Part 2 with Mike West of Lirio

**Mike West** (0:04)
But if you're really going to raise money and you're going to be in the category of doing the right thing, you have to be willing to ask yourself the question, have I really, really thought through this?
So when I go to raise money, there are months of process leading up to that before I ever open my mouth to talk about raising money externally. It's that hard work that goes into it that's given me the success to be able to do it.

**Paul Sponcia** (0:35)
From the IT Company, it's Made Right Here, the stories of East Tennessee founders, creators and builders. From the idea behind it to the impact it had on the community, their employees and their personal lives, we're taking you behind the scenes of the movements they built.
Hey there, here we are for part two of my chat with Mike West, currently the CEO of Lirio. Again, I just love talking with Mike and hearing his just humble journey of evolving as a leader and a CEO with vulnerability and honesty and humility. So enjoy.

**Mike West** (1:15)
I was working in Birmingham, a pharmaceutical company, had several things, steps in that organization pretty quickly, was enormously bored, just didn't, just wasn't built to do that sort of, do what you're supposed to do, even if you're overachieving, put in your time, you get paid well, you just kind of, I couldn't do that sort of thing. And I've always built, I've always been this way, I've always been this way, you can see it throughout my career. I've always built relationships with people who are in positions of leadership. There was the head of cardiology, Dr. Jerry Pohost, was one of the top cardiologists in the country.
And so he was probably in his 50s. I'm in my early 20s.
And we built a relationship. Came to me one day, and you have to keep in mind, this was in the early 90s. So this is the beginning of, you know, Clinton had just became president, and there's this new initiative to change health care, manage care, and all this kind of stuff. Nobody knew what that meant. And he came to me and he said, I've got a plan. I'm afraid that managed care is going to eliminate tertiary, you know, teaching institutions from the patients that we need. So I want to put together this thing, this consortium of the top academic centers in the country of cardiology and CV surgery. And we're going to go do it. In hindsight, it was a crazy notion. When you're 24 years old or 25, whatever I was, sounds brilliant to me. So he said, will you help me do it? That was on a Monday and I quit on a Thursday and I was on a plane on Friday. My task literally was to get the top 10 academic centers to put in $250,000 to go build this consortium. And so it was Johns Hopkins and Mayo and Cleveland Clinic and Texas Heart. It was the big, it was the Stanford. And I got it. I mean, it happened.
So within 30 days, I had $2.5 million.
And I was executive director of this thing, which I knew nothing about.

**Paul Sponcia** (3:35)
At 25

**Mike West** (3:36)
I thought I was, it cast me out. And yet, you know, in hindsight, what in the world was I doing?
So that's what I did for 18 months. I helped put it together. So that's how it started. You know, that ended reasonably well. And then I started something else and that ended reasonably well. And the, you know, in hindsight, all of them were okay. So from age 25 until now, I've been in a leadership position. And I would say to be completely transparent, it wasn't until now that I was actually prepared and ready to be the head of an organization.
Everything I've done prior to this was, in some respects, premature to what I'm doing now.

**Paul Sponcia** (4:21)
It seems like you, just looking at what you, listen to what you said and knowing a little bit about your history and then looking at the career path you've taken, that you've always had a really good knack for raising money. It seems like that's just something that's really, you're just good at it. First thing you did at 25 was go raise $2.5 million on an idea. I think to do that, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, I haven't raised a lot of money like you, but part of that is you gotta be bold. There's things you gotta do. I mean, that's part of the deal.

**Mike West** (4:52)
Well, this is a really important topic. So I think raising money is about a few things. You do have to be bold. You have to be able to tell a story, right? You have to be able to frame a vision that people can believe in. You have to be passionate about it.