ONEder Podcast Episode - Leading with Flavor: Strategy, Culture &…

Leading with Flavor: Strategy, Culture & Operations

Episode 70

Leading with Flavor: Strategy, Culture & Operations

From Michelin-starred kitchens to mission-driven healthcare systems, Eric Eisenberg’s journey is anything but ordinary. On this episode of the ONEder Podcast, Eric shares how his love of food and theatrical flair led to a decades-long leadership career in healthcare and senior living foodservice. Now as a consultant and co-founder of Quadra Alliance, he’s on a mission to empower teams, modernize operations, and help people thrive—both in the kitchen and at the table. Tune in to hear how systems thinking, empathy, and a passion for good food are reshaping the future of foodservice management.

Featured on the Show

View transcript
We see lots more chefs in leadership roles in healthcare and non-commercial kitchens because we have really started to bring the two, not started, we've really achieved bringing the two parts of the operation together. This empathetic, compassionate and very regulated part of what we do, which is often very hard for the cook, the guy who just wants to cook to grasp - we've kind of brought both sides to the middle.

Watch this episode on YouTube

On this episode of the ONEder Podcast, Quadra Alliance co-founder Eric Eisenberg shares how his love of food and theatrical flair led to a decades-long leadership career in healthcare and senior living foodservice. He’s on a mission to empower teams, modernize operations, and help people thrive—both in the kitchen and at the table.

Watch Now

Transcript

CCB [00:01.67] Welcome back to the ONEder Podcast. This is your host, CCB And today we're diving into the heart of food service innovation with someone who knows every side of the kitchen and the C-suite. Eric Eisenberg began his career as an executive chef and went on to lead large-scale food operations in healthcare and senior living. environments, eventually managing multi-million dollar budgets and teams of hundreds. Today, he's the principal consultant at iCulinary and a co-founder of Quadra Alliance, a new venture focused on helping operators navigate complex challenges with fresh thinking, collaboration, and strategic innovation. From reducing food costs and staff turnover to integrating sustainable practices and leading culture change, Eric brings decades of hands-on experience and a passion for helping people thrive, both at the table and in their roles.

Okay, before we dive in, I want to remind us that the ONEder Podcast is available on all streaming services. And when you want to look for more information about Eric and the work that he's doing, you can check out the podcast page because it will have links to everything that we're talking about.

So, I'm going to dive in and say, Eric, hey, take us back to the beginning. What sparked your love of food? Oh my gosh, what sparked your love of food? And what led you from chef's whites to system-wide leadership?

Eric Eisenberg [01:33.89] Hi, CCB. Well, wow, what an introduction. I have to say, it's always a little bizarre when you hear other people kind of saying back the the path that led you to where you were going, even though you didn't know you were going there. That’s a little bit of my story. So, you know, in a nutshell, I grew up in an ethnic household and just outside of New York City, started my life, you know, where gathering at home with friends and family was always accompanied by food. Every celebration was accompanied by food. That was from you know both culturally and emotionally in our house. And food was just always a part of what it meant to gather with the people that were important to you. And so I learned how to cook at a young age just at you know at my mother and father's apron strings. Both my parents were amazing cooks and we often had people in our home.

Eric Eisenberg [02:39.11] And so when I had finished college, as many people of my generation automatically did no matter what and followed a path that I thought was going to be the path I was going to go on. I got out of college and found myself after doing a bunch of work study in the dining hall, e etc. When I was in school, I immediately went and got a job in a restaurant. That was sort of how it all started.

CCB [03:07.52] Okay, wait, I'm gonna interrupt. What was your college degree in?

Eric Eisenberg [03:11.36] The theater.

CCB [03:12.64] Oh, perfect. Okay.

Eric Eisenberg [03:14.14] I have a bachelor's degree and my bachelor's degree is in the theater, both in performance and lighting design, strangely enough. So there, I always have had sort of a graphic, uh, artistic sort of aspect to my personality beyond performance as well. I, I graphically and visually, I kind of have, it's always been very appealing to me to work in those mediums.

And so, making art on the plate was, was a, was a good extension of that. And, I, I got lucky and went to work in a couple of really great restaurants in New York city in my early twenties. And I was just influenced by some really great chefs at that time. This is, you know, the mid 80s, the restaurant scene in New York was quite prolific at that time, kind of really emerging. This is pre Food Network and and all of that. So it was really, it was really as the Food Network was just sort of coming into even people are even beginning to understand that. So that that's kind of the That's the background as I was sort of that New York City restaurant pirate kind of guy working lines in very upscale restaurants and really enjoying that time of my life, I have to admit. But as I got a little older and all this...

CCB [04:33.45] Wait, did you have to scream “Yes, Chef”?

Eric Eisenberg [04:36.35] Well, we weren't really into "Yes Chef" at that time. It was more... There was just yelling and screaming, but we didn't...

CCB [04:42.20] Okay.

Eric Eisenberg [04:43.00] There wasn't a lot of “yes chef”-ing in those days. "Yes Chef" came a little later. But I did go to France from that experience. And so after working in restaurants in New York for a few years, I was working for an executive chef in a high-end restaurant in New York City. And they had a sous chef job available, but I couldn't get hired to it because I had never been to culinary school and I hadn't really had any leadership experience in a kitchen. So I was encouraged by my chef at that time to go do stage in a restaurant, a little restaurant in Paris.

And that restaurant called the Petite Marguerite was a one-star Michelin restaurant. And I had an incredible experience there. spent about six months working in that kitchen, tiny little kitchen, two brothers and three other guys and myself. And it was it was really an experience that solidified that I was in the right place doing the right thing. And so that what was going to be a three-month stage turned into a six-month stage, which then turned into enrollment at the Cordon Bleu in Paris. And then a couple of other Michelin restaurant experiences along the way while I was living in France. And I stayed in France for just about five years I was there. So, and then returned to New York for a variety of personal reasons, not to go too deeply into that, but my mother was terminally ill at the time and…

CCB [06:12.02] Oh gosh.

Eric Eisenberg [06:24.83] I had other plans to travel and go do some other things, but really wanted to come home and spend some time with my mom and and have that experience with her as at the end of her life. and And so that's what I did. And then unfortunately, my father passed shortly after that. And that kind of put me onto a different kind of trajectory and

CCB [06:42.32] Oh, my gosh.

Eric Eisenberg [06:46.58] I really needed a change of pace at that time. And that's that's what took me to Seattle. I had been working as the executive chef for the embassy of Luxembourg to the United Nations. And I was kind of getting a little stagnant in that job. it was It was a great job. I really loved it in a lot of ways. Got to meet a lot of really cool people. But i was yeah I was a team of one. I didn't really... It wasn't really fulfilling my overall aspirations about what I wanted to do as a chef. And I had some friends that had moved to Seattle shortly after I'd gotten back from France, actually. They had moved out to Seattle. And... and they were looking to open a restaurant and i was looking to do something. And, you know, my life had changed dramatically with the loss of my parents. And, uh, so I packed up and moved across the country to, to Seattle where I have now been, well, I'm in the Pacific Northwest since 1995.

So my life is here now, a hundred percent. And, uh, So I did go to Seattle and I did buy a restaurant. We had a French restaurant, a very high-end French restaurant that had been around for like 30 years. It was founded in 1970. And we were we had more we didn't have enough sense to realize that this old restaurant that was old and tired, even though it had a tremendous reputation, didn't really potentially didn't really earn that reputation anymore. it was kind of resting on its laurels and running on fumes. And so the first, first couple of years were a little rough, but we, uh, we engaged the community and we modernized and got a lot of great press and, had a really great run, at, at our restaurant in, in just outside of Seattle, actually, downtown Seattle.

CCB [09:02.59] I’m going to make a little note here for all of our listeners that there will be links on on the podcast page. And Eric on his LinkedIn profile has a great visual history of everything that he's telling us right now. Okay, go ahead.

Eric Eisenberg [09:17.13] Thank you. And so. Long story short, you know, in the in at that time of my life, I met my wife. We had a child and we kind of came to the conclusion that maybe this wasn't the life that we wanted for ourselves and our family forever. And it just so happened that a customer of mine at the restaurant wanted to invest in the restaurant to update it and do some stuff. And that was really cool. But he wasn't my favorite person. And I didn't really want to get into bed with this person. So we ended up selling him the restaurant and ended up working for him for a little while until that relationship dissolved.

And then I found myself getting into more of a corporate environment where i I went to go work at at a country club after that. And although that experience was not for me, it did transition me into the idea that, you know, what would I do next? And when I was looking for a new job, I was going through the paper, as you did in those days still. And I saw this job as the executive chef for a health, for a hospital, actually, Swedish hospital in Seattle. And I said, hey, This could be interesting. You know, I can make meatloaf and mashed potatoes for a couple of a year or two until I get….

CCB [10:43.54] and Jello

Eric Eisenberg [10:45.72] Right. Until I figure out what's next. And, you know, little did I know that that would be the most rewarding, the most engaging, the most satisfying work that I had ever done. So that was really interesting. You know, I interviewed for that job and I remember so I actually just told the story to somebody the other day. I left that room feeling I will never be hired for this position ever.

And I called my wife and I said, honey, it was interesting, but these folks are never going to hire me. And it was like I think it was an hour later they called me and offered me the job. And I spent 15 years on a very deep learning curve as we brought on another hospital and built another hospital and took on another hospital that was contract service managed. And then we took that over and, you know, one thing led to another and, and you know, 15 years and five hospitals later, had taken on a you know, a whole litany of experiences that I never ever dreamed I would have experienced as a chef, uh, let alone as a theater major.

But it really turned out to be, you know, there's so much leadership development, so much experience. And I'd say that a lot of it came not only through the organization of Swedish, but more so my professional organization that I've been along through for years, which is the Association for Healthcare Food Service, or it's known as AHF. And this is an organization that's a national organization. It represents, you know, about 2000 members over 1500 or so operate, you know hospital and senior living operations around the country and growing every day. It's, it's, a and they do focus on self-operated food service. So they're not catering to contract manager type environments, but they are an incredible resource for the self-operated food service operator in healthcare.

Through that experience, I was involved socially at all of our conferences. And then we had a culinary competition every year that I ended up participating in and then emceeing for decade at least.

CCB [13:13.04] I can only imagine.

Eric Eisenberg [13:13.11] And that's where I really got my people got to know me and And I ended up on the board of directors there and ultimately the president of AHF, which I in 2021. I was the president.

CCB [13:27.41] So you have like, you know, one might say, oh, my gosh, that's such an, you know, disjointed career, but not at all because there is the throughput of of the food and the and in conversations that we've had outside of this, there's also the the nature of helping people thrive, you know, through is it wellness because of menus or, you know, just appreciation of the food that's being delivered, is if that's the Michelin star restaurants or if that's you know the the hospital or the senior living place.

One of my first questions actually was kind of, how has working in the kitchen influenced how you lead teams or consult with clients? Is there any connection that you make?

Eric Eisenberg [14:19.58] Well, first, let me say that what we didn't discuss was that I then did transition over to the senior living environment. And to your point about wellness and helping people thrive, I mean, that was our entire mantra and mission within our senior living organization. It was all about helping our residents thrive there and In senior living, especially in in upscale, high-end senior living environments like the one I worked in, food is obviously such an important element to the day-to-day life of the folks that live in these environments, these communities.

And so that really was full circle what kind of made me understand and appreciate more than anything how important the person at the end of the fork is, because that is, you know, in a hospital, we're really just trying to get some food into you. Like, we just need to nourish you so that you can go home. And, you know, there are some times where, you know, we have... Babies being born or or, you know, we do have some joyous occasions in the hospital, but mostly not.

In senior living, you're trying to make every day a joyous occasion, and it's often through food. So it was it I really wanted to get closer to the end user, as I used to refer to that when I first went into senior living, and that's exactly what I experienced when I went there. And it's what helped me sort of decide to to transition to a, to that more holistic, I want to help operations and organizations thrive. So that that really is a great segue to the question which you asked, which is, you know how do i how do I bring my experience in the kitchen to my current clients that I work with? And on the one hand, you know if I'm I'm very grateful that I have this kitchen experience because I can go into a kitchen where they don't have the depth and breadth of experience that they probably need, where they maybe expensed a lot of money going forward on a major project, a lot of capital expenditure without really the know-how to put it all into practice. And so that really is my joy when I get to go into a team environment like that and bring them all together to help them understand.

I mean, I'm working with a client now where, I mean, we we started with what is a hotel pen and what are the various shapes and sizes? like So you know we start at the very, very basics with some teams. In other teams, you know larger teams, you'll you'll find that there's there's often, you know I don't think i'm I'm saying anything out of school, I say there's toxicity in in every team. And I think that there is a real camaraderie to what happens in a professional kitchen, a real support and understanding that we have of each other's roles that in a, especially in non-commercial environments, there's so there can be a disconnect between the various work groups. And I really like to bring those work groups together to it that common goal like that.

You know we are all about how we get that, that piece of food that's going to be going, going into the body of the person that we're serving. It's a very intimate relationship. I try to share with people. I tell them that, you know we're not just feeding them. It's not just about sustenance. We're really, it's a very intimate relationship we have with them. And so all of us really have to be rowing in the same direction in order for that to happen. And that was really what drew me to, you looking more at systems and processes rather than just the leadership development because what ends up happening or team development because what often happens especially with young leaders is they are so caught up in the minutia of the day to day and putting out fire after fire after fire. So often the soft skills and the soft opportunity, the opportunities to express those soft skills are inhibited because we're we're chasing our tails to get through through the end of the day.

And that's where we started looking at partners throughout the industry, all aspects of the food service industry, that were experiencing similar deficiencies amongst teams that they were working with and saw that there was a gap in the ability to lead and having the bit like the physical know-how and ability to lead and the time and energy and wherewithal to lead. Those things have big gap.

CCB [19:18.05] So that's going to take us, yeah, you're going to take us to, and forgive me for jumping over you, because I want to ask you a question before we get into kind of what what your vision is for systems thinking and innovation.

Eric Eisenberg [19:19.24] That's all right.

CCB [19:30.45] But because there was another conversation that was had in a senior living, you know, workshop that we both attended that had to do with like empowering, and this is going to take us back to your systems thinking, your innovation, but empowering…

Eric Eisenberg [19:39.07] Right

CCB [19:48.46] …dining staff, kitchen staff in Oregon. I mean, in in places and communities where they live full time and they live co-live with their guests and and there can be such a high pressure kind of feeling in health care or senior living when they're yeah there's kind of more at stake than, you know, the so good review from the restaurant. So I'd love you to just spend a little tiny bit of time talking about your philosophy when it comes to empowering staff.

Eric Eisenberg [20:22.92] It's so funny. You kind of reminded me of an experience I had when I was at Swedish early on. It was probably my second year there, third year, something like that. And it was Swedish's 100th anniversary. And they were doing a hundred stories of... Swedish or something of that nature. And they chose me to participate in that, which I thought was amazing. I thought that was really cool. And one of the things I had said in that in that little interview that we did, the video that we made, was how, you know, lucky for me, they were looking for someone that had, you know, a culinary point of view and was interested in team building and was bringing a different sort of level of attention to the team beyond just, you know, dietetics and nutrition and length of stay and, you know, all of the things that we, they, they look at so importantly in, in healthcare care food service. And I, as I said earlier, I never thought that they were going to, that I would ever get this job in a million years. And yet, you know, they did because they were looking for somebody who could flip the script for them.

CCB [21:35.69] Thank you.

Eric Eisenberg [21:36.04] And, you know, to your, to your point about, yeah, I'll call it more inclusion. You know, i think that there is a, uh, when you take rest restaurant cooks out of the restaurant business and you bring them into an environment where, there are lots of people who have never had that experience. There can often be a lot of, uh, misunderstanding about what people's motives and people's goals are. And we as chefs in healthcare care over the last, especially, and want to say like the the last 20 years, especially, we we have gone from joining a team of, forgive me, my my longstanding dietitian colleagues, but of hair nets and lab coats to chef whites and chef hats.

We see lots more chefs in leadership roles in healthcare and non-commercial kitchens because we have really started to bring the two, not started, we've really achieved bringing the two parts of the operation together.This empathetic, compassionate and regulated very, very regulated part of what we do, which is often very hard for the cook, the the guy who just wants to cook to grasp. And we, we've kind of brought them to the, we brought both sides to the middle. You know, we, we have liberalized the diets to some extent. We have given people lots more choices. We've given them room service so they can order at the time of need.

We've made the food more appealing and more made restaurant style a la Maynooth, you know, where we're really trying to provide a great level of customer service and quality while also adhering to all of the regulatory pressures and just the pressures that come from working in in the type of environment that a hospital is.

CCB [23:45.40] Yeah. so So now I'm going to take you back to what you started to tell us, because I think when when the listeners understand all of the all of the issues that you understand, that you bring together in recognizing a need, you start looking at your iCulinary Consulting with, you know, a little more, what's the next level of innovation that's required? And so tell us a little bit about how you decided to jump into the new venture.

Eric Eisenberg [24:22.92] Well, I decided to jump into the new venture because I always felt that I would get to a point where day-to-day operations was not going to be the thing that really filled my sail. And... And that was true. I had reached a point where the my sail was not full. I did not feel as though I was being pulled forward in the way that I normally am and wanted to be. I was feeling a little stagnant. So i i just you know that was the personal decision to go leave operations and go into business. or day to day operations, I should say, and go into an opportunity, give myself an opportunity to do that with a variety of different teams and share the experiences I've had over the years.

And a lot of that comes from the community in which I and my colleagues, that i my peers, the people that I know well, encouraging me to do so. So when you have people around you encouraging you to do things that you feel you'd be good at, you know it makes it a little easier to to take the jump. So that that was the reason I took the jump. But i will I will say that what drew me to this in the first place and why I had the opportunity in the first place is because one of the things that has always frustrated me, oh again, as innovation has come into the food service space, and as we've seen all kinds of new platforms and software and innovations that were intended to help us and it make us more efficient and give us the time that we that we so need to be in it with our teams.

What I have always found is that I was ending up with disparate systems that didn't communicate to one another, didn't really give me more time. It gave me less time because I was figuring out how to use all of this technology and My organizations that I worked for had expectations that you use this stuff in a particular way and you had to aggregate data from various platforms, et cetera. And it always felt very inefficient to me. And the other piece is that people are spending fortunes on all types of software platforms of which they're only using a small percentage. and That seems to be very common. And, yeah, and I was introduced to some software that was being used in Europe extensively that was highly integrated in its processes. And so the software was able to aggregate data from checklists, like things that your staff use throughout the course of the day, audits that that a senior leader or an external third party would use to assess your regulatory compliance or your cleanliness or whatever it is that you're trying to measure, a platform that can schedule and provide training both on paper and digitally, a platform that can manage all of your assets and devices, a platform that does temperature monitoring and sensor monitoring. And then also ties back to HR function. It brings training directly into the workflow.

So all of this was was sort of a pivotal moment for me say, this really is exactly what the industry needs. So we've spent the last year and a half really massaging yeah using this product that is very mature and very robust. But admittedly in Europe, it's used differently, right? they They have different requirements and different needs. And you know we see a tremendous amount of potential in this that they're not even utilizing, even though it can do it. And so we've we've kind of rebranded that software and we're using it as a Quadra Alliance ah product. And it is Essentially, it is that. It is a integrated operations management platform with a common dashboard that can basically provide all the detail that a senior leader needs in one view from any device that they can access in their in their operation.

And I don't want to get into a big advertisement here, but the fact of the matter is it's that it is that it is those disparate systems that when I'm out there talking to operators, It's the number one frustration that people are constantly trying to wrangle data that doesn't necessarily want to be communicated with. And so now in the year and a half that we've been working on this, we've not only taken the software as it stands, but You know, our CTO and his research team have been building new mods and new things that we're building on top of the platform that are really helping us through chatbots and KPI dashboards to access Anything an employee or a senior or a middle leader, junior, middle, and even senior leader might need all in one place. And that really, that's our goal.

CCB [29:59.02] Okay, it it actually is kind of mind boggling to think that, yeah, to think that, well, first off that you have the vision, you have the experience and the knowledge, and then the vision to understand this is something that could be, what do you, this could be very valuable to the communities and clients that you work with.

Eric Eisenberg [30:00.49] Yeah. but that that that's our goal yeah

CCB [30:21.33] Tell me like what an engagement opportunity might look like. you get called by somebody.

Eric Eisenberg [30:30.95] I'll give you a couple of scenarios. So one scenario is we're opening a new cafe and i don't we don't know what we're doing. And and well I want to say that this is an important part of the work that we do as well, because we we feel at Quadro Alliance that there's a little bit of a disconnect between the kitchen designer and the eventual end user, not even necessarily the senior leadership of the organization, but the food service director, their managers, and some of the other vendors that might be involved in the business rolling out of a new environment, we we feel like there is a little bit of a disconnect there. And we feel that through the practices that we're initiating, that we can really help organizations go from design to implementation with all of these tools built in, in between.

So rather than opening and then building these tools, you can actually build them through the whole design phase so that when you open all of your checklisting and your prep lists and your your maps for your stations and all of your equipment information, all of your spec sheets, your MSDS, your, you name your video training, pictures, PDFs, whatever it needs to be, they you're the employee working in that station can have either a device or a mounted tablet and whatever information they need at the time that they need it will be available to them. So it allows them to not have to find their manager or not even look for their manager because the manager is always so busy, you know, or ask a friend who also doesn't know and then they try to figure it out together.

You know, our goal is really to bring all of that information to them so that they can be as autonomous as possible until they can't be anymore. And if then at that point, you know, you engage, the manager gets engaged and that can either be by them asking for engagement or the manager can actually track along the way what is getting done or not getting done and can check in based on the fact that so-and-so has only achieved this or this today and they should really be here already, you know, they've actually already, they've sent a message to the manager saying, I need to talk to you or I need to see you.

So one engagement is you don't know what you're doing and you call me in and I come and help you set it up. And that, you know, that's my consultancy. And I call upon colleagues to help with that if if necessary.

Another form, another point of engagement. And then while I'm there, I share some of this, these software solutions with you. And it might be that we just start with a cleaning list. Like you need a cleaning list. We're going to put this in and I'm going to, you know, I'm going to, I'm give you a 30, 60 day free trial and you can use the software. And at that point, they get to see how it kind of works. So thats that's one engagement. The other engagement is, you know, maybe you just you're looking for device management. You need asset management software or you need temperature monitoring software or you need digital checklisting software. And we have all of that built into one.

So it could be that. you're looking for temperature monitoring and we bring you our temperature monitoring solution. And in that we offer you the entire software solution. So we often equate it to similar to like Windows or you know Microsoft 365. You don't need it all necessarily right away, but you have it all. And we don't necessarily charge you with each new platform that you implement. It is more how can the tools that we provide help you to aggregate all of the disparate things that you're currently working with or can we take the information from the systems that you're already using and bring it into ours and so you know that that's a very techy thing on the back end through you know that goes a little beyond even my knowledge of how it all works but um

CCB [34:52.25] That's APIs and the like. But I was going to say our listening audience, is usually a little bit more expecting the conversation to be around the space and you know how how design might impact it. But we're always thinking about how is the human experience ultimately being affected, improved, you know considered. And when we heard what you were up to, it just is, it's fascinating to think about areas that many people spend a heck of a lot of time in that, you know, may or may not be as operationally effective, you know, as they could be given all the advances that are being made.

So that's thing that I just want to underscore. It's in the senior living environment, you know, senior living communities. But also in healthcare. Healthcare has always been, you know, a lot of evidence-based, how is this collected, et cetera, et cetera, but perhaps not always 100% integrated when it comes to parts of it that are not core, right?

Eric Eisenberg [36:07.59] Yeah, I will say that in my experience, it's, you know, in in all of the new builds that I've been involved in, and this is not a big surprise by any stretch of the imagination, but it never pans out exactly the way you anticipate it will, right? It's never designed, to the exact need. You know, you think you've got it all figured out, like you have planned for every detail and you have, and and you really thought you had, and then there's always going to be something and plans change along the way. Staffing changes or budgets change, or, you know, even a concept can change. And I feel like that's why so much of connecting the the early parts of the design through more real planning relative to how is this going to work in the end and how are we going to train people to make sure it happens that way consistently.

The more work of that that we do from the time design begins to the time construction ends, the better off we are because then You can open your environment with a better understanding and you've already examined a lot of the challenges that you're going to over you're going to experience in real life as you're creating training videos and building station maps and figuring out where stuff will be stored, et cetera, which typically doesn't happen until we open in a few days and everybody starts, you know, everything starts coming, you know, into yeah and you're, you're finishing punch lists at the last second and, you know Oh wait, we don't have enough spoodles and there's not enough spatulas and, you know, we need extra sheet pans and, you know all of that stuff that kind of comes up at the end.

Our, you know, our philosophy is really let's begin that all of that training and all of that planning from day one versus as we're realizing that we're about to open and now we need to figure out how, you know, where the spoons are going to go.

Yeah. I had a great old colleague who was the master of simplicity and his philosophy was “plan your work, work your plan.” You just want to go that, you know, to be able to take complex environments or systems and bring them down to that level is fantastic.

So you have spent so much time with us. We are incredibly grateful. We're at the end of our time, actually over the end of our time, but it's just been such a fascinating conversation. I want to ask like a final question about reflecting on your journey from the kitchen to consulting. What are you most proud of?

Eric Eisenberg [39:00.29] I'm most proud of the network of people. and I don't want to say that I have developed over time. I'm just most proud of the fact that I have so many people around me in this industry that support the work that I do. Who recognize me as, yeah see me, you know, ease my way. And that is what I'm most proud of is that I have developed relationships over the years that have allowed me to have incredible experiences from, you know, winning the Silver Plate award for healthcare and being the president of AHF. And, you know, I can go most places and there's always someone I know that I love that part of my career. You know, I've done a lot of really cool things that I'm really proud of. I mean, I've really, I've had so many incredible experiences, but my relationships are the ones that are proving to be, by no stretch the imagination, the most important.

CCB [40:14.21] That’s beautiful, but it's also such a testimony to the work that you do and the engagement and the passion that you have for it. So you don't lose your relationships and you get to take them with you wherever you move.

And we are incredibly grateful that you've spent the time with us on the ONEder Podcast. And I'm going to remind us all that the ONEder Podcast is available on all those streaming services, Spotify, Apple, follow the ONEder Podcast and learn about the most amazing people that we speak with doing astonishing things for the betterment of the human experience.

Thank you, Eric Eisenberg.

Eric Eisenberg [40:58.40] Bye-bye, CCB. Thanks so much. It was really great.