DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - CEO Journey and Leadership Philosophy (ft. Adam McMullin)

Episode Date: October 22, 2025

On this episode of DGTL Voices, Ed Marx interviews Adam McMullin, CEO of Avasure. Adam shares insights on his time at IBM, the transition to healthcare, and the innovative work being done at Avasure in virtual safety observation. The conversation concludes with reflections on leadership principles and the future of healthcare technology.

Welcome to another edition of Digital Voices. Thank you for listening. I know you have a lot of choices. Great podcasts out there to choose from. And you've chosen time with us. We're going to make it worth your while because I have the amazing Adam McMullen. Adam, welcome to Digital Voices. Thanks, Ed.

I'm looking forward to this. It's a Friday. It's a great way to end the week. I got a fresh cup of coffee. So looking forward to the time. Yeah, this is great. You have become my running buddy. So whenever we're at conferences,

We run together. And in fact, it's always impressive, Ed. It's always impressive because you're so active at those conferences, but you are up there every single morning for the run and always for a good cause. Yeah. And as you know, we do it for a cause. We want to get out there anyways.

And we do it for a cause. And you've been a great supporter as the CEO of Avisure. You've always stepped up and have helped sponsor. And in fact, I didn't plan to talk about this, but it's just naturally coming up where we ask for all the runners and walkers to make donations and you've been gracious and kind to quadruple all of those. So thank you for doing that. You go to these conferences and getting out, getting some fresh air in the morning, getting some sunlight and it is a great way to start the day. But also, just fun on those runs chatting with people. Just another way to kind of get to know people who they're about and create

some contacts. Yeah. And my favorite one, we've done a few together and then we've run just as buddies together through Chinatown and stuff like that. But my favorite one, I think, is we ran in Vegas at Hymns, and we ran down to the sign. And I think Elvis was down there at the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. And we did some selfies with the group. That was a lot of fun. We had a big group that day. That was fun.

It was good. So we met about three years ago. I had just become CEO myself. And you were really kind to me and helping to mentor me and also to open. because you've been a CEO for quite some time, and we'll get into that. But I'll never forget that. And thankful for our mutual friend, Sherry McArthur, for bringing us together. And ever since then, we've been, like I said, fast friends and running buddies.

Yeah, you know, I've learned so much and benefited from so many people that have helped me along the way. And I remember when we first met, you had a very specific question. And it was something we had just rustled through in the last business. So it kind of gave us a good jump off point. and I've learned so much from you. And so, yeah, always love the relationship. Yeah.

And the most important question, Adam, that we have for this entire podcast are what songs on your playlist? You know, I am going to just seem a little dry toast on this one because my playlist is almost all podcasts. And, you know, it's one of two flavors. On one hand, I really enjoy. I'm a student of business, and I love podcasts like a choir. I also really enjoy founders.

It's also a little dry, but he reads a book on a leader every single week and summarizes it. Nice. And it's a phenomenal concept because there's so much knowledge to be learned. And you realize, you know, obviously people are going through the same things you've gone through. And if you get a couple things you can take away, it just energizes me and try. to bring those things into my day and my practice. But I also listen to this. I don't know if your other listeners have done this, but the rest is history. It's these two British guys and they opine on different areas in history. And I think especially today, with the news coming at us so fast,

and from so many directions and so many voices, I really tried to go back and learn things that durable and persist over time and try to figure out how does that apply to what I'm doing in my life and work. So I've really enjoyed Restis History and that's a little bit of a chill out, relax one for me. And, you know, anytime you get two British guys sort of opining on history, it's, you know, little humors as well. Yeah, no, I'm going to look that one up. Those are great suggestions. What about life message or mantra? Are there sort of words that you live by that help guide you? You know, somewhat early on to me, and this will sound a little bit like a quip, one said, don't fold like a cheap tent.

And I do think about that a lot. There's a lot of things that if you just spend the time and you immerse yourself in it and you wrestle through it and you and your team just battle through whatever the situation is, you just get through it. Yeah. And I think it's important to put the work in and the time in. and to have confidence in your team and yourself that you can step up to the challenges, because they happen all the time, right?

You have a dynamic role. I get to do a lot of things each day. My team is always wrestling through stuff. My family's wrestling through stuff. And you just, you got to wrestle through it. On one of those podcasts, Jensen Wang, you know, the NVIDIA CEO said something to the fact of, you know, I wish ample doses of pain and suffering in your life. Like if you want to become great, you got to, you kind of got to push, put yourself out there, wrestle through things.

Yes. Fail, learn. Yeah. Get into that meat. And I think that's just an important part of life, right? Like it just things never go the way you want. And sometimes they do, but often they don't. What did you learn and improving to yourself that you can just kind of get up and get through it?

Yeah. No, I love it. And that leads to resilience, which, you know, is a very important skill. to have. So Adam, let's talk about you. Like, who are you? What's your story? Like, tell us about yourself. Like, start with where were you born? I was born in Toronto. So if I say anything like out about or house, it gives it away. How did you make your way to the U.S.? Yeah, my parents, at some point in a deep Toronto winter, I think my father was recruited down to South Florida and he got down there and realized You could have an office by the beach and play little tennis and said, you know, let's try this for a year or two.

So we picked up when I was 12. We moved from Canada where I was, you know, attending a boys school in like a jacket and a tie and got plopped down into South Florida and no jackets, no ties, girls in the school. It was a big change. And, you know, and that gave me a real dose of, you know, the beginning of sort of moving to the U.S. And, you know, it was an interesting move. My parents are still, you know, mostly living in the U.S. as well. So on one hand, you knew that there was a world outside the United States. On the other hand, I think my parents really looked at coming to the United States as this sort of unbridled set of possibilities.

You know, I could kind of feel that infectious energy from my folks when I got here. But, yeah, I grew up in South Florida. And I'm an engineer by training. So I went to Georgia Tech. And, you know, that was a great discipline in problem solving being an engineer. And I would say my growing up was just a really interesting media experience for me. Yeah. That's great.

Was there a pivotal moment in life that fundamentally changed your trajectory? When we first moved to the U.S., 12 years old, didn't yet have, you know, friends and relationships and was, you know, probably like a lot of 12-year-olds, not that. focused. And I don't think this is a unique story. I think lots of people probably have it in, you know, whether it's in different domains of their life. But I really got eventually into sports. And I found two things that were really helpful for me. One, I played an individual sport. We had to perform individually and train and step out in front of the crowd, so to say, and get the job done. And then also, since I was in the U.S., I played football, which is about

a team and a commitment and everyone doing their job together. And I really, those two experiences that were really powerful for me in the team dynamics, but also individual accountability and performance. And like many, when you're doing well in those areas, it really, my grades really spike. Like, everything I did got better because of that experience with pushing yourself and unleashed a real competitive spirit and just made me a better person. And that was really important to propel the first part of my career. Yeah. No, that's very cool. But you can't leave us without telling us what was the individual sport. Oh, I was a wrestler. A wrestler. Okay, cool. Yeah. At what position were you best at on the football pitch? I was on the line. I like to get right in there.

So, and also, you know, frankly, I was, I was more about the, just the raw determination and was certainly not the skilled player. Yeah. No, that's awesome. And I agree. Sports can definitely do a lot to help shape us in a good way. So you graduate from the university. You start with IBM. So tell us a little bit about that.

I thought I would work at IBM for a couple years and be right back to business school. And I got in there. And, you know, I think a lot about this because the experience I had at IBM, I don't think it's, it's not often replicated today for that next generation. I get into IBM and got, Ed, they like trained the heck out of you. You know, I moved into a corporate hotel for six weeks at the beginning of my career. You had IBM executives coming in and training you. I was given fairly significant responsibility early on in my career and consulting. And I was given fairly significant responsibility early on in my career and consulting. And, I got to go work when, you know, when people hired IBM from a consulting perspective, it was a big problem because they weren't cheap. So I really got sort of inside the tent in companies like Phillips and Siemens and Sony. You know, I got to live and work around the U.S. I got to live and work in Europe. I ran a, eventually ran a practice in Asia. And I ended up staying there a lot longer than I thought because there was these phenomenal mentors, high integrity folks, The company invested so significantly in you building your career. You know, I would say like early on in my career, my EQ was pretty low. And I remember my first 360. I'd never had a 360 before.

And here I am at 20 something getting a 360. And I got this feedback. And I just was like depressed. I was like, oh my God. Not everyone loves the way I interact with the network. Oh, wow. And then like pages of like feedback. in comments and it just like, you know, kicks in the gut.

And it just, it was an amazing for me experience because it was like so humbling. But then they gave me a coach to work through it and become better. I ended up being there almost a decade because I was just learning. It was incredibly important, incredible lessons for me when I first went to Europe. I lived in Germany. It's a very different style for leading and working with teams. And I then again had to make some significant. changes to adapt to how I did what I did.

And gosh, there's no way my wife would still be married to me today if I hadn't had some of those experiences of sort of learn how to work with different people types and styles and, you know, get some good kicks in the gut to, so. That's good. Yeah, IBM was great. Yeah, IBM had this, you know, heritage and of this tradition that you're describing of incredible training. And so I know when I was first graduating, I was.

I wanted to work for IBM because I had known about all the perks that they give you in terms of the training in investment in young people. And the mentorship, Ed, like that's the other thing. They would just, I got assigned. I worked for a lady. Actually, the majority of my IBM career, probably 75% work for females. So it was another thing. It was just completely gender neutral. I worked for a lady Maureen McGuire.

She was a Scot. She ran strategy and marketing for half the company. and IBM would fly me to headquarters every week for a year just to work with her directly. And the phenomenal lessons on how to do things at scale. Yeah, no doubt about that. That's great. So you then switched to health care. What was the impetus for the switch?

So IBM paid for me to go to business school. And they created a customized program that was really filled by people in the IBM consulting group. And one of the individuals there was a guy named Mike Gallup who's gone on to be a very successful health care CEO. And I was traveling all the time. He was traveling all time. We learned so much in business school while we were all traveling and working through this. So we became pretty close. And he was asked to lead strategy for a company called Hillwam, which I'd never heard of.

And he recruited me into health care. And the impetus there was, well, I really enjoyed my IBM experience. ultimately wanted to lead a team that had more autonomy around just leading a business. And within IBM, when you're earlier on in your career, they don't sort of have a full business. And Hillrom had this healthcare technology division. And it was, it would, it was in a position where it benefit from a significant acceleration forward just in terms of how you look at enterprise technology and platforms. So Mike helped me get into health care and it was, it changed my life.

Yeah. Yeah. Before I get into health care, really my own experience because I was younger and fairly healthy at the time was a nurse that agreed to marry me. And so I had that. So I thought that was exciting. I was going to move closer to the industry that my wife was in and could see her passion. And then I found a six-year personally for the impact.

that you could start to make for care teams and patients. And, you know, I can be a pretty, got an emotional component. I didn't always show it earlier in my career as I got further on in my career and more comfortable. You know, you open up on the emotional side. But when you're sitting, you know, I once ran a business that was around labor and delivery and like the most passionate, committed nurses was just, it was incredible. Yeah.

No, that's pretty amazing. And so you've gone on to what I would describe to be as serial CEO. Tell us about the CEO roles you've had, and then that'll break into what you're doing today with Aveshur. Sure. Yeah, I've had the privilege to be the CEO on the third business, Avershire. And I never start a CEO job with a timeline or thinking that it's going to end. Right?

You take the job because you have real enthusiasm. for what that company is doing, what the opportunity is in front of the company to go do that. And you really believe that with that company, you can go execute. And you, you know, it's a, it's a busy job. It's a rewarding job. It's a dynamic job. But you better be all in. And that's the way, that's the way I work. And I get really excited about walking into a business. I've never started a business. That seems very risky, very hard. I think I can add value in helping businesses scale and get to the next level. And I find it really rewarding, working with the team to clarify what are A's B's and C's. Right? There's a lot of businesses where

they're doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that. And you only have limited resources. So making sure you've got a strat, strategic clarity around where you're going, you've got the right people in the right roles. Yeah. You know, as the CEO, your job is to build a team, align a team, and help them achieve great performance and outcomes. And that's, That's the part I really enjoy. So, you know, I've had the privilege to lead Volt, which was the first work to transition from Trey Lauderdale, who's a very dynamic founder and has moved on actually to the nuclear industry now and found that an interesting business. By the way, five years ago, when he said he was going in nuclear energy, I was like, what are you talking about? Now with all the data centers,

it's just been a resurgence. But, you know, that was my first CEO job. And my gosh, there was so many things to learn. I thought I was ready for it and I'd never never dealt with boards or managing cash flow and but it was a phenomenal culture, phenomenal business, a leader and a grower and I led a business called FDS that was really helped pharmacies transition their business model from putting pills in the bottle to delivering medical care and it was just another exposure. We eventually got 16,000 community pharmacies on the platform. And that was a phenomenal experience to learn at the role at community pharmacists play in health, especially in these communities where they, they only licensed health care professional.

And you can have a lot of physicians. You only generally have one pharmacist. And they see it all. So that was another, you know, that's, well, you see, look at health care, you know, there's all these very discrete domains. And that was a significant learning in that business and, you know, how to help those pharmacists run really healthy businesses and deliver care into their communities. Yeah, Adam, that's awesome. So what drew to Avesure? Same things I've mentioned. You know, Avesure is the pioneer in virtual safety observation. It is one of the best things I've ever seen because it allows you to provide a workforce multiplier where you have about 10% of patients in health systems need observation for

Falls, behavioral issues, caregiver violence issues, unfortunately. We could talk about that. It's just some of these stories are unfortunately impactful, but, you know, a nurse goes into work and one of the top concerns is violence. But they put someone in the room traditionally as a sitter. And, you know, it's not a great role. We're constrained for resources, not efficient. And with virtual safety, Aversher was able to take 16 of those roles, turn them into one. by doing that virtually and setting up a virtual care center, and that's workforce productivity, it reduces costs. But, and here's the best part, you will see significantly better clinical results. So it's cheaper, it's better for your care teams, it returns resources back to your care teams,

and you will reduce your falls by 50 percent, better manage your behavioral health, and that was the core of the business. So I got excited about that core value proposition, and you could see the rise of virtual care and the opportunity around computer vision. And just that core business was a couple billion dollar market. So there was a lot of room to grow. Yeah. And then the third element I always look at with the business is, do you think you've got the resources to be successful? And I got to meet the team. They're all enthusiastic about growth. That's really important. The business already had got to about 700 different hospitals. Now we're in 1,200. So there was a footprint. The business

We generate cash or a healthy business. We're not, you know, looking to raise money all the time. We can operate a business. And then we had a board that was aligned. And that's one of the important things. A board that is aligned around growth, where they're transparent growth-oriented partners. We started this question. We just talked about, you know, being a CEO.

That's one of the other things that gets me really excited. When you're in growth businesses and you've got a board and you're all on the same side of the table saying, how can we do the best for customers? How can we go faster? You can run laps around a lot of businesses with that kind of support and alignment. Yeah. No, it makes total sense.

I would have jumped at it as well. It's been, what, three or four years? Yes. So what... Three and a half. Yeah, right on. What are two changes that, let's say, if I was talking to a board member,

your chair of the board, you know, hey, what are one or two changes that Adam has made? in his tenure at Avershire. Yeah, the first of the most important thing is making sure you've got the right people and the right roles and the right team. We had some passionate people

that grew up in the Avershire business and were founders and many of them are still in the business, but there was an opportunity to complement them with people that brought in specific skill sets. And we brought in a phenomenal marketing leader. She used to run Apollo Cobb, ran marketing for Phillips Globally.

we brought in a phenomenal product and now that person runs R&D leader. We brought in great services and customer success leadership commercial. So we had to build the team out. And it takes a bit to get the right people in the right roles and get to that level where the team has enough trust

that you can have that productive conflict and then you can let them run in their lanes and it just creates so much capacity. That part has been incredible. The second and most important piece is we're a healthcare technology business. We have more than doubled our spend on R&D. And, you know, health systems more than ever, and especially this year, have gone from sort of experimenting around new technologies to wanting proven solutions, right?

They've got the reimbursement pressures that we all know about. And they've said, hey, what's going to make a difference on our P&L? what's going to show up on our quality results. How do we scale? And then from the technology, what are the platforms? And we had to invest significantly to make sure that we were a complete platform

to meet the needs of our customers. So the team, the R&D investment, and we continue to grow significantly. But it's, you know, that's fun. And it's been a very dynamic, very competitive market, which just helps you be better. Yeah, no, that's great.

I've had the opportunity to meet many of your team. You all had a sales meeting one time. in Dallas, Fort Worth, and you invited me to be a guest speaker. That was fun. Yeah, it was super fun. And the team is just stellar, like you talk about. What about the future? Where are we headed?

Do you think in this particular space and what is Avischer doing to meet that or to help lead it? Yeah. As we look at this space for health systems, there's a few areas where we think we can lean in and help them create significant value. We talked earlier about patient safety. You know, that is for every hundred beds, there's a million dollars of savings there and you'll get better results. The, is you bring virtual care into the health system, you can leverage your scarce resources much more effectively. Yeah.

And whether that's bringing physician services to your community-based hospital so you can serve patients, which then allows them to reduce leakage from their health system by serving more patients. whether that is taking skilled nursing and complementing those care teams. They're out there in front of patients. And then we're investing heavily in computer vision as well to provide additional layers of safety and to provide further automation in the care environment to support efficient flow of patients through a health system. I mentioned caregiver violence. We're bringing technology in there to automatically detect and look for situations where caregiver violence could be an issue in a building. And then I'd say the last thing for Avescher, because of our footprint and our scope, we're spending a lot of time and energy around building the ecosystem. You know, we're not going to do it all as one company, but because we have been around, because partners know we're going to be part of the solution going forward, we're making sure we work really well across, you know, Epic and CERner, but also the ecosystem around that whole smart hospital. And putting all those things together, the last thing I would say is we wrap that with a really competent services and clinical team. You know, we're a tech company. It's 15% clinicians.

So it's not just the tech. Yeah. It's how you actually drive the change management and get it to work and sustain. So it's not an initiative de jour, so to say. Yeah. No, no, I love that. I want to shift to leadership because not only did you get this great, like in your use. with sports and things like that that you spoke about.

And then we talked about your education, of course, the great education as well as employment with IBM. And that eventually led you to get into health care and then CEO of a couple different companies, including Avershire, which we just talked about. So clearly you're a great leader. And I know you already as a person, which we mentioned at the top. So you're a great character as well. Where do you go when you feel like super stressed out or your creativity?

is drained, like what do you do to sort of refresh yourself, replenish yourself? A couple things. I think like many, you got to get outside. You got to get some fresh air. You got to look farther than the monitor or screen in front of you. And I have benefited in my career from building some strong enduring relationships. And when I'm working on something and I'm stressed out, I will start calling some of those trusted advisors and just talk it through. There's a proverb somewhere about sort of like sharing your problems and it lightens the load. And I get such creative insight. And you call a couple calls. You're, your thinking is sharper. Your stress level is lower. You know, stress is sort of, it's,

it's the concern about what to do next, right? And when you get that insight and perspective from others, it really dials it down for me. I think that those are good. Those are good. Just actually on that, It's something, and I, you know, as I'm mentoring folks, I always encourage folks that have almost your own personal board of directors. Very good. And, you know, the people you can call on, I'm very fortunate that there's a number of leaders that are in the same industry that, you know, have real context that know me, have Karen concern for me, know enough about what I'm doing that are willing to and we'll dig in around some of the things I'm working. and when they call, I try to be, you just really to anyone on my network, super responsive. Yeah. So many people are responsive to me.

So many people have contributed to me being a better leader and being all the better serve the teams that I'm part of that I try to make sure I'm very quick on being responsive to them when I can be helpful in that dimension. Well, I'm certainly witness to that. You know, when I left as CEO, you were one of the first people to make contact. with me and you were there as a supportive friend and to see how you could help me. And I really appreciated that. So what just for my digital voices audience to know, like Adam is a real deal. So I, I am witness to that. So Adam, this has been amazing. We could talk forever. And unfortunately,

I didn't get to go much into the leadership side. But I think your leadership principles came out throughout our discussion. And I already summarized both of the things that we talked about. And then we just finished on sort of that creativeness and stress and who do you go. And, of course, the other answer you wanted to say was run with Ed. Creative, get to create. That's the outside. You get outside. You get a fresh start of the day.

So is there anything we missed or anything you want to double down on? I'll give you the last word. I'll give it down, double down on leadership. I know early on my career, you know, like many, you're a manager, right? you're like, how do we get people aligned to get outcomes? And you look at the world about systems that you get things from. And as you move further in your leadership style, you, you sort of fuse your personal self, bring your personal self to work.

And you realize, you know, leadership is really good about giving things to people. Yeah. And I'd say for me, I try to think about how do I bring forth things to the team? My enthusiasm and energy for what we're doing, right? It matters. It can be infectious. You try to help them grow their knowledge, right? People want to learn and grow their careers.

So what's your vehicle for that? Genuine care for your team. Yeah. Right? People want to know that you care about them and not just like you have, that you really want to see them be better people and support them through the things they're going through. And then the fourth thing is just modeling integrity, right? So that people can feel really good about the team. they're in. So I think as I think about what I do, and especially as I have progressed,

you know, throughout my life and career, you sort of move into this, like, how are you giving back to the teams around you? And as you're doing that, you're just getting better teams and creating longer relationships like the one we have, right, that is going to endure until, you know, one of us is undersendered or something. Well, out of this, it's been an amazing conversation. Thank you for being a guest on Digital Voices. Thanks, Ed.