Haiti - where SYSTEMFLOW began
Roger didn't have an effort problem. He had a system problem.
The origin story of systemflow
"The fish didn't change.
The fishermen didn't change.
The system changed."
Dr. Kerry Reeves
Some founders begin their journey in a boardroom.
Some in a classroom.
Some in a high-rise office surrounded by investors and whiteboards.
Mine began in a little leaky wooden boat off the coast of Haiti.
I was living there when I met a fisherman named Roger.
One morning before sunrise, I climbed into his boat. A few inches of water sloshed around our feet. His fishing gear consisted mostly of old Clorox jugs wrapped with fishing line, hooks, and bait fish he'd caught the night before.
We paddled nearly an hour, set the lines, and waited.
Nothing.
On the way back, I started removing the dead bait fish from the hooks and throwing them overboard.
Roger stopped me.
He took each fish and carefully made a pile beside him.
I assumed we'd use them for cut bait later, so eventually I asked what he was saving them for.
He said:
"Since we didn't catch any fish today, this is dinner for my children."
I've never forgotten that sentence.
The next morning, we went back out.
Same fisherman. Same leaky boat. Same Clorox jugs.
But this time, one disappeared beneath the water.
Roger grabbed the line with his bare hands.
Eventually, a roughly seven-foot sailfish exploded from the water, and somehow we wrestled it into that little boat.
I remember thinking, This changes everything.
Yesterday his children were eating leftover bait.
Today he'd caught a fish almost as long as his boat.
Except it didn't change everything.
Roger could catch fish.
What he couldn't do was reliably preserve, transport, and sell them.
There was no refrigeration. No dependable transportation. No established market.
By the time he found buyers, he sold part of the sailfish.
The rest spoiled.
And something clicked for me:
Roger didn't have an effort problem. He had a system problem.
This man was paddling into the Caribbean before sunrise in a leaking boat.
Telling him to "work harder" would have been absurd.
That experience changed the way I saw poverty.
Then business.
Then healthcare.
I started noticing systems everywhere—systems that make good outcomes easier and systems that make them nearly impossible, regardless of how motivated the person is.
Years later, that thinking became SYSTEMFLOW.
And it eventually helped lead me to build EyeCoin, where we're trying to redesign the systems around patient engagement and follow-through.
Roger never taught me a business framework.
He taught me something much more important:
Before you blame the person, look at the system surrounding them.
Because eventually, the system wins.
What it became
The same pattern Was Everywhere.
Years later, I began seeing it again and again - in clinics, in businesses, in healthcare. Capable people producing poor outcomes because the system around them was working against them, not because they weren't trying hard enough. That thinking eventually became SYSTEMFLOW.
Before you blame the person, look at the system surrounding them.
Because eventually, the system wins.