Welcome to The Main Thing Podcast! Each episode we bring you a concise, high impact wisdom lesson from one of the wisest people I know. Studying their wisdom and learning together, we all get just a little bit better at this thing called life.
The Coffield Effect: Visionary Insights and Meaningful Relationships
Join us on The Main Thing Podcast as we share the extraordinary wisdom of super connector Bob Coffield, celebrated for his innovative thinking and extensive network. Bob is an early adopter of technology and a cultural trend spotter, whose gifts often align in the connection of ideas and people.
Host Skip Lineberg highlights Bob’s ability to see possibilities and connect the dots. During this dynamic wisdom conversation, you will get valuable input on several important aspects of personal growth, including:
- Vital importance of relationships;
- Value of sharing big ideas, rather than protecting or hoarding them;
- Continuous learning mindset; and
- Enduring influence of mentors.
Discover the “Coffield Effect” and its associated term “Coffieldesque,” which illustrate Bob’s knack for creating unexpected yet delightful connections.
Connects the dots with us, as we explore Bob’s curiosity and his role as a super connector, encapsulating his unique impact on those around him. As always, you will discover the main thing our wise guest has learned in his lifetime so far.
More About Special Guest Bob Coffield
Bob Coffield, a partner at Nelson Mullins, is a seasoned health care and business lawyer with a national practice.
Bob’s client base includes health systems, hospitals, physician groups, health technology companies, and other national and regional health care provider.
Outside the office, Bob enjoys running, music, travel and history.
He is a father of two. Bob and his wife Susanne reside in Charleston, West Virginia.
Settle in and get ready for a big dose of wisdom and encouragement. Over the next 19 minutes, you will discover why Bob Coffield is one of the wisest people we know.
Resources
Connect with Bob on LinkedIn or Twitter
Explore Bob’s hobby: parkrun
Our podcast website for additional wisdom resources
Credits
Editor + Technical Advisor Bob Hotchkiss
Brand + Strategy Advisor Andy Malinoski
PR + Partnerships Advisor Rachel Bell
Marketing, Social Media and Graphic Design Chloe Lineberg
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Episode Chapters
[0:03:30] – Exploring The Coffield Effect and Coffieldesque
[0:06:50] – How Skip and Bob are connected
[0:07:53] – Bob’s career path; specializing in healthcare and technology
[0:11:20] – Bob reveals his Main Thing wisdom lesson
[0:11:50] – The Ace Hayward story; impact of a mentor
[0:14:45] – Quote from The Soccer Poet
[0:15:34] – Treasuring the importance of others who’ve impacted our lives
[0:16:00] – Bob’s reluctance to appear; the giving and receiving of wisdom
[0:17:00] – A daughter’s perspective on wisdom
[0:18:00] – Why humans ought to slow down a bit
Keywords
Healthcare, Business, Lawyer, Relationships, Innovative Thinking, Connections, Potential, Curiosity, Mentorship, Superconnector, Joy, Wisdom, Positivity, Attitude, Legacy, Soccer, Cancer, Appreciation, Happiness, Learning, Influence, Mentors, Inspiring, Inspiration, Smile, Meaningful, Present, Presence, Cherish, Slowing, Pace, Wisdom, Connecting, Enriching, West Virginia, Bethany, Capitol Street, Wetzel, New Martinsville, Physician, Doctor, Buzznugget
Full Transcript of Episode
0:00:00 – Announcer
Wisdom. It’s an incredibly valuable asset, some would say more precious than gold. It’s attractive, appealing, admirable. Conversely, a lack of wisdom is the basis of immaturity, blind spots and bad decisions. Wisdom, it can be gained over time, but it can’t be rushed. But wisdom can be shared. That’s precisely what we are here to do right now. Today. We are here to hack wisdom, to distill it, to understand it and to process it. Why? To get better at life.
Welcome to the Main Thing. This is your new nine-minute podcast. I’m your host, Skip Lineberg, and I’ve set out to interview the wisest people I know. We’ll see what we can learn from each one when they’re faced with an incredibly difficult, soul-piercing question.
0:00:59 – Skip Lineberg
Welcome to the Main Thing Podcast. If it’s your first time here, I’m Skip Lineberg and I’ll be your host today. A big, warm hello, so glad you’re here with us!
Each episode, we bring you a concise, high-impact wisdom lesson from one of the wisest people I know. Studying their wisdom and learning together. We all get just a little bit better at this thing called life.
Today, you’ll hear from my good friend, healthcare and business lawyer, Bob Coffield. Ever had someone turn you down then change their mind? That’s what happened with Bob. He initially declined my invitation to be a guest on this show. Then, very recently, after about two years had gone by, he said yes, saying yes. I think there’s a lesson there, but that’s a story for another day, or perhaps for a newsletter.
Bob Coffield is a creative thinker, an innovator and a super connector. He has the gift of seeing what’s possible and connecting the dots. I learn things from my friend, Bob Coffield, and you will too.
Listening to our wisdom conversation today. You’ll come away with powerful insights regarding the importance of relationships, why big ideas are meant to be shared, not hoarded or guarded, why it’s vital to continue to learn, and you’ll learn about the lasting impact of a mentor on one’s life.
Before I bring Bob on mic with us, I want to encourage you to head over to our website: http://themainthingpodcast.com. Once there, you’ll be able to access the many wisdom resources we bring you to help you grow and increase in wisdom. This includes our twice-monthly Wisdom Newsletter, plus much, much more.
More about our wise guest
Bob Coffield is a partner at Nelson Mullins. He’s a seasoned healthcare and business lawyer with a national practice. Bob’s client base includes health systems, hospitals, physician groups, health technology companies and other national and regional healthcare providers. Outside the office, Bob enjoys running, especially parkrun, music, especially live music, as well as travel, food and history. He’s the father of two. Bob and his wife, Suzanne, reside in Charleston, West Virginia,
Now settle in and get ready for a big dose of wisdom and a big, heaping helping of encouragement. Over the next several minutes, you will discover why Bob Coffield is one of the wisest people I know.
0:03:47 – Skip
Bob Coffield, welcome to The Main Thing Podcast.
0:03:49 – Bob Coffield
Thank you very much, Skip.
0:03:51 – Skip
Bob, we’ve been friends for a long time. I really appreciate you as a friend because you’re so curious about the world and also so connected.
And in fact, there’s this thing called “The Coffield Effect,” that our mutual friend Andy Malinoski coined the phrase.
Here’s the definition of the Coffield effect a property of life by which all things and people in the universe are linked in a manner that can lead to an unpredictable and unexpected, yet pleasantly surprising, connection across demographic, geographic and time continuums. And it all links back to you most of the time.
0:04:33- Bob Coffield
The world’s a small place.
0:04:34 – Skip
I took that, and I made an adjective. “Coffieldesque” is the joyful feeling one has during the epiphany, felt while experiencing “The Coffield Effect.” So I had a “Coffieldesque” moment.
Let me give you a couple examples. See if you remember these. Okay, so first, I get a Twitter. You either tag me or direct message me on Twitter, sent me a Spotify link, and you say, “Here, Skip, check this out. This guy’s building this amazing playlist, and it’s being crowdsourced. But the songs that people are putting in are just all the good songs that you want to hear.” And so it turned out to be like the world’s greatest playlist. It was totally crowdsourced and you, you turned me on to that.
0:05:22 – Bob
Cool.
0:05:23 – Skip
And so from Andy Malinoski, who’s a frequent guest on the show. He shares this “Coffieldesque” moment. He’s working at Frontier. He gets a call from you. You’re at a cemetery in New Martinsville. And who knew … but by law, all cemeteries have to have one phone line, at least one phone line. So Andy’s working for the phone company. You call Andy, and all of a sudden we’re working on getting the phone line fixed or repaired to the cemetery in New Martinsville.
0:05:57 – Bob Coffield
Switched over, was the question … connection!
0:06:01 – Skip
There we go, there we go. So from that it all, it all ties back to The Coffield Effect. You know I’m I’m playfully poking at that a little bit, but that’s one of the things that we love about you—is that you have all of this, all these connections, and your curious approach to the world. You like to share things.
0:06:24 – Bob Coffield
Yeah, curiosity, I think, is something that drives me all the time, with both people and things, and you know, it connects us all together and I find that I find comfort in that when I’m meeting people, when I’m trying to introduce people, yeah, making those connections to feel people you know are closer to each other.
0:06:44 – Skip
I love it. That’s neat.
0:06:50 – Skip
So, as I said, we’ve been friends for decades. I remember … you can chime in … and we’ll help tell this story together. But right behind us, where we’re recording in the Kanawha County Public Library in a gorgeous space, one block behind us, is Capitol Street. I started working on Capitol Street circa 2001. Maple Creative was on Capitol Street. So was the Flaherty Law Firm.
0:07:15 – Bob Coffield
I started there in 2001.
0:07:17 – Skip
Okay, so we would see each other on Capitol Street, and it was such a fun place to work back then, don’t you think?
0:07:25 – Bob Coffield
Yeah, and I think you know you ask when did we first meet? You know, I started to think about that and I thought I think it’s because you were doing some branding for lawyers and law firms. Yeah, and through Maple Creative. And that’s probably the first connection that you and I made together.
0:07:40 – Skip
Yeah yeah, Flaherty was looking for some some help on some branding and we eventually did some work for you guys. Yeah,
0:07:53 – Skip
Bob, let’s help our audience understand your day job, what you do by day. You are a very respected and experienced healthcare attorney. Tell us a little bit about your practice.
0:08:06 – Bob Coffield
Yeah, I came out and started practicing. I’ve been practicing for 30 years, started in the early 90s really as a business and transactional lawyer, so doing a lot of deal work, those sorts of things.
I actually worked a lot in the coal, oil and gas area in the first six or seven years. Then started to pick up some health care oriented matters and that really grew.
I went to the West Virginia Health Care Authority and went in-house as a counsel for a couple of years, got more experience there and then rolled out and really a large component of my practice from 2000 on has been health care, what I call regulation, you know, regulatory lawyer, transactional lawyer and technology lawyer.
So my practice largely centers around that and that’s representing a variety of health care providers over the years. I recently made a change. I had practice here in Charleston with a local firm, Flaherty Sensabaugh and Bonasso, and recently, earlier this year, have moved to Nelson Mullins, which is a large AM100 law firm with offices throughout the US. And so I’m connected with that group and continuing to do that work, both here in Charleston, kind of remotely, with serving some time in the Raleigh North Carolina office along with the Huntington West Virginia office of Nelson Mullins.
I got into health care, you know, really, as a result one, both my dad and uncle were physicians, old country doctors from Wetzel County, the New Martinsville area. Actually, my grandfather, who was also a physician from the turn of the century, early 1900s up to 1936, he actually rode his horse and we have his medical bags, that hung over the top of the horse.
So I come to healthcare with that background, and I found that interesting. And honestly, the driver—I remember a time, probably late 90’s, as I was doing transactional work, I went to something related to health care.
0:10:18 – Announcer
One nine two. 192 extra minutes of wisdom that’s what you get when you become a patron of the Main Thing podcast. Many of you continue to say we want to hear more from these wise guests. That’s precisely what patrons of our podcast get Exclusive access to bonus episodes. Called the whole thing. These 30 minute special shows bring you a deeper dive into our guests wisdom less editing, more laughter, less time limits, more stories.
Unlock those 192 extra minutes of wisdom for yourself for as little as $9 per month through the Patreon platform. And when you become a patron, you also get access to wisdom essays, behind the scenes glimpses and access to special patron only wisdom gatherings. Head over to patreon.com/themainthingpodcast
Go. Unlock your 192 extra minutes of wisdom.
0:11:20 – Skip
Bob, that brings us to the pivotal moment in our show where I’m going to ask you the question that I’ve asked each and every wise guest that’s sat across from me with the microphone. Bob Coffield, what’s the main thing you’ve learned in your lifetime so far?
0:11:35 – Bob Coffield
Skip, the main thing I’ve learned in my lifetime so far is to smile deep.
0:11:45 – Skip
Ooh smile deep. That’s intriguing, Bob, would you unpack that for us and take us inside the meaning of that phrase?
0:11:50 – Bob Coffield
It’s a phrase that’s from a college friend, paul Ace Hayward, who went to Bethany College with me. He was older than I was. And so he coined the term, and he gave this gift of a phrase to me and to multiple other people. You know a simple bit of wisdom and you know what the meaning of it is is really. You know what you receive, and it was one of many phrases that he had. He played soccer at Bethany College. He’s originally from Canada, came there and was a great soccer player, division III. Those were the early days of Bethany College’s kind of soccer rise.
0:12:32 – Skip
Was he faculty or a classmate?
0:12:33 – Bob Coffield
No, so he was two years older than I was. But he then stuck around because he became a graduate assistant. So he was around and knew him through that process. He went on to coach NCAA soccer, continue in that course, ultimately moved to Anna Maria Island down in Florida and continued to coach down there, was a community member but was diagnosed with cancer
0:13:02 – Skip
Recently or back then?
0:13:04 – Bob Coffield
This was back then, and so this ties back into kind of the social media piece too.
You know he went through a struggle with cancer. This is someone who had more zeal for life than anyone. And to watch the outpouring of love for this person, and yet maintain such a positive attitude through that process. We’ve seen people you know we’ve followed family members or others that we’ve known to do that. But his orbit of people that he had connected with just overwhelmed me. And that was the time. So this would have been 2015 or so is when that he passed away in 2015. So it would have been prior to that,
But you know that for me, that time period was such a busy time in my life. You know we had kids growing up. I had a vibrant trying to grow my law practice trying to be a good husband, trying to be a good community member.
Yet this allowed me to kind of step back and use that, and so that phrase has always stuck with me, and I’ve continued to use it going forward.
I pulled a quote from a close friend of his who’s another fellow Bethany graduate and soccer player, a guy by the name of Dan Blank, who has coached Division One and is also an author and goes by the name the Soccer Poet. But you know, at one point he wrote that what it means to smile deep was the phrase that he described, and the way he described it was: His entire existence was predicated on the solitary principle of making other people happier than then, than they were 10 seconds ago. That was Paul’s life, that was Ace’s life.
0:14:58 – Skip
Yeah.
0:14:59 – Bob Coffield
Anyone who has the nickname Ace. I mean, come on!
So I have used that phrase going forward one, just as a way, when I’m leaving, someone’ll say, huh what? What did you say? And you know what’s that mean, what’s it mean to you. And so, it’s just a phrase that stuck with me.
0:15:26 – Skip
I love it. It makes me think about seeing and embracing the joy that’s around us, that we might otherwise hurry past or overlook or miss.
0:15:34 – Bob Coffield
Yeah. Just to take time. Take a pause instead of saying goodbye, which seems such a you know time … smile deep. It’s almost a protective word to people. I’ll use it at the end of an email, sometimes with friends or with others. And it’s also a way for me to kind of continue to remember him and others who you know have been important in our lives.
You know that I’ve been anxious about appearing on the main thing, and part of that was centered around: what wisdom do I have?
And I, you know, I started to think about wisdom. Oftentimes we don’t even know when we share wisdom Right, and so it’s wisdom is something received, maybe not given, and I think we all need to remember that. That we all share wisdom, even if we don’t know it. I don’t know if Ace really knew he was sharing wisdom, but he was.
0:16:30 – Skip
Yeah, yeah, that’s cool.
0:16:35 – Skip
This illustration “Smile Deep,” your Main Thing is, in fact, a great example of wisdom, and the kind of wisdom that delights me and our audience and should be shared.
0:16:47 – Bob Coffield
Yeah, and I would ask people to use it. You know, part part of the reason why I think I wanted to share it was so that others will continue to use that and maybe pick it up as a phrase to do it.
You know, and it came. I was talking with my family at home and my daughter, Rachel. You know I was saying, “Hey, I’m going to do this podcast and hey, by the way, what kind of wisdom have I given you guys?”
You know, of course it’s silent in the room, but Rachel said, you know, this was back to the time when she was just starting, probably late middle school, starting at Charleston Catholic, maybe as a freshman. She said, you know, you would … when I’d get out of the car in the morning, you’d say smile deep and she goes, “What’s that mean?” And you know we had a lot of conversations back then about it, but I’ve got to give Rachel a little credit as part of my team to to bring that back around.
0:17:42 – Skip
Nice Bob. How can a listener take your Main Thing, smile deep, and go out tomorrow and apply it to their own life?
0:17:51 – Bob Coffield
They can use it OK. They can say to somebody today and tomorrow, “Smile deep.” And see how you know, see how people react to that and have a conversation around it. And ask them what do you think that means? And that may lead to some other curious conversations. You know, again, I think it’s back to the point. Maybe it’s a cue for ourselves to remain present with people. The world is moving so fast these days. The pace…
0:18:22 – Skip
Take a moment, slow down.
0:18:24 – Bob Coffield
That’s right, as humans I don’t think genetically we have caught up with the pace of change that’s been occurring really over the last 50 years, maybe 100 years, and so I think anything that we can do to slow down that process and take a moment with people is important.
0:18:47 – Skip
Bob, a fascinating conversation. I love your main thing: Smile, deep. I’ve loved sharing all of our memories and our connections. As we wrap up here, I just want to give you a moment of open mic time.
0:19:00 – Bob Coffield
Wisdom is something that we all share. It’s a valuable tool that connects us and gives us purpose. Be open to receiving wisdom. Think about wisdom. And so again back to the receiving side. I think it’s important for us to take nuggets from different people, and be able to share that with each other and pass it along.
0:19:26 – Skip
Bob, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your wisdom. This has been just so enjoyable. Thank you so much. And so long for now.
0:19:36 – Bob Coffield
Thank you
0:19:40 – Announcer
Wow – that goes by incredibly fast, doesn’t it! Time flies when you’re hacking wisdom. I hope you’re left wanting more. Sync up with us again next time on The Main Thing for nine more minutes of wisdom.
Transcribed by https://podium.page
