Growing, Leading Change, and Developing Your Team at the Speed of Private Equity

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Growing, Leading Change, and Developing Your Team at the Speed of Private Equity | Caity Liggon

In this episode, Caity Liggon recounts her career evolution from a part-time, high school employee to the Director of Billing at Assembly Health. She emphasizes that she wants to be known for her kindness and compassion, not her business success. This philosophy is reflected in her leadership style, which focuses on developing her people, managing change effectively, and maintaining transparent, flexible communication. These qualities contribute to her success and recognition as an Everyday Hero.

Transcript

Introduction

Caity Liggon: I think one of the major things that I want them to see in me is kindness. I don't care if they see me as a successful businesswoman, because at the end of the day, that's not the most important piece of my life. Being compassionate and kind, caring about people, being gracious. That's the things that I want them to see and to walk away with.

Hopefully a long time off, but you know, when I'm dead and gone and my kids are talking memories, I want them to be like, Oh, my mom was so kind. She always helped people. She was always willing to do things. She loved us. You know, that's what I think is the important thing through all of this. So, you know, it's great to be known as a strong leader or as a good businessperson.So I think being true to

But at the end of the day, I think The character piece of it is more important to me than any of like the material things that come along with, you know, leadership.

Anderson Williams: In this episode, I talk with Caity Liggon, a Director of Billing at Assembly Health. Caity talks about how a part-time job she took in high school to help her mom at New Bedford, a job she swore she'd never do again, has become a rewarding and fast-growing career at Assembly Health.

As a mom and an everyday hero, she also provides incredible wisdom about the importance of developing your people as you scale your own leadership and impact.

Welcome Caity, and congratulations for being named an Everyday Hero.

Caity Liggon: Thank you.

Anderson Williams: Before we get started, do you mind just sharing a little bit about yourself?

Things we can't find on LinkedIn that are a part of your story, family, pets, hobbies, interesting facts, anything like that?

Caity Liggon: Yeah, so I am married. We're actually coming up on our nine-year anniversary next month. We have two children, a five-year-old son and an almost three-year-old daughter. They keep us busy.

They're great kids. I love being a mom. And then my hobby is actually, we have chickens. So we take care of our chickens and collect fresh eggs. And that's been interesting and fun. fun to kind of learn more about all of the different kinds of chickens there are.

Anderson Williams: I bet your kids enjoy that as well.

Caity Liggon: My son really likes them. He is really into Jurassic World, so he treats them like velociraptors.

Anderson Williams: I love it.

Caity Liggon: My daughter's terrified, so, but they're probably a little more than half her size because she's so little, so I could see why that would be a little terrifying.

Anderson Williams: And if they're velociraptors, she's treating them the same way. She just does, she has a different reaction. Right? I love it. I love it.

So in terms of work, will you just share what you do and where you do it?

Caity Liggon: So I manage our billing department at New Bedford, who is partnered with Assembly now, and so I just make sure our day-to-day runs that we're getting claims out to insurance companies on time and just ensure that our providers are getting reimbursed for their services.

Anderson Williams: How would you describe, for anybody listening, what it is that New Bedford does and then sort of what, how that fits under what Assembly does?

Caity Liggon: So New Bedford is a medical billing company. We handle coding, authorizations, billing, credentialing, kind of the full scope of revenue cycle management and how that fits into Assembly.

Assembly, I know, started in the SNF (Skilled Nursing Facility) kind of side of things and have expanded to physician group billing. And so we handle billing for different physician groups, primarily radiation, oncology, and behavioral health.

Career Beginnings

Anderson Williams: How did you get started in this work in the first place? How did you find New Bedford and get involved in revenue cycle management?

Caity Liggon: So I actually started right after high school. So I graduated high school and I think I started like a week later. My mom is actually one of the old partners. So she had asked me to kind of work part-time to help with a cleanup project for one of the physician groups that had been bought out by a hospital.

So we were just kind of working through their AR and credits. And so that whole summer, I was working 40 hours a week, sitting at a desk for the first time in my life. Because before that I was waiting tables and working at daycares and you know, the typical high school student job. So, And so I remember I got through that summer and I was like, I'm literally never doing this again. But...

Anderson Williams: Back to babysitting. I want to get out of this.

Caity Liggon: Clearly that is not what happens. I ended up staying on part-time through college because New Bedford was really flexible with my schedule, which was nice in college. Cause you know, classes kind of gets scheduled when they get scheduled. And so once I graduated, I started full-time and I've kind of worked through all of the different roles and positions at New Bedford.

So I've touched a little bit of everything. And I think, you know, having that exposure to all of the different pieces definitely allowed me to learn and grow a lot. And I think it's great. That's one of the reasons I've been able to continue to be successful in my role.

Anderson Williams: So you had that first experience and you're like, I'm never doing this again. And then you managed to not only do it again, but go to school while doing some of it and then finish school and then come in full-time doing it.

How did your mom talk you into that or what was it that made that unfold that way?

Caity Liggon: I don't know that she necessarily talked me into it. I remember one of our conversations before I started was her telling me that I better not give her a reason to fire me and that she absolutely would fire me if I screwed anything up. So...

Anderson Williams: No pressure.

Caity Liggon: Yeah. So she definitely didn't make it easy in a good way though. You know, she had extremely high expectations of me throughout the whole process, honestly, but that just made me, I think, a better employee. I think the flexibility at the time working through school was a big factor for me because I could work, you know, 10 hours one semester, and then if I needed to bump it up to 20, I could.

And they just, Let me kind of work when I needed to. And then as I continued to work through college, I realized that I was good at what I was doing. And then I kind of started to get into other aspects of it. So I was training and then kind of leading a team here and there. And that piece of it, I think, is what really kind of grabbed my hold in the company because I love working with people.

I think some of this kind of goes just to the background. I originally went to school for psychology. So I actually have my bachelor's in psychology. I thought I would go into counseling or social work or something. Turned out that wasn't exactly where I found myself, but I think some of that initial interest in helping people kind of carried over into the role.

So when I graduated from college, I started full-time and I was working in kind of a trainer capacity because we were growing and bringing in new people and we really didn't have a dedicated team member at the time to training and I think in any company training is such an important piece of it that if it's not done well, it kind of sets people up for failure from the start.

And so we kind of put emphasis on that when we were going through that growth period and that was kind of initially my interest in helping people. I was like, okay, this is great. I can train people. I can help them be successful, get started, feel comfortable in the position. And then because I had kind of touched different aspects of the company, so I had worked in coding for a little bit, I had kind of handled all of the different billing processes.

They promoted me to a team lead position over what we had called our small practice team, which was a few of our kind of outlier specialties that had one or two physicians or practitioners. providers. So it was a pretty small team to start with. I think I had maybe two employees under me, but again, kind of that, like being able to help them succeed and seeing the progress with the client's stats and financials was one of the rewarding parts of the job.

And so from there, we kind of restructured a little bit and had additional management roles. And I moved into a supervisor position where I was managing, I think, a team of eight. And I was actually when I was prepping for my maternity leave for my son, I had two team leads under me and I was trying to get them ready to kind of cover my work while I was out on maternity leave and seeing them grow and seeing them be successful and covering some of those roles was really awesome.

And it was encouraging, you know, because when you get to see people grow and get excited about what they're learning and I don't know if that's just kind of, I love it. So.

Leading by Example

Anderson Williams: Jason Farrell has worked with Caity since 2012. In fact, Jason's dad started New Bedford, which is now a part of Assembly Health. So he's known Caity since those early days.

And ironically, he too started just to help his dad out. And 17 years later, here he is. I asked Jason what made Caity Liggon an Everyday Hero.

Jason Ferrell: I think it's, if you work with her for any amount of time, I think it's pretty easy to see. What makes her an Everyday Hero is really just that she leads by example, very hard worker.

She has very high expectations for herself as well as others, but she also has this understanding that people don't just automatically perform at their top level, that her teams need to be coached, need to be developed through feedback and educational opportunities in order to succeed.

I think she's always been big on team culture and kind of bringing the team together, making sure people knew each other, had a relationship, but wanted to always take that a step further and just provide different staff, other educational opportunities, whether it be directly related to their customer, their specialty, their system, or, you know, the type of work they're doing, whether it's billing or coding or some other type of service, or just general management training, like FranklinCovey courses, giving team access to management training opportunities that wouldn't otherwise have been available.

Anderson Williams: So for anybody listening, what does that look like for her in practice? What does that look like for your other team members in practice?

Jason Ferrell: Yeah, I think probably one large example that comes to mind is a few years back, our company switched claims clearinghouses, which is no small feat. It took a ton of work, but Caity really led the effort there to, you know, to take charge, take the training, take the lead over that transition.

And it really required redesigning all of our accounts, receiving workflows. A lot of other processes related to payment posting and just triage of denials and just she consistently met with her team, her account managers, provided them training opportunities, developed KPIs and trackers for tracking performance, implemented standards for performance, as well as quality auditing programs that was able to give team feedback. Let them know where they stood with their accuracy, but also as well as their production rates.

And like I mentioned about the general management training opportunities, she would train her account managers directly on the subject matter and customers, especially as they were working at, but also provided them that external management training that allowed them to just be better equipped to handle future issues.

Anderson Williams: It's clear Caity knows how to get stuff done, but more importantly, she knows how to get stuff done with and through others in a way that's beneficial to everyone. And Caity has seen a lot of change in her time. From the early days to growth stage for New Bedford through their partnership with Assembly, and now as part of a fast-growing private equity-backed business, Caity's navigated a lot and helped others do the same. Here, she offers a mini masterclass in leading change.

Managing Change

Anderson Williams: Can you just talk a little bit about your experience of being with the company for as long as you've been with the company, going through the transitions you've gone through, joining with Assembly and those kinds of things, just some of that journey from a professional perspective that you've been on.

Caity Liggon: So I think as far as like going through a lot of the growth before Assembly, you know, when you start out with such a small company, there's definitely growing pains and learning how to work with higher volumes of people. You know, just influx, managing additional employees. We went through the offshoring process, some system changes, and through all of that, I think just being flexible and also being a change agent, you know, like encouraging the team to embrace the change, reassuring them through the changes was an important piece.

One of the major changes we went through was when we offshored work, and I know anytime a company offshores work, there's always fear of losing jobs, and so we just really worked to reassure the team that the purpose of offshoring was not to eliminate positions, it was to be able to continue to take on additional work, and so we were able to kind of prove that through time just because we didn't eliminate people's positions.

And so we navigated that with just, you know, continuing to encourage them, being transparent, answering questions, but also, you know, having extreme flexibility because anytime you make changes like that, things don't always go according to plan. And so one of the other big changes that professionally we went through was when we changed clearinghouse systems.

So, you know, anytime there's a system change, there's so many pieces that you have to watch and getting, you know, staff on board is a process too, because you're used to doing things one way. And so again, you know, we were just very transparent. We encouraged flexibility.

We opened up the conversation for feedback from the staff on processes. And, you know, just really encouraged like that open communication so that we could continue to hear them and take their recommendations into consideration and kind of figure out best processes with the new system. And I think some of those changes really prepped us for the transition to assembly.

You know, they had already gone through some significant changes and we've had a lot of staff that have been with New Bedford for years. Like, I am one of quite a few that have been here for as long as I have. I think there's five or six others that have been here longer than me. So, you know, they've all been through that, too, and I think having that longevity here encouraged some of our newer team members to stick through the changes because they could see that they would pay off.

And then of course the transition to Assembly, I think made people a little bit nervous because you never know when you're, you know, new management, new processes, but we continue to just be encouraging everything that assembly stands for was basically the same values that new Bedford already had.

And Assembly really did continue to like, kind of stick with their word. You know, there wasn't any change ups, what they said they meant. And so we just continued to reiterate that with the staff. We trust the original partners, so when we heard they were making this decision, we trusted their judgment, and I think because there was that trust with the partners, that has kind of lended itself to Assembly as well.

But they really have been great. They answered questions, they took the time to call our team members that had concerns. They made it easy for us to continue to encourage our staff and to kind of back the change with them.

Anderson Williams: It's fascinating listening to you. I could listen to you talk about it all day because change is so relevant and so present in all of our companies that are all growing, whether it's technology or new processes or integration or new markets or new products.

And, you know, I was just taking notes, you know, you mentioned really proactive communication, being open to feedback and questions, being transparent, being flexible. You described that with New Bedford through all of the changes you went through, but then you kind of came back in assembly, sort of approached partnering with New Bedford with the same spirit and same ideas, right?

Caity Liggon: Yeah.

Anderson Williams: It's sort of a masterclass in managing change because those fears and those concerns about the unknown are just very real for people.

Caity Liggon: Oh, yeah, definitely.

Leadership Lessons

Anderson Williams: I want to read a statement from your Everyday Hero nomination, then just have you talk through it a little bit. It says:

"Through Caity's efforts on developing her account manager skills and improved workflows, New Bedford's denials have decreased and our workflow has become more efficient. Our collection percent has increased on several clients over the past five years, and the outstanding AR (Accounts Receivable) has decreased for many of our clients."

I mean, it's a pretty huge impact materially to the business, right? And I'm just curious, as you think about how you've already talked about developing your people, as you think about that kind of impact on the business, what are some leadership lessons you've learned through your evolution with the company and in your roles that our audience would love to learn from?

Caity Liggon: I think one of the biggest lessons is that I am only as successful as my team is, so if my team isn't performing well, I'm not performing well. So, you know, at the end of the day, I am accountable for the work being done, but that starts at building my team up. So I think taking the time to really develop the people that work under you is so important.

Because as a human being, people only have so much capacity, you know, you're going to hit a point where you can't do it all. And if you don't have a team under you that can step up to the plate, then you've limited the entire company's growth. And so I think just taking the time to invest in them and more than just like teaching them the work.

But investing in their leadership ability. And, um, we actually walked through a book with the entire management team that kind of distinguished between a manager and a leader. And, you know, one of the biggest things is managers manage processes, but leaders lead people. And I think that the difference in those two things is it's not just.

It sounds small, but it's so big. So I think that's one of the lessons that like I've come away with is that like I can't do it all. That it's literally impossible. So if I'm not continuing to build the people up that work under me, you know, I'm going to hit a point where I'm going to fail. And at the end of the day, like I'm going to take responsibility for the failures, but I'm going to credit the successes to my team.

One of the most rewarding things is that like I have managers now that are coming to me and they're like, Hey, I found this and this is what I did, or Hey, I worked with this person and now they can do this. And like, there's nothing more rewarding than like listening to their excitement and seeing their development and their growth.

But I think that's one of the most important things as a leader in a company is to invest in developing other leaders. And I think, you know, letting go of the control and the power is important too, because if you're trying to hold on to everything, you're going to fail. So just being able to say, okay, you've got this, you've learned this, now go was a huge thing.

And one of the things that I've done with my team at New Bedford is, you know, push them to stretch a little bit. So if it was something they were a little uncomfortable with, I would make them do it anyways. And so they all would hate me through the process. But by the end of it, they came out of it stronger and more confident and were able to kind of take over whatever that responsibility was.

So like, I've got account managers who, you would never have led a client meeting before, leading client meetings with no help. And so it's just little stuff like that where it's important to continue to build their confidence in themselves. And I think again, recognizing that they're all human, they're going to make mistakes, things are going to go wrong and giving them the grace that you want them to give yourself, you know, is important, but also recognizing that everybody has different strengths and kind of feels Finding what works best for people allows them to really take off with their, you know, leadership potential.

Early Career Leadership

Anderson Williams: I can't help, and I'm not going to guess your age, but you are not old and your leadership wisdom is quite profound. Where does that come from for you to have that kind of awareness of what you're doing and how you're thinking of others and how you're building the business and trust and all of these things this early in your career?

Caity Liggon: I think part of it is that working with my mom, I got very candid feedback. And so that, of course, you know, caused hard feelings for mother-daughter, but it really helps me. me to grow but also working closely with the other partners at the company. You know, they've always been so willing to help us grow and not just me but all of the employees at New Bedford that, you know, they've been transparent with their mistakes.

They've talked through that. They continue to invest in like leadership trainings like we've gone through like the FranklinCovey series. We've read different books. There's been recommendations for podcasts. So they're as willing to invest in me, which, you know, allowed me to kind of learn that investment into my team.

And then of course, some of it's through trial and error. I've definitely made my fair share of mistakes through the process. But I think one of the things that I've learned is like, if you take the time to get to know and care about your team as a whole. People then when you mess up again, they give you that grace back because they know that you genuinely care about their success and that oftentimes the actions you're taking are to help them grow.

So even when we've had to have like some really tough conversations, they know that the intent of the conversation is not to knock them down. It's to build them up. You've got to always keep the intentions in mind. Like what are your goals? The intentions of the conversation or what are the intentions of the action and make sure that the team knows those intentions as well.

Anderson Williams: Caity Liggon is an Everyday Hero whose superpower is her intentionality. Caity knows how to balance the immediacy of getting stuff done with the longer-term investment in developing her people, their skills and their confidence to do more and be more themselves. She intuitively understands that she doesn't scale, her people don't scale, and the business doesn't scale without intentionally investing in her team every day.

If you enjoyed this episode, please check out our other Everyday Heroes at www.shorecp.university/podcasts, or anywhere you get your podcasts. There you will also find our other series, Microcap Moments, and Bigger. Stronger. Faster. each exploring the people and the stories that make the microcap space unique.

This podcast was produced by Shore Capital Partners with story and narration by Anderson Williams. Recording and editing by Reel Audiobooks, sound design, mixing and mastering by Mark Galup of Reel Audiobooks.

Special thanks to Caity Liggon and Jason Farrell.

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.