, I wanted to make sure that she is protected and that we have a legal contract within our business.
We are a corporation. And I wanted to make sure that everything in the unfortunate or untimely demise of either one of us so that the other partner indeed was protected. So let me get back to your question.
00:16:52:01 – 00:40:35:01
Jay Shorr
What have I learned along the way about dealing with family? Well, it’s not just family. I think what have I learned along the way of dealing with a younger daughter?
Well, I will tell you that the main thing that I have learned, even as far as most recently, is that a younger daughter, 25 and 26 years old, actually beyond my wonderful or wildest belief, does turn in to a 36, 37 year old woman. And it’s not something that I ever believed would happen. And if you ever look at we have a lot of ducks here in South Florida, and if you ever look at a mother or a father duckling, they never leave and they always consider their offspring still their little ducklings.
And it was it is very difficult for me not to think of Mara still on my shoulders as I’m going through the park on the swings. All right. And I’ve learned that Mara, who has turned into a professional businesswoman, does have pushback. And it has become very, very difficult for me to accept sometimes until I sit back and I say, you know, maybe she has a point.
This is the new way of doing things. And that, you know, Jay, take your five and a half, three and a half inch disk out of your computer, of your DOS, and maybe get up to Windows ten or something like that.
Mara Shorr
You know, and I think it’s helpful that I think in the past two weeks alone, we’ve ordered you, you know, new headphones, a mic stand. And I have to say that as much as we joke about you and liking to really hold on to previous ways, you are now the proud owner of like a ring light for when we do some webinars and video and it’s it’s true though you know in all seriousness is that when we look at how we did things eight years ago is not the same as how we do things now and how things were done.
And what’s crazy, as I was even talking with, I was talking with my husband, I was talking with Russ this morning. And, you know, I joke that when Russ first asked me what my podcast was going to be about, I said, I’m going to do an entire podcast about you. One day. I’m going to talk about your baseball hat, one day I’m going to talk about your motorcycle, and he quickly lost interest.
And you know went along his way. But in all seriousness, I was talking with Russ this morning and I said that the crazy part is that with our business and I think everybody who owns a business or runs a business can see this. Is that the way that things were done 8 to 10 years ago is not the same as how it was done three months ago.
Right. If we’re talking about and for those of you, we’re recording this in the spring of 2020. And why that’s important is that when I say a couple of months ago, I’m talking pre-COVID and how business was run. Q1, even of 2020 is not the same as how business is even run now. And you and I have and, you know, we’ve actually for listeners, just as an FYI, we’ve really decided we wanted to rerecord our initial episode.
So for some of you may say, Hey, we notice a difference in audio quality or we noticed a difference in the conversation flow or the content. And we decided we wanted to rerecord this episode, but truly how things are done from. Q2 of 2020 on, is not the same as what the world was before that. And, you know Jay, you and I have a lot of conversations about that because the way of doing things before almost doesn’t exist anymore.
And it’s like the world changed without notice very, very suddenly and so I think you and I have had a lot of discussions. And certainly one thing that people always ask me is how is it working with your dad? And sometimes they say, how is it working with your dad? That’s so cool. And sometimes they say, how is it working with your dad?
And it’s never a slight against you. But I think people also that don’t have business partners at all. It’s also a question of how do you work with a business partner? And one thing that I say that you and I even have to reevaluate from time to time is that it’s we need to be like where we need to be alike.
In our goals for the business, and our drive for success. But we need to be different, where we need to be different. And so where you’ve spent so much time negotiating contracts and focusing on some of the legal components, although you’re not a lawyer, you are so legally fluent when it comes to the law. You are a news junkie.
And I think that we look at you are and we we joke all the time about your insane mathematic ability where numbers are a foreign language in which you are fluent and it takes you longer to explain to me how you came across a number which I know sometimes could be frustrating for you because you’re like, Don’t you just get it? Because it’s just it’s all there.
Jay Shorr
Let me jump in for a second.
Mara Shorr
Yeah.
Jay Shorr
The challenge and opportunity in a partnership. Any partnership.
Mara Shorr
Yes.
Jay Shorr
And we deal with clients who have partnership and they are non-family related. We have several clients that are husband and wife partnerships where both are doctors might be a male physician and a female surgeon or a male surgeon and a female physician. But they’re both physicians, or they may have a husband administrator like I was and a female doctor surgeon or the other way around.
So it is challenging. And there are no father daughter that I know of in our industry. But many times in my situation, the old gray bald hair guy sometimes doesn’t want to let go. And you know, whether it’s possession or whether it’s ownership, what you really need to do is focus on what each person does best and let go of ownership, not of the physical ownership of the business, but let go of ownership of processes.
And this goes with any business to allow the people your end goal is going to be identical. And naturally that success. However, the process is what each one excels at, and I excel at numbers and finance and legal compliance because I read legal briefs and things like that for a hobby.
Mara Shorr
I was going to say for fun!
Jay Shorr
I mean, I really enjoy, people look at me and they’re like, What are you reading? I don’t even like the print. I don’t even like the envelope that those legal papers come in because I know it’s coming from the attorney, All right? But I happen to enjoy it because to me, it’s a puzzle and I use it for experience for other clients on what really what not to do.
Jay Shorr
All right. That’s the most important part. Because to me, when you were mentioning about pre-COVID, this is for those of you listening, this is May of 2020, more mentioned the spring. I think there’s a term and people are saying the new normal. I don’t really want to say the new normal because people coming into business today, it’s actually going to be normal.
All right. The new normal for me was post-9-11, because pre 911, that was normal. Then there was a new normal after 911. But you know what? That’s not new normal anymore. That’s normal. Having to take your shoes off and having to take your laptop out. I never had to do that before.
Mara Shorr
So this is normal. Before, I could walk you up to the gate, I could greet you and yeah.
Jay Shorr
Yeah. So right now what we’re doing about washing your hands and social distancing and wearing masks and all this. Yes, everybody is doing a webinar. Everybody is doing some type of a speech and it’s about what are we going to do when we get back to work, post COVID? What? You know what? We’re in the process right now, Mara, of opening up several different practices for clients.
And you know what? It’s not the new normal. It’s going to be the normal. So we really have to think, what’s our next generation? And you’re going to be dealing with that next generation in your professional career. I mean, I’m 66 years old. 20 years from now, I don’t think I’m going to be doing this. You know, I hope I can still probably use my fishing rod as a cane or something like that, you know, or my golf club as a cane.
Mara Shorr
It’ll be the coolest nightstand ever. It’ll be the coolest nightstand ever.
Jay Shorr
But that will be the normal and how we do things. All right. And our consulting company that deals with A: start ups B: existing practices to help them gain momentum and C: the succession planning and exit strategy for people who want to get the most out of their business. And unfortunately, we’re in a situation where we’re actually helping practices go out of business, but doing it the right way because they can’t afford or sustain to reopen.
And my heart drops for these people who’ve worked so hard, but they just cannot afford the loss and the damage that has occurred on this. So we actually work pre, intra, you know, and post, whatever terminology you want to use for the success and health of aesthetic, cosmetic, medical practices. And just to note, we are venturing into other verticals as well.
Always want to be remaining in aesthetic cosmetic but because of COVID and essential practices, there is a need for us to help other specialties now that are essential, that are also being hurt by this type of shutdowns and things like that. And they’re asking for our help. So, you know, we’re venturing out into additional verticals because the nonessential that are being closed down, some may not survive.
Mara Shorr
And we’ve, you know, we’ve seen this to a degree before as far as practices that have suffered. And we’ve had to help them look at what are their other options. And so this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve seen that. We haven’t seen it to the scale that we’ve had these conversations. And that’s why you and I actually got when we got together a few months ago at the beginning of of COVID and at the onset.
And we said what is needed right now for practices? And one of the things is that you and I always make a point of looking at what is needed right now. And you what are I would say in the consulting company, you do this great job of, hey, I want to do this big idea, I want to launch it and I want to do this big idea.
And over the years, so you come to me and you say, Hey, Mara! and that’s why over the years we started calling them the Hey-Mara ideas. And so because you look and you have the finger that you point, you say, Hey, Mara, I have an idea. And then it is my job to look at all of the 859 steps that need to happen to make this idea.
But we work together on this. And I think one thing I’m really proud of is how quickly.
Jay Shorr
See, that’s the difference in the old generation and the new generation. My Hey-Mara moments are think about it, sell it. All right. The new generation is okay. Think about it and create the steps that have to develop to get it to sell. No, that’s that’s. I looked at it totally different.
Mara Shorr
Yeah, I focus a lot on processes and that’s where, you know I handle a lot of that for our team is like what are all the processes? Because when we first started our company, it was just, you and I, and now it’s you and I and our team and we always say our team because truly we could not have grown without our team, without the team that we have in place.
And we I am so, so proud of the team we have in place that everything from our very first intern, many, many years ago who actually I just heard that. So not only was I her reference when she was going for her job at a big, huge corporate company, I was her reference when she was going for her masters and she actually asked me to be a reference because she came back for a very short period of time last year and now she’s getting ready to buy a house and it is something that everything from our very first intern to the current team that we have in place, that we are so team focused.
And I swear I come back to that is that I focus a lot on the processes of our team. But because we have the team that we have, we’re still nimble and we’re able to say this is a product. How quickly can we launch what needs to be done to get this out? And during COVID, that has meant for us a lot of content production and really producing some really great products that people have said to us.
All of our clients have come to us and said, Thank you so much for A: helping me through it on the consulting side because you and I and our team were putting out probably where we normally would put out very long days anyway, but probably, I would say 14 to 15 hour days every day because everybody needed guidance with everything.
But we’ve also created some really great turnkey products. And so that’s something that I’m really, really proud of.
Jay Shorr
Yeah. The interesting thing about the turnkey products are they are also retail products that we sell to non-clients as a one off product. But we had a yesterday we were speaking with a brand new client who just signed on because they’re opening up a med spa in West Virginia. And he said, by the way, that other tool kit that you have, you know, how much is that?
And we said, Oh, no, no, no. That is a product that we offer to all of our full service clients that, you know, regardless and every update. And we probably make daily updates to it and their updates that we create. And they’re also updates from things that we receive and with permission from collaborative vendors or NIH or CDC or even other doctors that create something and we receive it, even if it’s one of the companies I ask for permission with citation, if we can put it up on our toolkit site for everybody to see.
Mara Shorr
And that’s, you know, we’ve then as we’ve collaborated with others because this thing you and I always talk about is collaboration is better than competition. And so we’ve spent a lot of time collaborating. And that’s where on this podcast, one of the things that our listeners are going to hear are every time I introduce somebody and it’s, Oh, this is my friend, this is my colleague, this is my and they’re not friends of, oh, I’ve known this person for, you know, since nursery school.
And they now have no relative relation to our industry. These are people that you and I have fostered relationships with over the years, and we’ve become genuinely friends with those in our industry to be able to pull things together very quickly and to be able to work together to problem solve for our clients, whether it is legal, whether it is other owners of other medical spas or other medical practices.
And so we can pull from their knowledge base, whether it is digital marketing firms. But we’ve really fostered those relationships because they’re genuinely important to us.
Jay Shorr
Well, that leads me into we are going to be starting a webinar series and the webinar series I’ll host and of course Mara will also be my guest time to time. But the webinar series is going to be with legal panels because there are going to be many, many legal issues post COVID from the patient side, from the staffing side, and we’ll get into that even in another podcast.
But it’s going to be other doctors, other surgeons, it’s going to be industry. And some of these can even be our professional colleagues who may or may not perform some of the services that we do. But I really want the listenership to listen to different sides of it because we don’t have all the answers and they don’t have all the answers.
And when you, you know, take it all up and shake it up and throw it against the wall, whatever remains is what you really should take away from it. You know, take the best sources of information that you can. Mine will be video and Q&A and Mara’s will be the audio side. And these are just ways that we can get the information out to the public to get ourselves known.
You know, I teach at Florida Atlantic University in medical business management, and I just concluded my second semester. And what’s interesting is I was all excited the first semester and I was in front of the students where I had taken the medical business management course. Post Bachelor.
Mara Shorr
Are you are you at liberty to say which in.
Jay Shorr
Yes, it’s Florida Atlantic University and it’s in the Medical Business Management College of Executive Education, and it is public knowledge. It’s up on their website and it has my faculty profile on there. But my my point to this is I was so excited because I was in front of students again. All right, teaching. I had done it before and I just loved it.
And then at the end of the first semester, it became, Oh no, you can’t teach in the classroom anymore. You have to teach from home or in office, and it has to be done on a platform. Go to Citrix, Zoom, whatever your preference of choice is. And then came the second semester and I taught all semester, you know, and it’s 3 hours a night, 630 to 930.
And you know, it went from classroom to computer. And if you don’t know how to do that, it becomes a challenge because when you’re in front of people, you can call on them. You can have a team effort. And when you’re doing it all by yourself and your team of your students don’t participate. It is three solid hours.
Anybody that knows if you give Jay 3 hours at a conference will take 3 hours and 20 minutes.
Mara Shorr
I know I’ve been in the one in the back of the room going, Jay you have to wrap it up! with get.
You have to wrap it up Jay. Everyone’s ready for their orders. But no, I mean, that’s, you know, and we joke, but even at conferences, even I always say, okay, we need to wrap it up, then the second you wrap it up, there’s always people going, But wait, I have a question. Jay, Can I ask you a question? And I’ve seen it where it’s another half hour before we get out of the conference because you are the source of knowledge and everyone has, quote unquote, Just one more question.
You and I joke a lot about people that say to me, Oh, can I have just 5 minutes? And it’s never just 5 minutes, but with you, it’s I have just one more question and it’s never one more question.
Jay Shorr
The funniest story that I can actually tell at a conference is people that have known me know that I love to teach, but that’s just the bottom line. And they asked me, I had like a 30 minute lecture that the next presenter actually was not in the same room. They were different keynotes and the next lecture was actually in a different room.
And they said to me, You know, Jay, you did the same lecture yesterday, was in the same time frame, a different actual topic. But let me tell you what happened. Can you cut your lecture to 20 minutes instead of 30? And I said, Why? And they said, Because at the end of your lecture, you had so many people that came up to you afterwards that nobody showed up for the next lecture in the other room, and the presenter asked if Jay could cut it 10 minutes short, so that when people asked him, you know, questions or something like that, that at least he would have people in the room.
Mara Shorr
See, that’s not the story I thought you were going to tell. I thought you were going to tell the story of how probably somewhere around 2013 or 2014, we were at a national conference and we were at our we were lecturing at a forum, and you and I had completed our lectures, and their keynote was Arnold Schwarzenegger. And Arnold was riding a bit late.
He was flown in on what I believe was probably private jet. And the situation was just it took him a little longer. And so of all the people in the room and if anybody’s ever been to a forum, you know that they have a huge attendance and this is a keynote. So the room is full and they’re waiting for Arnold.
And they tapped Jay on the shoulder and say, Hey, I know we hadn’t actually had you prepare anything, but can you get up there? Because you do a really great job of speaking. And I, you know, just kind of off the cuff talking. And they had you go up and you were the one that spoke leading up to waiting for good old Arnold.
And it was some knowledge combined with some jokes and, you know, I’m going, oh, no, because as any daughter can understand, every dad thinks his material is hilarious. And everybody that’s listening to the dad jokes thinks material is hilarious because they’re hearing it for the first time. But I’m going, oh my gosh, I’ve heard this whole so many times my whole life.
And it was and you went see Mara, people like the jokes? I’m like, Yeah, but dad, the jokes. And for the next two years, people came up to us at conferences and said, I saw you at a forum, I loved your jokes. And you would look at me and say, see, people love my jokes, but you did this great job of just jumping in.
And I don’t know how many times over the years you’ve done that.
Jay Shorr
To show you how unimportant it was. I was on for about 35 minutes in the fill in because he was running late and they when they tapped me on the shoulder, I went up on the stage and I just I’m on a roll. And as fast as they put me on the stage, Arnold arrived and it was like they pushed out a hook and they rolled it in because now Arnold is ready.
And as fast as I went on, 32 minutes later, they pulled me right off in the middle of my dialog because Arnold was ready now.
Mara Shorr
Now, you know, and I think, you know, my earliest memory, I would say, of, you know, you never meeting a stranger because we always say you never met a stranger. And I think that’s part of what has really helped us succeed is just your natural ability to connect with everybody, to connect with potential clients, to connect with conference leaders, to connect with other vendors, and form these relationships.
But my earliest memory is I was it was a little girl. And you said you would pick us up for the time at that. At that point in time, right. You and Mom had had split up many moons ago. And at that point in time, this was when dads got like one night a week and every other weekend.
So dad would pick us up, we’d have dinner, we would go to Shabbat services and then we would go food shopping, right? And so it’s like 8:30 pm at night. We’re going food shopping for food for the weekend. And I remember as a little girl having to say to you, you’re allowed to talk to one more stranger in the refrigerator dairy aisle because you were just you never met somebody that you didn’t like and that you didn’t instantly meet and connect with.
And I remember so clearly it’s just but that you always you make that person light up just because you know how to make people feel great about themselves. And you had to connect with them. And then they always make you happy because those connections make you so happy. So it’s I remember being little and having those trips.
00:40:35:01 – 00:41:09:04
Mara Shorr
But one of the things that as we start to wrap up our conversation is I always like to ask three questions of every podcast guest and you can answer them in any order. And so those three questions are what is one lesson you’ve learned along the way that you would like to share with our audience that you haven’t already? What is one thing you would do differently and what is the thing either personally and professionally that you are most proud of? And you can answer those in any order you want.
00:41:09:06 – 00:41:46:12
Jay Shorr
Well, let’s sort of answer them in that order. One thing I’ve learned along the way is don’t sweat the small stuff at the end of the day, what is really most important, number one is family. Friends will wane and go by the wayside. Take life seriously. Don’t do everything to chase the dollar, because many times when you live your life to chase the dollar, you really bypass some of the things and you give up time along the way that you could have been spending with more important people in your life.
And really, as a young man, you sometimes, priorities Athletics was very much a priority to me. What I didn’t explain is that young, early in my career, although I did want to be a surgeon, I also wanted to be a professional baseball player. And that’s not a joke. I mean, I really did. Injuries along the way prevented that dream.
Fortunately, my father said to me, Get an education, son, because you’re really not that good. But I thought I was very good because I always made a starting team. But in the scheme of things, I did listen to my father.
Mara Shorr
Which is really good piece of advice that I do differently.
00:42:23:11 – 00:42:49:18
Jay Shorr
I think one thing that I would do differently is I would take life more seriously as a younger man. All right. And let people into life to collaborate. And, you know, testosterone really gets in the way a lot of times when you compete with one another because the WE versus the I syndrome, we are much stronger as a team.
One plus one equals three. I see where we’ve gotten when I started it and then you joined and then we have doubled, tripled, quadrupled our team. It has challenges along the way when you have to manage other people because you don’t always agree. All right. So, you know, take life more seriously and still spend time to smell the roses.
00:43:13:16 – 00:48:23:12
Jay Shorr
All right. And the one thing I am most proud of, anybody that knows me will realize what I am most proud of is what I guess, though, I would want somebody to put on my tombstone and that he was a husband and he was a father. And to me, I am most proud of having the ability to raise such a beautiful daughter and being a business with my daughter because we don’t always get along professionally.
But I will share with you that right after our disagreements professionally, if the phone rings and said, can I talk to dad, that’s a whole new hat that flips around and that’s what I’m most proud of, that I have the ability to see my daughter grow up. I have created and partnered to have a successful business. When many businesses fail in its infancy, we have grown in its infancy.
I’ll never be a Silicon Valley type of corporation that are in the billions, but that’s okay. We feed six additional families and that’s important to me. I’m proud of what it is and actually I’m very, very proud that in a very short time we have won national and I mean, national awards as the aesthetic, non-physician, aesthetic practice management company of the year from Informa, The Aesthetics Show, The Aesthetic Channel in 2018 and 2019.
These are awards you cannot buy. They’re voted on by your peers. They voted on by judges in the industry. You don’t pay a fee and get the award. That is what I’m proud of because I’m recognized along with my daughter, for the efforts we’ve done. Because I do this, because I love to do it, you know, and I will continue to do it for I think.
Hopefully, thank God as long as my health allows me to.
Mara Shorr
Well, thank you so much for for joining today and for being my my first episode on shorr Solutions: The Podcast, I wouldn’t have it any other way, so I definitely wouldn’t have it any other way. And I think that even though having a business and having a partner, being a business owner, it’s people say, Oh, that must be that must be easy because you’re the boss.
00:45:39:00 – 00:46:10:07
Mara Shorr
It’s not easy. But I think that there are so times that I am so forever grateful to be able to have you on my side and knowing that I have this partner that I can trust 100% and I can’t tell you how much I’ve learned from you, you as my mentor and being able to understand so much about the business world and and quite honestly, the parts that I can’t necessarily learn from from you.
I am able to learn from. And although we haven’t given her credit as our unofficial third musketeer. But your wife, who is, you know, my step mom, Pat, who is just this absolutely amazing woman that has helped be our sounding board and she helps us strategize, figure us out. Pat comes not from inside our industry, but from having this glorious 42 year career with Bloomingdale’s and corporate.
And so I think that being able to have not only you, but now, Pat, because you and Pat have been together for quite some time now. And so having you guys as these people that I can really look up to and learn from and sometimes I need industry mentorship and sometimes I quite honestly need mentorship from another woman who has really rocked her career.
Jay Shorr
The fourth question that you didn’t ask is what would I what would I like to say in closing? Because, you know, I always have to get the last word.
Mara Shorr
Oh, okay. Okay. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to let you Jay. I’ll tell you what we’re going to do something a little differently than normal. Let’s have you take us out here. So we’ll you flip the table and you can wrap up. You can wrap up here.
Jay Shorr
I’ll take this.
Mara Shorr
Okay.
Jay Shorr
The one thing that I certainly hope that nobody else that you do a podcast with will say to you and mean it is that I love you. That’s how I’ll end it. I love you.
Mara Shorr
I love you, too. Now, I had the last word. Yeah.
Jay Shorr
That’s a wrap.
Mara Shorr
And that’s a wrap.
Mara Shorr
Thank you so much for joining us on Shorr Solutions: The Podcast.
00:48:23:13 – 00:49:41:04
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