Our Featured Guests for September 21, 2026 are Matt Seefeld and Kevin McCarthy
Healthcare AI, Leadership Blind Spots, and the Entrepreneurial Lessons Hidden in Failure
What happens when healthcare technology meets artificial intelligence—and what happens when entrepreneurs discover that their biggest obstacles may be the things they cannot see?
On this episode of Passage to Profit – Road to Entrepreneurship, hosts Richard Gearhart and Elizabeth Gearhart speak with two entrepreneurs whose very different experiences reveal important lessons about innovation, leadership, technology, resilience, and business growth: Matt Seefeld, President of MedEvolve, and Kevin McCarthy, founder of Blind Spots Leadership Development, author, and Certified Speaking Professional.
Matt Seefeld, President of MedEvolve
MedEvolve: medevolve.com
Matt Seefeld is the President of MedEvolve, a healthcare technology company focused on revenue cycle technology and helping healthcare organizations improve the processes involved in getting claims paid. His entrepreneurial journey began in software and consulting, including work with major consulting firms, before he launched his own software company. He later joined MedEvolve and helped transform the business from a traditional revenue-cycle company into a software-driven SaaS business serving a broader healthcare market.
In this conversation, Seefeld takes listeners inside the complicated economics of the American healthcare system, explaining how healthcare providers, patients, and insurance companies can have competing incentives and why administrative costs and unpaid or delayed claims can put significant pressure on healthcare organizations.
He explains how MedEvolve measures the human effort involved in moving a healthcare claim from scheduling through billing and ultimately to a zero balance. The company’s technology uses data and generative AI to identify patterns and help determine whether problems originate with people, processes, technology, or payers.
Seefeld also discusses the importance of proprietary and curated data in artificial intelligence. He argues that AI systems are only as useful as the data they can access and describes how MedEvolve has developed its own data asset to help identify patterns in healthcare revenue-cycle management. He also discusses the risks of automation when AI systems make errors without learning from the right data.
For entrepreneurs, Seefeld shares a broader lesson: businesses do not necessarily have to invent something that has never existed. He describes how entrepreneurs can identify an existing market, recognize something that could be done better, and build a differentiated business around solving that problem.
Kevin McCarthy, Founder of Blind Spots Leadership Development
Blind Spots Leadership Development: blindspots.com
Blind Spots Assessments: blindspotassessments.com
Kevin McCarthy is the founder of Blind Spots Leadership Development, an author, and a Certified Speaking Professional who helps leaders and organizations identify blind spots, understand how their behavior is perceived by others, and develop stronger leadership skills. His work grew out of his experience as a serial entrepreneur, professional speaker, and technology entrepreneur.
McCarthy explains why identifying a blind spot is only the beginning. He emphasizes that everyone has blind spots and that people need to be willing to acknowledge them and take action before meaningful change can occur.
One of the tools he developed is the Blind Spot Assessment, designed to give participants rapid insight into their behavioral tendencies and potential blind spots. McCarthy explains that the assessment uses approximately 17 questions and can be completed in less than three minutes, making it practical for use with large audiences and leadership teams.
The conversation explores how different personality and behavioral styles can create a perception gap between how leaders see themselves and how other people experience them. McCarthy explains how a highly results-oriented leader, for example, can unintentionally be perceived as insensitive by someone who places greater emphasis on teamwork and harmony.
McCarthy also discusses a common leadership challenge: promoting excellent individual contributors into management positions without adequately preparing them for the human side of leadership. Someone can be highly effective at performing a job while still needing to develop the communication, interpersonal, and leadership skills required to manage a team.
An Entrepreneurial Journey With an Unexpected Turn
One of the most striking portions of the episode comes when McCarthy describes a devastating chapter of his entrepreneurial journey. He explains that after building businesses and achieving significant professional success, he became involved with a healthcare company whose CEO was later revealed to have committed stock fraud. McCarthy says he spent 33 months in federal prison after becoming involved in the scheme and describes himself as an unwitting participant who failed to recognize important warning signs at the time.
Rather than treating the experience simply as a business failure, McCarthy says it led him to examine his own decision-making and study cognitive psychology. He discusses how rationalization, incentives, assumptions, and overlooked warning signs can influence decisions—and how those experiences ultimately contributed to his work helping other people recognize their own blind spots.
Artificial Intelligence, Data, and Human Judgment
The episode also turns to artificial intelligence and intellectual property, including questions about whether increasingly sophisticated AI behavior could change how people think about human control, creativity, and copyright.
The guests discuss AI’s potential to automate processes, identify patterns, and increase efficiency, while also considering its limitations. Seefeld emphasizes the importance of high-quality data, while McCarthy describes AI as ultimately deriving from the information and systems humans create.
The conversation provides a broader entrepreneurial lesson about technology: automation does not eliminate the need for human judgment. The quality of the underlying data, the design of the process, and the willingness of people to change their behavior can all affect whether a new technology actually produces better results.
The Entrepreneurial Mind: Attitude, Curiosity, and Change
The episode closes with a discussion of the mindset behind entrepreneurship and leadership.
Seefeld describes his entrepreneurial secret as attitude, emphasizing the distinction between controlling actions and trying to control outcomes. McCarthy connects his own experiences to the importance of recognizing that personal stories, mistakes, and blind spots can become sources of insight.
The two guests also discuss curiosity as an important entrepreneurial and leadership skill. Instead of assuming that the first explanation is correct, entrepreneurs and leaders can ask more questions, investigate what is actually happening, and remain willing to change their behavior when the evidence calls for it.
From healthcare AI and revenue-cycle management to leadership development, cognitive blind spots, entrepreneurial failure, and personal resilience, this episode explores what can happen when entrepreneurs question conventional thinking—and when they are willing to look more closely at the problems hiding in plain sight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Matt Seefeld?
Matt Seefeld is the President of MedEvolve, a healthcare technology company focused on revenue cycle technology and improving the processes healthcare organizations use to manage and collect payments.
What does MedEvolve do?
MedEvolve provides technology designed to help healthcare organizations analyze and improve their revenue cycle. Its technology measures activity involved in processing claims and uses data and generative AI to identify patterns and potential problems.
How is artificial intelligence being used in healthcare revenue cycle management?
According to Seefeld, AI can analyze structured data, identify correlations and patterns, and help healthcare organizations determine where problems are occurring in revenue-cycle processes. The episode also discusses why the quality and specificity of the underlying data matters.
Why is data important to artificial intelligence?
The discussion emphasizes that AI systems depend heavily on the data available to them. Seefeld explains how MedEvolve has developed a proprietary data asset that can help identify patterns in healthcare revenue-cycle operations.
Who is Kevin McCarthy?
Kevin McCarthy is the founder of Blind Spots Leadership Development, an author, and Certified Speaking Professional who works with leaders and organizations on blind spots, leadership development, behavioral differences, and team communication.
What are leadership blind spots?
Leadership blind spots are behaviors, assumptions, or tendencies that a person may not recognize in themselves but that can be apparent to other people. McCarthy discusses how these gaps between self-perception and how others perceive us can affect leadership and teamwork.
What is the Blind Spot Assessment?
The Blind Spot Assessment is a tool developed by Kevin McCarthy to provide participants with rapid insight into their behavioral tendencies and potential blind spots. McCarthy says the assessment uses approximately 17 questions and can be completed in less than three minutes.
Why can successful employees struggle after becoming managers?
The episode explores how organizations sometimes promote strong individual contributors into management because they excel at their technical or professional responsibilities. However, managing people requires additional skills involving communication, relationships, leadership, and understanding how others respond to a leader’s behavior.
What happened to Kevin McCarthy during his entrepreneurial career?
McCarthy describes spending 33 months in federal prison after becoming involved with a healthcare company whose CEO was conducting a stock-fraud scheme. McCarthy says the experience caused him to examine the decision-making process that led him to overlook warning signs and ultimately influenced his later work on blind spots and cognitive psychology.
What entrepreneurial lessons does Kevin McCarthy share?
McCarthy discusses the importance of recognizing blind spots, remaining open to feedback, examining assumptions, and being willing to change behavior. His story also illustrates how difficult experiences can become part of an entrepreneur’s broader professional journey.
What does Matt Seefeld say about entrepreneurship?
Seefeld discusses the value of identifying problems that can be solved better rather than assuming entrepreneurs must invent something completely new. He also emphasizes client success, transparency, adaptability, curiosity, and being comfortable with the uncertainty and lack of structure that can accompany entrepreneurship.
What does the episode say about AI and human judgment?
The conversation presents AI as a powerful tool for automation and pattern recognition while emphasizing that AI remains dependent on human-created systems and data. The guests discuss both the efficiency opportunities and the risks of relying on automated systems that may make mistakes.
What is the main theme of this Passage to Profit episode?
The episode examines how entrepreneurs can identify opportunities, improve existing systems, recognize leadership blind spots, learn from failure, use artificial intelligence responsibly, and remain curious enough to challenge assumptions.