Behind the CXO Title: Rachel Scott Garrison on Managing Stakeholders and Relentless Prioritization

Anderson Williams: Welcome to Bigger. Stronger. Faster. the podcast exploring how Shore Capital Partners brings billion-dollar resources to the lower middle market space. In this episode, I talk with Rachel Scott Garrison, the CXO at Agentis Longevity.  

Rachel talks about her transition into the microcap space after years working with and around numerous, large and globally recognized companies and brands. She talks about what drew her to entrepreneurship and her lessons learned in her first year supporting the launch of Agentis.  

Rachel shares some powerful insights about communicating and managing stakeholders, including and emphasizing the founders who choose to partner with Agentis.  

Finally, she shares the value of the CXO Fellows Program in both its quarterly learning events as well as the network of support that shares resources and how’s your back when you need them?  

Well, Rachel, thanks for being here. Will you start just by giving us your name and tell us a little bit about what you do and where you do it?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah. First of all, thank you so much for the opportunity. It feels like a full circle moment being in this room. I remember listening to the CXO podcast when I was in business school a few years ago, and I was interested in the opportunity and it’s really cool that it’s been full circle and I’m sitting in this seat. So, thanks again.  

I am Rachel Scott Garrison. I am the CXO at Agentis Longevity here in Nashville, and I’m a Nashville native. So originally from here and went to Baylor in Texas for undergrad. And then after spending kind of a few years in Austin at Dell, I came back to Nashville to do my MBA at Vanderbilt, which was a invaluable experience. 

And following that, I was at Deloitte for two years in consulting. So like you mentioned, I’ve joined Agentis last fall as an off-cycle hire into the CXO program and have just really loved my experience so far.  

Anderson Williams: Given your range of experiences, what was it that the CXO program provided you that you thought, yeah, that’s the next move for me? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: Well, I’ve always had an entrepreneurial spirit, probably driven by influence of my dad and my grandfather who are both entrepreneurs themselves, and my goal has always been to be in an environment where I’m building and running a business or helping to do so and so. That’s always been the goal. 

Early on in my career, I’ve always sought out roles where I’m able to be challenged and pushed and grow and probably underqualified for at the beginning, and I think that’s really helped me to grow and discover what I’m passionate about. And my friends would probably tell you I over-indexed on every career choice that I made to get to this point, but it’s been a journey and I think every step has taught me something that I’ve used in my day to day being a CXO.  

So, at Dell, I learned the value of sales and performance and reporting and having a pulse on the business. At Visa, I was able to do a customer segmentation project and understand how the payments business model worked and the value of subscriptions and memberships. At Deloitte, I got strategic management experience and was able to peek behind the curtains of some of the greatest minds in business and get that experience and those are all things that I’m thinking about on a weekly basis. So, I think it’s really just been serendipitous that this opportunity came about and I’ve been able to learn so much so far.  

Anderson Williams: And say a little bit more, you’ve got some big names with some big companies. Everybody recognizes, everybody listening to this podcast doesn’t know a Agentis Longevity, yet.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yes.  

Anderson Williams: But will at some point. Give us a little bit of context for where Agentis is as a company in terms of size, scale, sort of growth, and then some of what your day-to-day looks like in that environment.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: So I’ll start with really what Agentis is and what we’re about. So we are a longevity healthcare company that’s focused on helping people take a proactive approach to their health. 

And our mission is to advance healthier, happier, longer lives. And so we’re partnering with multi-site healthcare practices to help advance their diagnostic testing methods, advise on hormone health and optimization treatments, and bring them other therapies to expand services and to support overall education around their wellbeing and health. 

And so right now we are still. What I would call a small business, we have one business under our umbrella and are seeking to partner with a couple more to be able to scale.  

Anderson Williams: What have you learned in this early stage of a company that you kind of can only learn when you’re in this early stage of a company? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: I think the biggest takeaway for me has been how important setting a foundational data infrastructure is. And an area that I’ve worked with the Data COE at Shore over the past few months to help build ours out further. But I think our business specifically had a lot of disparate scheduling tools, EMR systems, even just one business, but had nine locations, like how different that can look to just get a true handle on a list of active patients, how is volume trending today? What is the service mix of our patients? And it’s something that our CEO has really drilled into us. It’s so important to be able to have those insights readily available to understand how the business is performing.  

And so I think that’s been one of the biggest challenges early on and one of the huge takeaways is make the investment early on to get the data infrastructure in the right spot because it will pay off.  

Anderson Williams: And how would you describe, for someone who’s not familiar with other CXO stories, hasn’t listened to other podcasts or otherwise, how would you describe the CXO role as you’ve experienced it?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: My experience and I think charting traditional path versus off-cycle path, the traditional CXO role is coming into a business where you are building for scale, but also accountable for results and being that wear all hats person, whatever it may be.  

So I think one of the big themes is being in the details and the one executing often down to the most granular level, but also in the boardroom, the leader and who the teams are watching and setting an example for that culture every single day.  

And so I think that’s a big theme of the CXO program is always holding yourself to that high standard and pushing yourself to do more, but just relentless prioritization. ’cause there’s always the to-do list is never ending. It’s what needs to get done today, what can get done next week, and communicating that effectively.  

Anderson Williams: And say more about that. I love that term and that phrasing, relentless prioritization. I think that is the reality of a young company and a growing company. How do you do it in practical terms, given all of the things you could be doing, given the pressures of a growth company, having an investment team who’s asking you a lot of questions, having a CEO, who’s trying to build this thing, having a board, having all of these kinds of things, what in real world terms does that relentless prioritization look like? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: I think it’s been something that I’ve really had to craft these past eight, nine months because I tend to be someone, and I think a lot of the CXOs probably feel this way, is high achieving people put a lot on their plate and it takes active effort to push things off the list and deprioritize and delegate and not take ownership of something you otherwise could. 

And I think what that’s looked like for me is. Asking my team, telling my team in our Monday meetings like, Hey, this is what I’m working on, these are my goals for the week. If a deadline is not clear, asking, when does this need to get done by? And just having an organic conversation as a team of like, is this a priority or not? 

And I think we’re trying to do a lot like, our lead independent director said at our last board meeting, you know, you’re doing eight to 10 things and that’s normal. You guys should be doing eight to 10 things, and if people think that it should just be three, they’re probably wrong, honestly, just with how the experience goes, and so it’s always just, who do I need to loop in to help me who has expertise in this that can really help to lead it from the Shore COE team, and just asking for help. 

Anderson Williams: Yeah, I think asking for help and leaning on what resources you have both within the team and otherwise. One thing you mentioned that I think is interesting and important is that conversation with your team, where it’s not just you relentlessly prioritizing, but that you’re having an open conversation. 

Such that all of you can relentlessly prioritize because in the speed and change of the day to day in a company this size and this stage, priorities are constantly in flux.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yes.  

Anderson Williams: And so just, I love hearing you think about like, how do you have that relentless prioritization conversation as just part of what your team expectation is? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: For sure. Yeah.  

Anderson Williams: When you think about the early stage experience as a CXO and a young company, how does a young CXO relate to best support, a young and hungry CEO in a new company?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: My biggest observation about the CEO experience, especially at Shore, is that I think my day to day is busy, but it’s 10 times for every CEO and the pace does not change at that level and the pressure multiplies.  

So one of the things that I’ve been talking to my CEO about recently, Jimmy, is how do we make the best decision that’s right in front of us right now that we know we have to make? And I think that goes with the prioritization, is there’s always gonna be something else on our plate but working together on that and being really in sync on that has been a game changer.  

Anderson Williams: So I wanna talk a little bit about the CXO program.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah.  

Anderson Williams: You started in an off-cycle, so you didn’t come in with a cohort, but will you just describe a little bit about the experience and maybe some of the takeaways from your in-person sessions or even having the network of CXOs around you? 

Just describe your experience a little.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: So I came in off-cycle last fall and candidly didn’t know what joining that cohort would look like, and I’m so grateful that the cohort has been so welcoming with open arms and the learning and development overall with the CXO program is world class.  

There are quarterly learning and development sessions. I always leave the sessions with a tangible takeaway, different way of thinking about something with more clarity and structure, and then also a tangible tool like an Excel map to build an integration plan or how to think about building my data infrastructure that I can bring to my team the next day or next week. 

And I’ve really just been super appreciative of that. And I think the element that’s been most helpful is that peer network. So having shared experience in college, in grad school is really the value of what you pay for in education. And being able to have that for quick questions, feedback, even just to vent, has been awesome. And they’re just great people overall. And so I’ve been really honored to be able to connect with that group, and I’m excited to be a part of the next cohort as well and join their orientation.  

Anderson Williams: Is there a story or an example from your experience in the CXOs that if somebody’s listening and maybe they’re thinking about being in the CXO program or they’re still trying to figure out exactly what it is, is there something that comes to your mind in your experience that really captures the spirit and essence of the program? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: I think one example in the theme of building foundation for scale and infrastructure when I joined was in the first three months we were trying to define our patient journey and implement our CRM system to be able to have just a patient census program. And so that was a project that I knew a little bit about, but really was just all encompassing of what it means to be at CXO to meet with the business, define those stages and data definitions, understand the data source and where they’re coming from connect the dots to really technical people and developers who are building our CRM based on that.  

And that’s really high stakes and important because there’s gonna be field teams and operators and users of that tool after it’s done. And how do we make sure it’s applicable for each group not knowing the answer and taking an educated guess and building an MVP of the tool for phase one, and now we’re doing ongoing optimizations of it to make it better and easier and faster. 

But I think having never implemented A CRM before, that’s just one example of a complex project that only took us a month and a half to do. It was at a fast pace, but still really thoughtful and took a lot of work to engage with our stakeholders and our teams. And it’s a piece of advice I would give a future CXO is to understand that context and your stakeholders before any decisions are made, and really understand the impact of the design of any tool that you’re working on so that it’s, you know, the teams can get behind it and it doesn’t feel like a top down decision. 

Anderson Williams: And did you go to other CXOs who were maybe in multi-site healthcare and ask, Hey, we’re about to do this. What’s your experience been? Is it that straightforward?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: I did, yeah. I leaned on a couple other CXOs and they were super helpful in sharing resources, how they designed it. Everyone’s. Instances a little bit different. 

Sure. But they were really helpful in just common pitfalls of what they did that they would’ve done differently. And just the shared network of materials, resources, Hey, watch out for this, was invaluable.  

Anderson Williams: Yeah. It’s that sort of cumulative learning that comes from that, that you don’t have to go back and figure this thing out. You’re not starting at zero and I think that’s partly also mirrored in the value of being in a portfolio.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Totally.  

Anderson Williams: It’s like that you have that pattern recognition, which is what enables a portfolio to become better and more efficient over time.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah, exactly.  

Anderson Williams: It’s a really powerful thing to see on multiple levels. 

When you think about what you had done prior to joining the CXO program and then prior to joining the Agentis Longevity. Based on where you sit today, what do you feel like your prior career had most prepared you for in this experience? And then the flip side is what’s been the biggest learning curve for you?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: I think that in my prior experience in some of those larger corporate environments. What I’ve learned and has set me up for the most success is the ability to structure complex thoughts, ideas, and how to present that to a stakeholder group and just the organization around that. 

I think consulting really drills that into you, and I think it’s something that is highly valuable in the CXO role is just being able to frame up new complex decisions and what decisions need to be made has been super crucial. And then being comfortable with not knowing the answer, but jumping into the deep end of being able to be really uncomfortable in that, but lead with confidence at the same time and stay grounded on. Okay, I’m gonna bring in the people that do know how to help me on this and we’re gonna have a discussion on where to go from here and problem solve together and make it a working session and be collaborative in that sense has been a huge shift that has been really helpful.  

And I think with that, an area I’m still learning and something I think our CEO does exceptionally well is tailoring your speech and the way that you communicate to different audiences and stakeholder groups and doing that with a lot of thought and tact. It’s a lifelong skill that I think everyone always works on, but the audience of being in our Monday morning standup versus our board versus a vendor partnership, all looks a little bit different. And so how do you tailor that message to relate to that group in the best way?  

Anderson Williams: I’m struck by something you said earlier, just in terms of previous experience and the success that you’ve had and CXOs are coming in, having in all likelihood been very driven, very Type A, very successful. You don’t get here unless you’ve been very successful. 

So how have you dealt with perhaps professional challenges where you didn’t feel as successful? Maybe some of those things that only an early stage company can really humble you.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Totally.  

Anderson Williams: I speak from experience.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: How many examples do you want?  

So I think early stage companies, there’s so much you’re working on, and I definitely think at the beginning a huge learning was I felt like I was falling on my face every couple weeks. Just one being new to the role, but new to the company, new to the vision, we’re going at light speed and there’s questions to answer people to respond to on email.  

I think a huge takeaway from that experience is like, don’t sweat the small stuff. And I think sometimes I had the tendency and a lot of Type A successful people do have the tendency to sweat the small stuff, but you just can’t. As a CXO, you’re in a unique position of being. An individual contributor, but also a leader. And so it’s a constant switch back and forth of being super in the details and knowing that those deeply, but also being the leader in the room and who people are watching. 

But one of the things I’ve really loved and philosophies about successful people that I’ve tried to follow is that successful people act and they make decisions quickly, but measured in in a smart way. And I think that that’s an area that I’ve added value in is using the 80/20 rule of not getting caught up in analysis paralysis, but being able to be measured about your decisions to move quickly and progress over perfection is just kind of a lifestyle you have to adjust to. 

It’s often a lot of the prior experience of a CXO as being perfection over progress, and that’s a big shift you have to adapt to in this role.  

Anderson Williams: What do you know now that you’re in the CXO program and have these experiences under your belt that you wish you had known when you first started?  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Coming outta consulting, you’re an expert in PowerPoint and dangerous enough in Excel, but I wish I’d had more reps at consolidating large data sets to get insights out of and just the efficiency that that skill can bring early on is second to none. I think you can never have enough experience in doing that, and especially starting out in this role where that’s a big responsibility on a CXO’s plate is sifting through that, trying to make sense of it. And so leveraging tools like Power BI, Tableau, and your day-to-day for anyone interested in this role is definitely time well spent. 

Anderson Williams: So in addition to thinking through and getting some reps on the data and the data tools and the even the modeling and the infrastructure kinds of conversations, what other advice would you give someone who might be listening, who’s considering applying to be a CXO about how to prepare themselves for success in this role? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: One of my biggest pieces of advice for future CXOs is be open-minded and coachable. I talked about perfection, but you will not be the smartest person in the room and you likely never will be across these next five years. There’s so much wisdom and smart people in the room with you, and so like lean into that and stay curious and ask for feedback even when it’s hard ’cause you’re in the place to grow and people wanna help you. So that’s been really energizing.  

And then, like I said, gather context before taking action. A big learning for me and skill I’m still working on is doing the work to really understand your stakeholders and get their buy-in before an enacting change, because that’s how it’s gonna be more effective in the long run is with them behind it, your people feel included. They’re championing in it and it’s not dictated to them.  

So that’s another nugget of advice I’d give and just be open-minded in the sense of the match process can be up in the air of where the opportunity will be. And when I was exploring this team focused on the people and do I align with the purpose? And if those two things are a fit, then you’re probably gonna be in a good spot. So just keep that in mind as you explore opportunities.  

Anderson Williams: Yeah, I love the point you were making before because in my experience both in supporting and knowing and interviewing a lot of CXOs as well as in startups myself, you are managing stakeholders and you are managing change. 

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah.  

Anderson Williams: Like those are two truths. And you’ve brought up stakeholders a lot, which are really appreciate because your stakeholder list is only getting bigger and more diverse. And if you don’t learn how to manage those stakeholders early in the process, it’s only gonna get more difficult.  

Is there an example that you’ve learned as you’ve thought about your stakeholders of how you rethought a message or an approach or the timing of something with one stakeholder versus another? 

I’m curious what that kind of awareness and empathy looks like in practice. And it could be something really simple or a pause for a question that maybe you’re doing differently now or thinking about differently now than you would’ve before.  

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah. I think a big example of what I think about here is the stakeholder group of our founders that we’re partnering with and the changes to their tech stack and the tools that they used. 

I think a good shift overall has been asking them, what do you think is the right time to do this? Like, are we ready for this? Given the other initiatives we have going on and going back to my team and saying, do we need to do this right now? There’s X, Y, and Z going on as well. And so I think that’s been a good way to hear their voice. 

And oftentimes when there is frustration, it’s usually because someone feels their voice isn’t being heard. And so just creating space for that, I think that’s been really helpful.  

Anderson Williams: And you said something earlier that I think is important too, and is something that is true to Shore’s philosophy is the degree to which you’re leveraging and leaning on and valuing your founders. 

Rachel Scott Garrison: Yeah.  

Anderson Williams: And the relationships that they’ve built, whether that’s with their team or a vendor or other stakeholders. Recognizing like these are the ones who hold some really important relationships. And so continuing to involve them in this process is a strategy I didn’t want to overlook ’cause it’s really important. 

Rachel Scott Garrison: Absolutely. And something unique to Shore and as well is that, so founder friendly, they’re always a part of the puzzle and a part of the picture. And so how do you make them feel? Heard a part of the process, but excited about the growth and the change as well.  

Anderson Williams: So, one question I’ve been asking in all of my interviews recently, ’cause I kind of want to just collect a big bank of them across a lot of perspectives, but what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten? 

Rachel Scott Garrison: Something that I was reflecting on when prepping for this conversation, and it’s really a mantra that our CEO has drilled into us frequently, and I think just applies to a lot of life too, though, is nothing’s ever as bad as it seems and nothing is ever as good as it seems. And I just love that because it tells you, okay, don’t make assumptions about what’s going on. 

Fact find and find data to support any hypothesis, to like really get to the root cause of an issue it’s going on, and you’ll probably find that it’s a different problem than what you expected. So I think that applies to a lot of areas of life.  

And then secondly, don’t get complacent when things seem like they’re humming and good, and strong and flowing. There’s always something to do. There’s always a team member who is having a bad day or could use more attention if you have some bandwidth. And giving people time and energy and the place to respond in that way. And I think that framework has just really been energizing and helped sharpen our management team overall and kept us on our toes. 

Anderson Williams: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure and check out our other Bigger. Stronger. Faster. episodes. Specifically highlighting the CXO Fellows program, as well as other CXO profiles at www.shorecp.university/podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners and recorded in the Andrew Malone Podcast Studio with story and narration by Anderson Williams. Recording and editing by Austin Johnson. Editing by Reel Audiobooks. Sound Design, mixing, and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks. 

Special thanks to Rachel Scott Garrison.  

This podcast is The Property of Shore Capital Partners, LLC. None of the content herein is investment advice, an offer of investment advisory services, nor a recommendation or offer relating to any security. See the Terms of Use page on the Shore Capital website for other important information.