AFC's CMO Kurt Lee Hurley on Embracing Change and Finding Your Inspiration

Kurt Lee Hurley currently serves as CMO of American Family Care - the nation’s largest and fastest growing urgent care clinic with over 215 locations across 26 states. While Kurt has been very successful in leading marketing teams and initiatives at many multi-million-dollar organizations his life journey to this point has been anything but easy or traditional.

“Lucky to live to 21” was the medical diagnosis given to Kurt at the age of 7 as he battled rheumatic fever contracted from swimming in a toxic waste reserve. In his early 20’s, he created his own band and music video (featured on MTV) but his music career abruptly ended due to acquisitions and reorganizations of major recording labels happening at the time. A movie, based on his script, went into production only to die in movie studio purgatory. In his 30’s his Amazon best-selling book, Boundless, while becoming a tremendous success (with 40K+ copies sold) and helping thousands of people with their personal development journeys, has taken a significant toll on his personal life.

With so many starts and stops, lots of success and failure, and change being the only constant Kurt’s journey hasn’t been a fairy-tale. But his incredible resolve to live life to the fullest, insatiable thirst for knowledge, and a mission to positively impact millions of others has gotten him through the tough times and given him the opportunity to create amazing works, friendships and experiences like no other.

I’ve had the opportunity to read Kurt’s book and the privilege to speak with Kurt about his experience. As someone with a very non-traditional journey to the role of a CMO, by conventional standards, Kurt shares his advice on building your own path, embracing change, his main sources of inspiration and much more.

Mike Osipenko: You’ve lived in over 15 states, numerous cities and a few countries. You’ve also had many different roles, from writer/creator and producer to fitness coach and personal development guru to business owner and CMO. That’s a lot of change. You’ve mentioned in your book that earlier in your life you hated change but have come to eventually love it. For those of us who are on their journey to embrace change, what advice would you give?

Kurt Lee Hurley: Change is often associated with negative outcomes because our minds are programmed to focus on and remember the unpleasant elements of change. We also tend to define change as a major event in our lives. One with greater uncertainty and, therefore, higher risk of failure – like a career change, a move to a different state, or a major purchase, for example. And because we give it so much significance, we increase the level of fear in our minds, which is ultimately what we’re afraid of. The fear of change. Not the change itself. Those old adage’s we’ve heard from our parents of “you’ll pay for your mistakes” start to take over our minds and inadvertently paralyze us into thinking that staying the path or controlling the known is the safer approach.

The interesting part is that the complete opposite will be true when we embrace change. One of my favorite quotes is by Wayne Dyer who says, “Change your thoughts – change your life,” which is a very positive way of looking at it. Essentially saying that change is a gateway to something better.

In order to get more comfortable with it, I’m of the belief that everyone needs to experience more change. As there’s no replacement for experience. This, above all else, will help you develop a higher level of resilience for it. The good news is that change is constantly happening to us and all around us whether we realize it or not. The cycle of life IS change. It’s inevitable. Recognizing this mere fact is a major step in the direction of becoming comfortable with it.

Once you acknowledge that it’s already part of your life, it provides an initial level of confidence to build from. The next step is to recall and focus on the positive outcomes of change that’s happened to you in the past. Remember the times you’ve tried something “risky” and ultimately succeeded – even if it took a few tries. This provides the next level of support in shifting your mindset to embrace it. Then you can build from there.

Mike Osipenko: At some point you realized that you wanted to make a major career change. Step away from more of a solo-prenuership approach to serving as a leader of other businesses. Was there a specific moment in your life where you knew you had to make that pivot, or was it more of a gradual awakening?

Kurt Lee Hurley: As an entrepreneur I was doing quite a bit of consulting and coaching, and dispensing advice for others who were looking to solve challenges or seeking an outside perspective. When you’re consulting, you’re able to glean access into others’ function and ways of going about doing things. It’s a fantastic learning experience, and through it all I realized that being a part of the bigger picture in other organizations was really enticing to me. As I received more exposure to that world, I felt a personal evolution which made it not just easier to let go of the old solo-preneurship path but more desirable to let it go. So I made a conscious decision to let it go and be part of other people’s dreams and aspirations.

Mike Osipenko: How is letting go different from giving up in your mind and why was that important for you to recognize and appreciate?

Kurt Lee Hurley: The biggest difference is, with letting go, you truly feel in control, content or even excited to move on. It’s recognizing that it’s absolutely okay to love something for a period of time but then be completely fine with not loving it anymore and moving forward to a new chapter. The only life sentence you have is, well, your life. The pieces within it should begin, end and move around. A key lesson in all this is that the more you think you know, the more you realize that you have so much more to learn. So don’t confine or limit your knowledge to past experience and always be open to new inputs and new adventures.

Mike Osipenko: This year marks the 10 year anniversary since the publishing of your personal development best seller, Boundless. Looking back at this work, do you find that most of the principals you’ve outlined still ring true today and do you still follow many of them? 

Kurt Lee Hurley: Yes, I am a practitioner of truth – so all that I’ve outlined in the book I consider truth and I try to live in that truth as much as I possibly can. What that means is those principals that take you from “nowhere” to “now here” I still have in order and many of them I’ve gotten better at.

What I no longer do to the same rigidity is the self-focus on my physique. While I’m not entirely happy with the outcome of that choice because I’m not in as good of a shape as I used to be, nonetheless I’ve made that choice consciously. At the same time I still ensure that I generally live a healthy life and always reserve the right to invest back into my physique with the same energy I did a decade ago.

Mike Osipenko: What’s the one thing you would change about the book itself or the process of creating the book?

Kurt Lee Hurley: If I could change anything, it would probably be to remove a lot of the exclamation marks in the body text of the book. Looking at my past writing with my, now older/wiser, eye it feels amateur to have so many exclamation points there. However, I say that with a disclaimer: exclamation marks seem to be a recurring theme in my life. The title of my Billboard Hot 100 hit single had an exclamation point in it, and at that time I was very passionate about exclaiming in my writing, the passion I felt for what I was conveying.

If you look at the definition of exclamation marks, you’ll see that they were originally called notes of admiration and to this day are used to express excitement, enthusiasm, surprise and wonder. So while the intellect in me says I would want to remove those exclamations, the young man in me (who is passionate and excited about my progression) says, leave it as is. I’m okay with it.

Mike Osipenko: Over the course of your marketing career you’ve had tremendous success in helping to grow many marketing driven organizations like Restoration 1, Bluefrog Plumbing + Drain and now AFC. What attracted you to the world of marketing and how does the role of a marketing leader differ from organization to organization?

Kurt Lee Hurley: The most consistent theme in my life has been marketing. I was always intrigued by messaging, communication, packaging, products. I loved brand name items as a kid. I grew up understanding the value of advertising and how it affected people. One of my absolute favorite quotes is by Regis McKenna, who is a marketing pioneer with successes at Intel, Apple and other widely recognized brands, which is that “Everything is marketing, and marketing is everything.” To me, everything you say, do or don’t do, it’s all marketing. I firmly stand behind that. I love solving problems that help connect people to things that make them happy and make companies money. To help companies experience growth and great return from their investment in marketing.

In terms of how the role of a marketer differs from organization to organization, I’ve found that every scenario I’ve encountered, even if the job description seemed the same, ultimately when you walk into a new environment, nothing is the same. Some of the verbiage or concepts are the same, but none of the actual work is ever the same twice anywhere.

Mike Osipenko: What are the common myths about the role of a CMO?

Kurt Lee Hurley: I think Hollywood helps create many of the myths about CMO’s that people have come to believe. But contrary to their depiction, it’s not martini’s and menthols, unlimited expense accounts or glamour. If you’re interested in becoming a marketing leader that isn’t what it’s about. It’s about connecting with the mission of your brand and creating a vision that others can rally behind (both inside and outside of your organization).

Mike Osipenko: What do you find to be your greatest source of inspiration and creativity?

Kurt Lee Hurley: Ultimately, it’s thirst for knowledge and desire to accomplish something bigger than myself. Like most everything else, marketing can be fun and it can also be very stressful so finding ways to inspire oneself is very important. One key thing to realize is that it’s more about the journey and less about the destination. So I don’t expect the destination to inspire my next move, I tend to focus on enjoying the journey which continuously inspires me beyond some end goal.

With that said, my kids are my true inspiration for anything I do. They inspire me to be a role model for them. Recognizing that my legacy will have limited staying power, the only real aspect of any legacy is our off-spring and the contributions they will make to our world.

From a creativity standpoint, I realized this from an early age that, I’m simply a vessel and vehicle for certain elements of creativity and that’s something that was given to me by something bigger than me. Furthermore, the same sources that serve as a basis for my inspiration also stimulate creativity.

Mike Osipenko: There’s lots of excitement in communities all over the country as urgent care clinics (like AFC) continue geographic and service expansion which provide for greater access for patients. Such rapid growth tends to not be without some growing pains that comes along with the process. What are some of those challenges and how is AFC taking them on?

Kurt Lee Hurley: Like most organizations, AFC has its fair share of challenges. While the urgent care category has been around for a long time it has really exploded over the last decade or so. With such rapid growth, in any category, balancing geographical and service/product option expansion with the high level of service our patients have come to expect from us is a huge focus for us.

We are an urgent care as well as a primary care provider, and as a brick and mortar entity, making all the services accessible to more people in need is a challenge. Building long term relationships in a “need based” service environment is also a challenge. Supporting 65+ of our corporate locations while at the same time building out and supporting hundreds of our franchise operations is an ongoing challenge as well. All the while, as a business we’re trying to manage the bombardment of entities that contribute to our success and entities that take away from it.

What I will say, in terms of the key element of conquering these and other challenges, is having incredible leadership and supporting teams of varied individuals from all walks of life who dedicate themselves to live out our mission helps tremendously to ease the perpetuating change that occurs in this sphere.

Mike Osipenko: AFC’s stated mission is to provide the best healthcare possible, in a kind and caring environment, while respecting the rights of all patients, in an economical manner, at times and locations convenient to the patient. How does this translate into your marketing approach and efforts?

Kurt Lee Hurley:  From a marketing standpoint, our goal is to holistically support and grow all the different pieces of the business. We support franchise development as well as consumer facing communications and interactions. While at the same time perpetuating championing and defending the brand, its marks, its logo, its representation in the marketplace and the category as a whole. This comprehensive approach enables AFC to continue growing while confidently carrying out its mission.

Mike Osipenko: Finally, as a voracious reader and consumer of knowledge, what are your top 3 books that you would recommend to everyone and why?

Kurt Lee Hurley: The first book I would recommend is Good to Great by James C. Collins. I find that if there’s any book that will change the life of anyone in business or anyone who’s an entrepreneur, it is this book.

Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin, is another favorite of mine. It does an amazing job of taking concepts that work in battle under extreme pressure and applies these principals in pursuit of yourself and business success.

Traction by Gino Wickman would be my 3rd favorite. It’s essentially a blueprint for running an effective business. It has spun this concept called the Entrepreneurial Operating System or EOS, which is being applied to over 100,000 businesses today because of this book. It is a turnkey system to effective management of your operations within the context of the business setting. Without it there are no best practices and not having best practices in an organization makes no sense to me whatsoever.