Let’s talk about love. No, not the rom-com kind. Let’s talk about the love affair I thought I’d never have… with healthcare. I know, I know. I’ll be the first to admit I was a cynic. I’d pretty much written the entire industry off. Healthcare was too stubborn, too impersonal, kind of a stiff. All my healthcare dates were terrible communicators—spent the whole time talking at me instead of listening to me. They were so well-learned in the mathematics of health that they had forgotten the humanities of care. I had surrendered to the old ball-and-chain notion that providers are from Mars and patients are from Venus. I was bitter. I was ready to start dating outside the industry, you know? Tell my friends I was happy just dating myself for a while.
But then I met someone. And this, right here, is a case study in what happens when a noun becomes a verb. She entered the bar, a seductive sorceress, and asked, “Who are you?” Accustomed to this routine, I barely looked up from my insulin and diet coke on the rocks. I pointed to the crinkled name tag practically glued to my chest. “Hi, my name is Diabetes.” Because it was Wednesday. Tuesdays, I’m heart failure. Thursdays, infertility. Weekends, I’m partial to obesity. She just smiled and responded, “No. Who are you?” I chuckled at her amateur attempt to engage me, so I indulged her. I told her that I am diabetic, asthmatic, anemic, epileptic, and occasionally neurotic. I have carpal tunnel, cavities, colitis, cancer, a curious mole on my left foot… “Stop,” she said, sliding her finger along a dried tear that had rivered the lines of my cheeks many hardships ago. And she asked me again. “Who. Are. You?”
And in that moment, I got it. She wasn’t asking for the label. She was asking for the story. So, I exposed everything—the fragile, ugly of my every hurt, every atrophy that was rendering my possibilities inert. And when I was done, she did something unexpected. She leaned forward, fastened her eyes to mine, and whispered, “You’re beautiful.” She placed her palm in mine and stilled the trembling. Then she performed a quiet miracle, what I can only describe as the world’s first soul transfusion. She broke off a sliver of her soul and placed it into my bloodstream until it dissolved on my chest and I… I was hers. Mind, body, heart, and soul. This is the work I champion as a Grammy Nominated Spoken Word Artist; it’s not just about crafting the best spoken word poetry, but about understanding that the most inspirational connections happen when we stop speaking to business cards and start speaking to the soul. This vanguard artist approach isn’t just for the stage; it’s for the boardroom, the hospital room, and the living room.
That encounter taught me the most powerful lesson in business and in life. It’s the difference between a noun and a verb. “Health” is a noun. It’s passive. It’s a state of being, a zip code, a diagnosis on a chart. It’s a box to be checked. But “Care”? “Care” is a verb. It’s an action. It’s the collision of words that causes an irreversible chain reaction. The belief in health needed the act of care. The verb that put health’s noun into motion. Care is listening with your eyes. Care is reading patients less like charts and more like poems. It’s the work of a true motivational poet to show that this shift—from noun to verb, from information to inspiration—is what separates the top leaders from the rest. As a Grammy Nominated Poet, Sekou Andrews, I’ve seen that the world’s leading companies don’t just sell a noun; they live a verb.
So I ask you, what’s the noun in your industry? Is it “finance?” Is it “technology?” Is it “product?” Now, what’s the verb? Is it “empowering?” Is it “connecting?” Is it “solving?” Don’t give me that bland, ordinary, siloed love. Give me that hospital-wide, hospitality love. That laughter-delivered-like-flowers love. That billing-pays-it-forward-and-legal-fights-for-me love. That bold and brave and bursting with possibility love. Stop treating your mission statement like a dusty noun on a shelf and turn it into a verb that pulses through the veins of your organization. That, my friends, is how you stop being an industry and start being a movement. That is how you get a soul transfusion.
