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Shay Eskew
Grit warrior, life builder, adversity embracer 🚴 50 IRONMAN finisher by 50🕴️Healthcare tech advisor 🌎 7 Continent Marathoner in 7 days 🎙 Best Selling Author + Motivational Speaker 💥 National Wrestling HOF 👉 5x Dad
Shay Eskew is a prominent figure in the healthcare consulting sector, currently serving at Kodiak Solutions. His role focuses on optimizing financial performance for healthcare organizations, where he leverages his extensive experience in revenue cycle management, financial reporting, and risk compliance. The Healthcare Consulting Team at Kodiak Solutions collaborates closely with various healthcare providers to enhance revenue realization and ensure compliance with regulatory standards.1
Beyond his professional expertise, Shay Eskew is also known for his inspiring personal journey. He has overcome significant adversity, including severe burns from a childhood accident that left him with lasting scars. Despite these challenges, he has become a celebrated motivational speaker and an accomplished athlete, completing over 50 IRONMAN triathlons and marathons across all seven continents.2 His educational background includes an MBA in Finance and a BS in Wildlife & Fisheries Science from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
In addition to his work at Kodiak Solutions, Shay is a bestselling author and has gained recognition as a keynote speaker at numerous events, sharing his message of resilience and determination with diverse audiences.3 His life story and achievements resonate with many, making him a sought-after figure in both the healthcare and motivational speaking arenas.45
Highlights
One thing I’ve enjoyed as I’ve gotten older is talking to my dad, aka “Slick Rick”. We talk almost every day. I love our little talks and I know he values me calling, even if it is just for 5 minutes. I usually call him when I’m running errands, taking kids to soccer practice or driving to meet a client. My dad was a big part of my life growing up. He taught me you’re never too busy to make time for your kids. Growing up he worked a lot, but somehow, he always made time for me and made me feel I could do anything in life.
Why Slick Rick? Well, when I was in college he drove a bright red El Camino with flames on the side. I wish I had a picture as words don’t do it justice. The entire car rattled idling, and boy was it fast. He drove it up to UT to help me move into the fraternity house and it was an attention getter.
I of course introduced my dad (Rick) to everyone and soon after the legend of Slick Rick was born. It also helps he wears his hair combed back and can usually be seen wearing his black Dale Earnhardt jacket. Dad is exactly what he appears.... a good ol’ boy raised on a farm who grew up loving God, family and cars.
The best was when my jeep broke down and I had to borrow the El Camino for a few weeks. We had a blast cruising around campus and revving the engine at every stop sign and red light. I can assure you no one on campus had a bright red El Camino. It however didn’t impact my dating scene, or lack thereof.
Today he was excited to tell me he was going to pick up his new engine for his 1940 Ford pickup. Dad spent his entire lunch break (and countless weekends) over 10 years building this truck. When he bought the truck, no two pieces were connected. He’s been driving this truck all over the country the past 20 years and carries a tool box to make repairs on the side of the road if needed (joys of old cars).
Take time to call your parents. You’d be surprised how 5 minutes could make their entire week... and yours. There will come a time when you will give anything just to hear your parents voice again!
Life has a funny way of coming full circle. March 1, 2020 I raced IRONMAN Bariloche 70.3 in Patagonia, Argentina and secured a slot to compete in the World Championships to be held in Taupo, New Zealand later that year. I was over the moon excited. I remember calling my wife on the phone at the finish line telling her “we did it.” I say we because she supports my craziness and I try to reward her support by qualifying for Worlds in these amazing destinations. Racecationing makes me feel like I earned the right to be at these amazing places (sad I know).
A week later the world came to a stop… that nasty five letter word took over. It was a wonder I survived the trip without my wife. The first day in Bariloche I lost my credit card and drivers license after being chased by a dog biking through town. I didn’t realize I had lost them until I went to pay for dinner. Shockingly, I missed my flight home souvenir shopping for my kids. By sheer miracle, I was able to hitch a ride with a stranger in the parking lot of the Buenos Aires domestic airport to get a ride to the international airport 30min away. On the flight home news outlets were breaking stories of the pandemic.
For 4 years I have dreamed of making it up to my wife and taking her to New Zealand. Over the past year, I had entered 2 races to qualify and came up short. I had suffered a stress fracture in my ankle 2 weeks before the first race and missed a slot by 3 minutes. Once I healed up, I raced 3 months later and missed a slot by 5 seconds. I was devasted but told myself to just focus on getting back in peak fitness and let the results play out. Six months later, after a winter of continuous training, I finally punched my ticket to Worlds at IRONMAN Chattanooga 70.3.
Life rewards those who continue pushing forward even when things are crashing around them. We are never guaranteed tomorrow or that things will work out. In my experience, things usually work out even better if we keep the faith and continue doing the hard work!!! Just three more months until the mission is fulfilled.
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.