You’re More than Your Work: Interview with Jackleen Samuel, CEO of Resilient Healthcare

I recently went one-on-one with Jackleen Samuel, CEO of Resilient Healthcare.

Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?

Jackleen: I'm a physical therapist by trade. I went to Rutgers, where I got my doctorate in physical therapy. I'm from New Jersey. I initially went to physical therapy school because I wanted to treat athletes. I played soccer my whole life, and I played a year of D1 soccer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. I realized I wanted to be in the healthcare field, but I wanted to work with athletes, so physical therapy fits. I was young (20 years old) when I went to physical therapy school and graduated at 23. I only say that because I was able to take on more risk because I was so young. I didn't have a lot of other responsibilities in my life at that time. 

I started my first practice, which was an outpatient clinic and private practice, and it focused on treating athletes. My dad had a stroke in New Jersey, and I was working on the weekends with home health agencies. I also visited and treated patients for extra money in their homes on weekends.  Back then, I never knew home care settings existed, not even through grad school. I fell in love with that care setting and thought it could fix many of the chronic care issues in America. Treating patients in their homes reduces the burden on the family and patients as patients are more comfortable. You learn so much more about them in their own environment. And then, when my dad was spending so much time in the hospital, I just started asking myself, why are we sending him back (to the hospital) rather than us treating him at home because a lot of the care that was provided in the hospital, if it was integrated, and there was technology that managed all the logistics, we could deliver that kind of care at home safely thus making it more convenient for patients. That was really how Resilient Healthcare started. 

Capital raising has been very instrumental to my growth and the failures around capital raising. I am a woman. I am a woman of color. We get the least amount of VC money than anybody else in the country. Even though outcomes show that women-led companies do a lot better than men, with that said, I had an early capital partner who decided he no longer wanted to capitalize on the company overnight. We had an acquisition offer that he wanted to sell, but I did not, so that was a very challenging experience I went through. I ended up not selling but committing to buying out that partner under specific terms. Thus, I had to learn a lot about the legal documents around accepting money from investors during that experience. I learned it the hard way. So, gaining capital and losing capital, I learned a lot. 

Raising money and then realizing that raising money is not the accomplishment, as the accomplishment is when you can return that money, and so really, you just set yourself up for a contract. That has been a learning experience—running out of money and figuring out how to continue growing the business with very little capital has been a learning experience. I would say much of my learning experience has been around how money moves in healthcare and the capital world.

Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?

Jackleen: Number one is to have a good product. Absolutely. And then make sure that that product is scalable. So, for us, we started as providers and realized that it's tough to scale a practice if it's so human capital intensive—it's actual people, it's providers. Therefore, we shifted to a more technologically enabled platform so that we could scale the programs to different hospitals more quickly. 

So, on the technology front, having a good product that is scalable, just because you have a good product or good software, the way that you sell that software needs to be standardized. It took us a bit to learn that, especially when you're selling into the healthcare market, where every hospital is so different, they will all want different things. When we started, we would meet with our clients and ask them to tell us what they wanted, and then we could build a contract around that. We standardized our contracts and did so in a way that our clients are used to when contracting - they're used to labor costs, management costs, and software costs.  So, having a good product, having a standardized, repeatable sales process, which includes contracting, having the right kind of capital, and then being able to tell your story in a way that is scalable so that other people can understand it.  

Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?

Jackleen: An effective leader possesses a unique blend of qualities that set them apart. First and foremost, they are a hustler, someone who is driven, ambitious, and relentless in the pursuit of their goals. They are mission-driven, fully committed to their organization's mission and values, yet flexible and adaptable to new circumstances and challenges. Instead of being impulsive, they are strategic, carefully weighing their decisions and actions to achieve the best outcomes. Overall, an effective leader is not just a visionary but also a pragmatic executor, able to inspire and mobilize others towards a common goal while navigating through complexities with clarity and purpose.

Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?

Jackleen: First and foremost, you must set your ego aside, then network and learn from the people you network with—those three things, along with reading.  Read, read, and continue to read and learn. Read books from people who've already accomplished what you're trying to accomplish and learn from them. Any continuing education course that you find that fits your mold, do that, but be open to learning and understand that you don't know everything, and the more you learn, the more you realize, the less you know.

Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?

Jackleen: Tip number one: you're more than your work. I think especially for servant leaders. You're so passionate about your mission that you start tying your entire self-worth to that mission. And these things, especially for entrepreneurs, ebb and flow; it is much like a roller coaster ride. Sometimes, there are really great days, and sometimes, they're not-so-great days. So, understand that you still have self-worth, and you are going to work through it.  And especially with the fact that you hear that higher execs have higher suicide rates and all that, I think that's important to note, especially for entrepreneurs. 

Tip number two is to surround yourself with really passionate people who believe in what you're doing and want to support you in what you're doing. For me, it's my staff. We have been through basically everything in the last five years, including a health pandemic. My staff always believed we would make it, though, because they believe in our mission, which is to make a difference in healthcare.  So, surround yourself with people who genuinely believe in your mission. 

Tip three: Take time for yourself. I know that everyone always says that, and terrible at it. I don't really know how to go very far without my phone. But take time with the people who are in your life: your spouse, your kids, your family, etc.

Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?

Jackleen: Find people who genuinely believe in what you're doing and your mission, not people who are there just to collect a paycheck. Be patient with people. Everybody has a different learning style and a different way of scaling and progressing in their own careers, and it's not going to match you, so just be patient with how they grow.

Adam: What are your best tips on the topics of sales, marketing, and branding?

Jackleen: Sales, marketing, and branding, especially in healthcare, are tough markets to sell into. So, for me, what was successful was being patient. It's a long cycle to close your initial sale. After that, it becomes a lot shorter because hospitals look to each other or health systems look to each other for networking. Most of my most significant contracts came from networking and meeting with people in decision-making roles at these large health systems. 

For marketing and branding, it took me a little bit to realize that my company needs a brand. I, too, need a brand and recognize that working with an agency like the Sax Agency is so valuable that many entrepreneurs don't think of it until three or four years into the business.

Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?

Jackleen: Stop acting like you're alone in this process!


Adam Mendler is an entrepreneur, writer, speaker, educator, and nationally recognized authority on leadership. Adam is the creator and host of the business and leadership podcast Thirty Minute Mentors, where he goes one-on-one with America's most successful people - Fortune 500 CEOs, founders of household name companies, Hall of Fame and Olympic gold medal-winning athletes, political and military leaders - for intimate half-hour conversations each week. A top leadership speaker, Adam draws upon his insights building and leading businesses and interviewing hundreds of America's top leaders as a top keynote speaker to businesses, universities, and non-profit organizations. Adam has written extensively on leadership and related topics, having authored over 70 articles published in major media outlets including Forbes, Inc. and HuffPost, and has conducted more than 500 one on one interviews with America’s top leaders through his collective media projects. Adam teaches graduate-level courses on leadership at UCLA and is an advisor to numerous companies and leaders. A Los Angeles native, Adam is a lifelong Angels fan and an avid backgammon player.

Follow Adam on Instagram and Twitter at @adammendler and on LinkedIn and listen and subscribe to Thirty Minute Mentors on your favorite podcasting app.