Welcome to the Idaho Leader Podcast. This is your host Ben Davidson.
The Idaho Leader Podcast is the place to meet and learn from Idaho´s best. You´ll be inspired and entertained as Idaho’s most interesting and influential business professionals share success stories, challenges, networking ideas, and career tips.
Listen to a different interview each week by subscribing at Idaholeader.com.
Now, let’s get to the show!
0:35 Ben: With me today is Andy Fujimoto, CEO of AmeriBen. Andy, from where on Idaho are you joining us today?
00:44 Andy Fujimoto: I´m joining you from our offices in Meridian, Idaho.
00:48 Ben: Andy is the CEO of AmeriBen. Joined AmeriBen in 1986, as a Human Resources Consultant, and he’s worked his way up through the ranks. He graduated Magna Cum Laude, from Linfield College in Oregon, and he loves the Boise area, where he is active in the community. He is on the nationwide Leadership Council of Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
Andy, I´ve just told a little bit about you, but please tell us more, we want get to know you and understand your career, your interests, friends, family, etc.
01:15 Andy Fujimoto: Well, thank you very much, I appreciate that, Ben. I´ve got a wife, of thirty-two years, Yoshi. In fact, Yoshi comes from Japan, and interestingly enough we speak Japanese at home, although my kids don´t speak Japanese. I got four of them, my oldest is thirty, and my youngest is eighteen. I think that the old saying is certainly true: “We learn a lot from our parents, but I learn even more from my children”, and that continues to happen to me on day-to-day basis. I’ve got a lot of interest in youth, as you mentioned. In fact, if I had an hour to spend, I probably spend it with youth. A lot of my volunteer hours do go to the youth.
I certainly enjoy where I work. I´m a strong advocated that our best friends should be at work, and I do have those individuals around me; they provide a great support. Work is one of the only places I know where we get paid to get an education. Work is the one of the only places I know where we’re able to encourage one another, and even in fact send people home at the end of the day with more energy than they came at the beginning. So that’s a little bit about me.
02:29 Ben: Please, start us off with some words to live by that inspired you to greatness.
02:32 Andy Fujimoto: These are the three things that I came up with: one, dream big; two, work hard; and number three, have faith in the future.
I think about this element of “dreaming big”, and the clearer the vision we have, the more likely that vision will become reality. “Dream big”, I think is really, really critical. You know, I bump into individuals every now and again that say that they really haven´t had opportunity. I found that opportunity often times comes disguised and we don´t recognize it, and often times opportunity comes in the form of hard work. I don´t do a good job of it but I’ve tried to start to develop an attitude of gratefulness for those things. Because what I´ve seen in my life is that I´ve certainly be able to realize my dreams because of those things that initially I thought would be distasteful; in other words: “hard work”. Those are a few things that I think are real critical, Ben.
03:34 Ben: Thank you, I was excited to ask this question to you, ‘cause you´re a deep guy and I felt like I knew you really well. This is exactly what I was expecting. But you did throw me a curve ball at the start; I didn´t know that you speak Japanese at home. There´s an awesome Japanese sushi place right by your work, there on Eagle and Overland and I´m going to have to take you there, to Sakana.
03:53 Andy Fujimoto: Ben, you got a deal. I do love sushi. One of the things that attracted me to my wife was she looked like my mom and one of the things that I noticed is my brothers and sisters had not married anyone with Japanese descent. I noticed that the Japanese food had disappeared in their day-to-day lives and I have such fond memories of my mother; she passed away when I was nineteen. That Japanese food and my wife, who to me looks a lot like my mom, it just had a great impact on me. So, I’d love to go have sushi with you, Ben.
04:28 Ben: All right, it´s a deal. So, the next question is about challenges and obstacles. I know that you´ve faced some of those in your life; they teach us important lessons. So, if you can please share a story about a challenge that you’ve overcome and what it taught you.
04:41 Andy Fujimoto: Ben, I think I’ve probably got more challenges than I’ve got successes, so it was interesting to reflect upon this particular question, ‘cause there´s so many that I could relate. But I’m going to relate one, and this is business oriented.
In 1997 we and two other individuals thought it was a bright idea to buy the organization, in fact, where I work right now. We decided to buy it trough an interesting transaction, and that was, instead of paying individuals… In fact, we were a not-for-profit organization that was looking to go private, and so, it would be like a chamber of commerce that was becoming privatized, if you will. We had members of the association, and so, what we decided to do was, rather than pay them for the business, we would extend to them credits for services, so that they wouldn´t have to pay that way. We didn´t have to come up with any money, so to speak, on day one. They would be able to get, if you will, free services depending on the length of time they were costumers of ours and how much money they’d spend with us.
That was a great idea for about the first month and then first round of receivables came due. And what we quickly found out, Ben, was that no money was coming in the door, and of course, we had all of the expenses. What we thought, that we would just go to the bank and we would get some financing. Well, the bank took a look at us, especially as a service company, we processed medical insurance clients and we didn’t have any collateral; so they weren´t interested in loaning us any money. We were going out of business in a hurry, because we didn´t have the inflow of any kind of cash, because the credits were there and we actually at that time had a number of operation issues as well.
Ben, those were some extremely, extremely dark times. I can remember coming home one day from work and my third eldest son… I have four kids, so this would’ve been the second to the youngest, Steve. Steve is our more sensitive child. I came home from work and my wife said: “Steve asked an interesting question today after he came home from school”. And I said, “Well, what was that that he asked?” And he said: “Mom, when are we going to meet the parents who are going to adopt us?” And my wife crinkled her brow, and she kind of cranked her head and looked at Steve and said: “What? Steve, what are you saying?” And he said: “Well, when parents go bankrupt, don´t the kids have to go live with adoptive parents because their parents can´t take care of them anymore?” He had heard us talking about the financial issues of the company and he thought that he wouldn’t be able to be in our family, so to speak, anymore. It just broke my heart.
I remember at that time, Ben, saving all the credit cards. You know you get the credit cards that say that you’ve been pre-approved for so many dollars? Because I thought: I may need to use those cards on some point in time, so I had a whole folder full of those. I remember leaving the office and I would just be dead tired. I’d get there by seven in the morning; I’d have staff meetings, one-on-one for breakfast with individuals from six to seven; and then I’d leave the office at about six, six-thirty, go home and have dinner and then I’d finish off work at until about eleven. And I can remember thinking if I looked back out of the review mirror of my car, I’d see this trail of blood that would just be coming out of me because I was hemorrhaging so bad. I mean, it just felt really, really bad.
But this was just something that I found; there are two things I’ll pass along to you and that saved me. One is, I would go home every day and I would ask myself if I did the very best that I could, even though there was so much more to do. I’d put head to pillow knowing that I did everything that I could that day, and I’d think to myself: “There´s no more you could have done, and if that’s all you could have done and you did it, then that’s been a great day.” So that’s one of the things.
The other thing that I found is I’d start feeling depressed and feeling bad for myself I happened to volunteer for a thing that was done by the Idaho Association for Commerce and Industry, IACI. They were doing at that time a program called Business Week and they bring in high school kids and they do a business simulation with them, and I was what was called a Company Advisor. Well, Ben, I saw these kids and I saw how life was meant to be lived. I saw them eating pizza at eleven o´clock at night, I saw them drinking not Diet Pepsi o diet soft drinks but they were drinking the real stuff. And I thought: “These people, they know how to enjoy life, and I need to sit back and I need to enjoy life, I need not to be wrapped up in all my sorrows, I need not have a pity party on myself because there are a lot of great things to live for.” And so, as a consequence, that put perspective around things in a way that I think I just got caught up in my own issues too much and once I saw I was able to lift my eyes to a greater vision, to see a greater timeline than what I was dealing with, now, all of a sudden, perspective was regained and I was able to do the things that I needed to do.
10:21 Ben: Thank you for sharing that. I have a feeling that perspective is something we’re going to talk a lot about on this interview and I am excited to hear that. Let’s next explore a success you’ve had or an epiphany. Take us to the other end of the specter now and share a success story.
10:37 Andy Fujimoto: I´ll share with you this and for me was just a great success. We have a staff member by the name of Christine who works here and I happened to learn that her mother had passed away and I decided to give her a call. I asked her: “How’re you doing, Christine?” and she went on to relate to me this story. She said: “Andy, my brother came in from Texas and my sister came in from Seattle. We then met at my mother’s home. She had lived in the same house for over forty years. I don´t know where her husband was but it was all full of stuff” is what Christine said. And she said: “Andy, this has been some of the most chaotic time we have ever experienced as a family. I’ve been trying to figure out what to do with all of this accumulation of my mother’s; it’s just been total chaos.” She said though, that she stopped and she thought about a company meeting that she had attended. Here in AmeriBen, every week from nine thirty to ten on Thursdays we have what’s called The Leadership Forum, where we teach leadership skills to all of our staff members. Whoever would like to attend, it’s paid time to be able to go to that. She said: “I remember studying about Project Management and I remembered that we talked about gathering as a team, that we would take the bigger task and break it down into smaller tasks. We would assign those tasks out to individuals and those individuals would go off to do those tasks, and then we would gather later to be able to report on how we did.” And she said: “Andy, don’t tell my family but I decided to do Project Management with them. We had a family meeting (in fact, yesterday) and in the morning we made assignments, we decided what we were going to accomplish and we all disbanded to go our various ways to work on those particular tasks. We then gathered in the evening to be able to relate what it was we were able to do that particular day”. She said: “I want to tell you, yesterday was the greatest day we’ve had since my mother has passed away.”
And Ben, it just gave me a clear, clearer perspective about what work really is all about. That we do have…we do make a difference in family, business, community and the world, and for that matter, work is one of the only places I know where we do get paid to get an education. And If we look for the things that we can learn at work, then we can take them home with us Then, I know what happens just as I saw with Christine: she was a better daughter, she was a better sister, she was better in her community, she was making a difference because of the things that she had learned at work, and those are some of the great successes that we can have in other people’s lives.
13:43 Ben: I love that and as you were talking you were using some very familiar words, your core purpose: “Changing lives by developing great leaders in family, business, community and the world”; it’s very impactful. One of the things that the CEO of the company I work for talks about all the time -his name is Kent Oram, great leader- is that you have to have a heart at work and it’s the same heart that you use when you are at home, when you’re at work, in the community. It’s not about separating work and home, it’s about bringing that same passion and goodness to all aspects of your life.
14:13 Andy Fujimoto: I think that’s outstanding advice. I whole-heartedly agree. In fact, I think it causes people depression, I think it causes people anxiety when they try to separate home from work and work from home. We believe ‘work up to go home’ and in fact we believe that home ought to come to work and we believe that many of the great ills that we experienced at home can be resolved through the tools that we receive at work. I whole-heartedly endorse what Mr. Oram is doing in your organization in Idaho Central Credit Union.
14:48 Ben: Since you´ve had this as you core purpose at AmeriBen, have there been some stories that illustrate how home and work overlap one another? And what a wonderful culture you’ve seen there develop over the years?
15:00 Andy Fujimoto: I have seen that and I’ll relate to you a personal experience with that. In this time frame, the Gallup Organization that does a lot of research creating a culture of engagement at work. One of the things that I noted in my reading of Gallup’s material is they note that an engaged worker is half as likely to suffer from depression, and when I looked out into the world of the mental illnesses that we have, I look at our own pharmacy spent in our group of benefits here in AmeriBen: the number one prescription is for depression. And I think about people being engaged and being able to see a difference in their own lives. One of the things that they say is that we ought have to have a best friend at work.
One day, Ben, I came to work and I wasn’t feeling very good about things. I received an e-mail, from one of my children and that child had something to announce to me that I wasn´t expecting at all, something that I, in fact, didn´t necessarily want to hear. I’d just been with that child the week before, visiting them and this was the news that I got, of all ways, through e-mail. I had the fellow that I work with, Ben Wright. I carry the title of CEO and he’s got the title of President. He came into my room and he noticed that there was something different about me, and being the best friend that he is, he said: “Andy, are you doing ok?” Wow, I looked up at him and said: “Ben, no, I´m not doing very good. Let me tell you what I´m dealing with.” He looked back at me and he said: “You know, Andy, I’ve got a friend who I think can help you because I think he has experienced some of the same things you are. Do you mind if I have him give you a call?” I said: “Ben, that’d be fine.” Well, that evening lo and behold what happens as I get a call from Ben’s friend. Pete did have some great advice to share with me. One, to tell me that I wasn’t alone in what I was doing; and two, he told me a little bit of what he had done to be able to respond to that particular situation.
We see these people at work, much more than, in fact most of our people. We see them more that our very bests friends, even sometimes our spouse, for that matter. And these individuals, I think, have an opportunity to help us in a way like no other. And so, as I think about what changing lives by developing great leaders can do, Ben, I’ve been on the receiving end of that. So yes, I have seen that; in fact, I’ve experienced it first hand.
17:45 Ben: For those listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar with AmeriBen, can you tell a little bit about what your work force does there in Boise and how many of you there are?
17:55 Andy Fujimoto: We in AmeriBen do three main things: We process medical insurance claims, we do human resource consulting, and we administer retirement plans. We’ve got in the organization currently about four hundred and twenty people; three hundred and fifty of them are in Boise. We have offices in Phoenix, in Salt Lake City as well. We’ve just got really good people, and so, as a consequence, I’ve seen the organization grow considerably since 1986 when I joined the company.
18:29 Ben: Thanks for sharing that. I wanted to make sure listeners and job seekers out there know about this company in Idaho that is definitely worth celebrating; good Idaho success story. So let´s change gears now, and if you could tell us about something that’s got you really excited.
18:42 Andy Fujimoto: We have four core values: Integrity, initiative, good judgment and teamwork. As a matter of fact, interestingly enough, I’ve had people come to visit the organization, one I can recall specifically from Dallas, Texas, who had heard about what we were doing and the growth that we’ve experienced and he was interested just to find out a little bit more about the company. While he was waiting in the reception area, he had seen on one of our doors the four values, and he said: “I get initiative [sic] and I get teamwork, I can kind of picture what those are, but integrity and initiative, those are a little bit more ambiguous to me.” Along the way, one of our clients (it’s one of the fortune five hundred; was, in fact, in one the top ten best places to work)… that particular organization had put together, a sheet that had listed out, not only their values but the behaviors that were associated with that, to be able to extract ambiguity and be able to make ambiguous things more concrete. As we thought about that as an organization, as we get bigger, as we want to continue to enhance the culture that we’ve got, we thought that that would be a really good thing, so that people could understand what our values look like in actual actions.
That´s a project that we´re doing right now because this is what we believe: when we take care of our core purpose of changing lives by developing great leaders, when we act with integrity, initiative, good judgment, and team work, that´s the goal; and the byproduct is that we grow as a company. We expect to grow by 15% per year, we double in size every about five years, and we triple in size every ten. And oddly enough, Ben, we’ve been able to maintain that pace since 1980. But I want you to know that the goal or the focus is not growth as it relates to revenue. The focus, the goal is to enhance our core purpose and our core values. And so I’m really excited about that and I think that will only, hopefully make us a better organization.
21: 01 Ben: Yeah, it comes back to that perspective once again. Tell us now about a good habit or daily ritual that brings you success.
21:07 Andy Fujimoto: I´m not by nature a person who visions very well, and I think about the phraseology of: “Where there is no vision, the people perish”; and I think about that as it relates to how organizations, or how many organizations perish because the organization doesn´t have a vision. For me, I´m kind of a here-and-now and kind of an analytical person. I´m not that much of a conceptualizer of what the future should look like, and then, to be able to communicate that effectively.
So, often times what I’ll do is I’ll force myself into a different time zone, Ben. I say, “ok, Andy, you´re going to go to the year 2020; you’re going to be about six years, five years out from now, and you’re going to envision what AmeriBen is going to look like twice as big as it is right now. And then you´re going to go out to the year 2025, and you´re going to envision what it’s going to be like to be three times as large as you are right now.
What kind of environment would there be? What would people say about what it’s like to work in AmeriBen? What would your costumers be saying about Ameriben? What would they say about Andy Fujimoto for that matter?
And I’ll actually go through those different senses if you will of how they would feel, what they would hear from my mouth, what they would say, for that matter; what they would be doing within the organization. What if they found a hundred dollar bill in the parking lot and no one else was in the parking lot? Would they bring that hundred dollar bill back in to the reception area to say “someone has lost this and I’m going to return it to them?” Would they not do that? Would they look around to see if anybody is looking and then slip it into their hand? What kind of place do I want them to work in?
Well, I will force myself to go into those particular modes. Sometimes I’ll do that and one of the greatest things for me, Ben, is exercising; while I´m exercising, I’ll think of those things and I’ll try to refresh, I´ll try to put things in perspective. I guess there´s that word again isn´t it? It put things into perspective for me. That visioning is so critical.
23:20 Ben: Visioning is important and it’s something I try to do as well as part of my morning routine after exercising and do some meditation. And one of the reasons that I launched this Podcast to begin with was due to some visioning where I was imagining my children and what they were interested. I have two boys who want to go into computer science, so one of the things that I wanted to do is help give them some opportunity. The thought just came to my mind: “Well, what do I know: leadership development, recruiting, I love Idaho (it’s where I’m going to live for the rest of my life) and podcasting. My children, they help edit the podcast and help with some of the web design. Didn´t know really how to do any of this before then but it´s mostly an opportunity to help them learn entrepreneurship. It’s been great, a lot of fun. My son, who’s thirteen is our chief marketing officer and my son who’s eleven, he´s a CFO, so it´s been a great opportunity so far.
24:16 Andy Fujimoto: Congratulations, Ben. That´s wonderful.
24:19 Ben: So that really ties back into your core purpose: Changing lives by developing great leaders in family, business and community and the world. It’s all intertwined.
24:28 Andy Fujimoto: Yes, Thank you.
24:30 Ben: Let´s talk about your favorite place to visit in Idaho.
24:32 Andy Fujimoto: I grew up in the shadows of the Grand Tetons. Oh, what a majestic sight that is! Can you imagine the power that must have been used to push those beautiful spires up into the air? I just can even fathom what that must have been like. To me, it’s awesome; to me, it is inspiring; to me, there´s almost kind of a religious experience that one has, a humbling experience. To be able to stand, even far away from them, but if you´re close… My word! What a wonderful spectacle you´re able to see with that.
25:15 Ben: Yeah, that is certainly a beautiful place. What´s a favorite book, app or internet resource that you’d recommend to the Idaho Leader Community?
25:22 Andy Fujimoto: Well, of course it’s your leadership Podcast, that’s got to be one of them. I admire what you’re doing, Ben, and then to hear more of the background about your children. I mean, if we could all do something like that, what a difference it would make in the generations to come.
These are a couple of things I think of: One, I remember as a sprout reading: ‘In search for excellence’ by Tom Peters. That was just a good read for me, it gave me some good thoughts about leadership and the difference leaders can make. Jim Collins came along with a book that I just referenced and that´s ‘Good to Great’, and I love one of the sequel books that he wrote: ‘How the mighty fall’, because most of those organizations aren’t where they were. I think the concepts are sound. I think the people within those organizations, they´re certainly imperfect, but the concepts are sound.
26:25 Ben: In Idaho, we’re hard working and grateful people. Besides your family and your health, what is one thing that you’re particularly grateful for, right now?
26:34 Andy Fujimoto: You cause me to reflect back. The first thing when you asked that question that came to mind was my fiftieth birthday. I can remember thinking: “Oh, my word! I´m getting old!” I started to think back when I was in high school, and some of the teachers that I had in high school and I started to put the mathematics together to figure out that many of my teachers in high school, in fact, were probably only thirty five years old or so, and I thought that they were old! And here I am turning fifty. I remember that particular day. This was one of the things that I was most grateful for and that is, Ben, my eyes popped open that day. And it was a new day and I was able to do what I wanted to on that particular day. And believe it or not, for me, that´s one of the things that I´m most grateful for: As long as those eyes will pop open every morning, I dream big, I work hard, I have faith in the future, I believe that we can all make a difference in other people’s lives. One of the greatest blessings, one of the greatest things that occurs to me is my eyes pop open in the morning.
27:42 Ben: It´s a great thing not to take for granted. Well, thank you, Andy, for telling your story and being so generous with Idaho Leader Community. We’ve enjoyed hearing your stories and your wisdom. If you could please leave us with some parting advice and then tell us how we can connect with you to keep the dialog going?
27:57 Andy Fujimoto: I appreciate and I’m very grateful for the things that you’re doing for so many people and thank you for the opportunity to be a part of this Podcast. The words that I leave you with are: The big is in the little. As we go about doing things that many times other would consider to be insignificant, that´s where the miracles occur. As we want big things to happen let us go about doing those little things that make a difference and we´ll see all the miracles that we ever will wish to see.
I can be reached; I’ve got my LinkedIn account there so certainly an individual is able to reach me that way. Ben, I feel comfortable with you and trust those that would listen to this Podcast. If they ever wanted to send me an e-mail, I’d be happy to respond to that. If I might be able to be of any assistance, I’d be happy to do so.
28:54 Ben: You´re such a generous guy, we really appreciate that. It´s been touching to hear these stories and the Idaho Leader Community salutes you, we wish you the best and we look forward to connecting with you and wish you success at AmeriBen.
29:09 Andy Fujimoto: God Bless you, Ben Davidson, Thank you very much!