Have you ever wondered how doctors do their own healthcare? Or how they talk to their friends about healthcare in their living room? Our guest today is David Berg, who shares with us how he saw a difference between how he and his wife did healthcare in their living room versus in their office. He shares his journey about how he decided to do something about it in our episode today.
TODAY’S WIN-WIN:
Starting with a different question can lead to finding different solutions.
LINKS FROM THE EPISODE:
- Schedule your free franchise consultation with Big Sky Franchise Team: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
- You can visit our guest’s website at: www.redirecthealth.com
- Attend our Franchise Sales Training Workshop:
- https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/franchisesalestraining/
- Connect with our guests on social:
- Da********@************th.com
- Get a copy of our guest’s book: CLICK HERE.
ABOUT OUR GUEST:
David Berg is the CEO and Co-Founder of Redirect Health a digital health platform that manages employers’ health plans and lowers costs. Finalist for 3 best-in-class awards at the World Health Care Congress in Washington, DC. Winner of the Phoenix Business Journal’s Health Care Innovator Award. Author of “Business Owner’s Guide to ENDING THE FIGHT WITH HEALTHCARE.”
ABOUT BIG SKY FRANCHISE TEAM:
This episode is powered by Big Sky Franchise Team. If you are ready to talk about franchising your business you can schedule your free, no-obligation, franchise consultation online at: https://bigskyfranchiseteam.com/.
The information provided in this podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, legal, or professional advice. Always consult with a qualified professional before making any business decisions. The views and opinions expressed by guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the host, Big Sky Franchise Team, or our affiliates. Additionally, this podcast may feature sponsors or advertisers, but any mention of products or services does not constitute an endorsement. Please do your own research before making any purchasing or business decisions.
TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] Tom DuFore: Welcome to the Multiply Your Success Podcast, where each week we help growth-minded entrepreneurs and franchise leaders take the next step in their expansion journey. I’m your host, Tom Dufour, CEO of Big Sky Franchise Team. As we open today, I’m wondering if you ever wondered how doctors do their own health care and if it might be different from what you do, or how do doctors talk to their friends about health care in their living room? Our guest today is David Berg, who shares with us how he saw a difference between how he and his wife did health care in their living room versus in their office.
He shares his journey about how he decided to do something about it in our episode today. Now, David is the CEO and co-founder of Redirect Health, a digital health platform that manages employers, health plans, and lowers costs. They’ve been a finalist for three Best-in-Class awards at the World Healthcare Congress in Washington, DC, and winner of the Phoenix Business Journal’s Healthcare Innovator Award, and he’s the author of Business Owner’s Guide to Ending the Fight with Healthcare. You’re going to love this interview, so let’s go ahead and jump right into it.
[00:01:12] Dr. David Berg: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here. Thank you for having me, Tom. My wife’s a physician, also, and we moved from Toronto, Ontario in 1985 to Phoenix, and we had to figure it out as immigrants in the healthcare system. We did, took us about 10 years, and we figured out it’s pretty easy to make money here, but it was really hard. We also learned that there’s some huge differences between the United States and Canada. One of the biggest ones was although the United States has much superior health care than in Canada, access to it, and it’s so much better here.
Everybody in the world, if they’re wealthy enough, will want to come to America if they have a serious enough health condition. This is the best healthcare in the world. Let’s not like even debate that. That’s not saying Canada is terrible or bad. I’m just saying US is very, very good. That was obvious to us right away. Here’s what was also obvious to us. In Canada, with that less than American healthcare, there was incredible peace of mind that the populace had when they were healthy, that if they needed the system, it would be there for incredible peace of mind.
When I moved to the United States, it was so eye-opening at the lack of peace of mind that American citizens had for this great health care that they had. People were just afraid of it. They were afraid of the complexity, it seemed; they were afraid of the cost, the unknown cost, how many times will I have to miss work and bounce around the system? There was a lot of anxiety over it. I was never used to that as a Canadian, that level of anxiety for healthy people about if I have to, if I have to, if my daughter gets a fever, if my son breaks his arm, if my husband gets cancer, like just like the anxiety of around access affordability.
I saw that in 1995 when I moved here. It was weird, really weird. It became harder to tolerate when we were making really good money in a healthcare industry. We owned multi-specialty clinics all over Phoenix and surgery centers. We got really good at managing the insurance system and following the rules and understanding what the rules were. It was easy to make profits. It’s harder now, it was easier then in clinics. The thing I never could get close to was, how can I relieve that anxiety of my own hourly ordinary workers?
I couldn’t relieve it. I couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t make it affordable enough for me to subsidize. Even if I did oversubsidize it, they still had the anxiety. I recognize it being a uniquely American issue that we didn’t experience in Canada. It made it really hard for me to hire, let’s say, $14, $15 an hour employees. This is back in like 2005, 2006. I found that my best employees were going to work for larger companies. Honeywell, American Express, Discovery Card were down the road, and they had better benefits.
They had lower deductibles. They could afford more. They subsidized it more for the whole family. I’d lose my best employees. It just made sense for them to leave me. I had a problem in my company. I decided I’m going to solve this problem. I went at it for about nine months, 10 months, and I could not solve it. I could not solve it. Then I noticed something that was in front of me the whole time. I’m sure a lot of your listeners have experienced this too, where the answer is right there or the inspiration for the answer is right there in front of them.
What I noticed is that my family, my family, with two doctors, had incredible peace of mind around the US healthcare system. Incredible peace of mind. I also noticed that our neighbors who had access to us had incredible peace of mind. I also noticed that our families back in Canada, because they had access to us through a telephone, had incredible peace of mind because they had access to us. That was weird.
I started noticing that the things that we would recommend to our family and our friends and our neighbors and our neighbors’ moms and dads that lived in other states, how we would help them and create that peace of mind around access and affordability of healthcare was so different than if they had stepped in our clinic. That was a little strange for me. How is it that myself and my wife, if you came to visit us in our living room or over the telephone, while we’re sitting in our living room or our kitchen, we would recommend something that was so polar opposite than if you came into our clinic.
I know that sounds weird. The healthcare would be the same, but the focus would be different. For instance, if you came into our clinic, the focus is going to be on coverage, going to be on who’s your insurance, what are the authorization rules, what are the codes we have to use to get paid? How do we make sure that you stay a network and you don’t get a bill that makes you mad or bankrupts you? All the initial thinking was around coverage.
When you were in our living room or we’re talking to you from our living room, we didn’t think about that. All we thought about is what do you need? What do you need? What’s the care that’s needed, and how are we going to deliver it? What are the logistics of it? I saw the starting place for my living room being, what care do you need, and what are the logistics of getting it? Logistics meaning urgency, time, timing, today. Do you need it right now, or do you need it tomorrow, or do you need it next week, or can we wait till tomorrow and just go overnight so you feel better and see if you feel and make a new decision tomorrow?
Do you need an MRI? Do you need an X-ray? That’s that’s the logistics. You need imaging. We need to look at it. What level do you need? Do you need to go to the emergency room right now, or can we wait till tomorrow and go to a freestanding? What we learned in our own families and in our neighbors’ families, et cetera, regardless if they’re in a different country, is that the cost of health care, which was a big part of the robber of peace of mind here in America, but it was it was controlled by logistics.
The cost of how we deliver the care was more important than what care you needed. I mean, you need your appendix out. I get it. You need surgery, that’s the health care you need. Can you be driven to the hospital by your wife, or do you need to take an ambulance to the hospital? Two remarkably different costs. That’s logistics. Transportation is logistics. Do we need an air ambulance to land on your front lawn and take you to the helicopter pad at the hospital? That’s another level of logistics.
The cost of that appendix surgery has very little to do with the surgery, has a lot to do with the logistics. A lot to do with logistics. We saw that in our own families, too, with medications, where the cost of a medication in a capsule, 10 milligrams of Lisinopril in a retail pharmacy would be 200– call it $300 a month. That same medication in a tablet, not a capsule, logistics. Form of medication, same medication, just logistics, but in a grocery store pharmacy instead of a retail pharmacy, grocery store pharmacy. That’s a logistics, location.
The difference could be $280 a month or $2 a month, $3,400 a year or $24 a year. Tremendously different. If you’d solve for the logistics many times, almost most of the time– I don’t even know that. I haven’t measured it. If you get the logistics right, you can get the cost so low, it really doesn’t matter who’s going to pay for it. That’s what happens in our living room. You come to our clinics and every clinic in the country, we focus on who’s going to pay for it, who’s going to pay for it, what’s the coverage, what are the rules?
Then we figure out a lot of times logistics don’t matter because who’s going to pay for it? Party. They control logistics, so nobody is used to thinking about logistics. It struck me as when I started talking to other friends who are doctors or insiders– it could be the people who knew doctors. They’re an insider. My neighbor is an insider because they could call my wife– we all did it the same way. We all started with, what do you need, and what are the logistics? All of us would tell you that if you were in my office, I’d have to do something different.
I had to start with who’s going to pay for it. Then that meant removes the logistical considerations because the who’s going to pay for it decides, which then I removed the opportunity to get that, what you need down to close to free if possible. I noticed that was I was seeing that in my own family. How I solved it was I reproduced that for my business family. I never for a second thought that it would give me the advantages it did, but it immediately gave me a hiring advantage because I can now lower my healthcare costs in half, and I could now say free healthcare, my job ads.
Huge game changer for me. No longer could Honeywell or American Express or Discovery Card easily take my employees by having a better benefit level because I was saying free. They didn’t need to say free, but I was saying free to hold on to my employees, and then I could attract the best people. Because I’ve attracted a bunch of people who appreciated it, and our company mission of helping our employees have that peace of mind around access and affordable health care, now now we got we got at their hearts.
Not just at their wallets and their purses and the logical part of their brain, but we got at their hearts because we cared about them. We showed it by giving them that peace of mind and relieving that anxiety around what happens if my daughter has a fever, my son breaks his arm, my husband gets cancer. We we alleviated that anxiety best we could for healthy people. I get it. When you’re unhealthy, you’re going to be anxious. When you’re healthy, there’s no reason you should be anxious.
You should have incredible peace of mind when you’re healthy. You shouldn’t be afraid of the American healthcare system. We did that in our business. We found that we saved a lot of money, which meant we could provide free healthcare to everybody in our company. Very similar to the peace of mind that we wanted. Most people are healthy. We wanted that peace of mind in our business, like we experienced in Canada. Other people started noticing our employees were– we were getting thousands of applications for employees, thousands.
Even today, I would be shocked if we don’t get 20,000 a year of unsolicited applications to work at Redirect Health. People started noticing– we had some friends during the recession of 2009, ’10 who were getting in trouble with their businesses, like many. We started helping them alleviate this healthcare problem just by extending our– that’s this family. Like, “Let’s bring them into the family, let’s help them.” The system was evolving at this time. One of them was the mayor of Phoenix, Paul Johnson, and he had run the city of Phoenix, 14,000 employees.
He was very familiar with some of the legal structures and the complexity of it. Now he had a home building company, and his brother had a drywall company, so they still do. We helped them and it worked incredibly. Then Paul convinced me within about the next two years that, “Hey, this is so valuable. This should be a service offering, a product offering in your business.” Instead of that, we created a new business together. We were just going to do Arizona at first. It turned out that it was wildly successful.
Now since 2018, we’ve been in all 50 states. I’ll fast-track a bit. I know I made the story a little long. In 2021, we turned it into a platform so that others could start building their healthcare products on our platform and extend that concept of peace of mind through what do you need, and how you’re going to do it and access? That’s very similar to what a doctor would do in their living room. I know it could sound trite, but it’s so important to understand that what doctors do from their living room is so different than what they do, including me, in an office.
The system demands something out of our offices. The system that we’ve created for ourselves outside of our offices is tremendously different and has a lot more common sense and it’s a lot less costly. When I looked at my own family, I would assess that our family would see doctors about tenth as much as what we would recommend to people if they were in our office. A big reason would be if your dad saw me in my office, I would have to check the insurance. Say I wanted to send to a cardiologist, I would have to figure out the authorization rules.
I’d have to figure out who I could send them to, and then I’d have to send them there, and then it might take three months, and maybe they need some diagnostics I’ve got to manage when they get there. Then when they get there, I’m going to get consult notes, and now I got to sort it out as the primary care provider. If your dad came to my my living room, I’m not going to do any of that. If I think he needs a cardiologist, I’m going to call my buddy who’s a cardiologist and go, “Here’s what I’m dealing with.”
“What kind of diagnostic testing would you recommend? Here’s the medication this gentleman’s on. Does that make sense? Do you think he needs an appointment right now, or was there something we can try first, and then see how it works, and then we can make the appointment in three months, which is when your dad was going to get it anyway.” At least we can get started on it, and maybe he gets better and doesn’t need the appointment in three months.
You see the difference? All I did is I put that into a platform and surround it with data and technology, and licensing. It’s quite complex, the system we’ve created, but it’s solving that very, very simple problem of access and affordability and peace of mind that come with it for Americans that are ordinary wage earners and lots of times in small businesses and franchises.
[00:14:11] Tom: This problem just seems, from my experience in working with our clients and talking with thousands of small businesses over the many years of doing what I do, almost all of them have shared a similar struggle about benefits, health care. They want to be able to offer a solution to their staff and to their team members, but the ability for them either doesn’t exist because they’re too small, or it’s just too costly, and the quality of care that they’d be able to offer just isn’t that great of an option. I’d love for you to talk a little bit about how you have now taken that. You started going down this pathway with the platform and a solution for other small businesses and now working with franchisors to provide some solutions.
[00:14:58] David: You made a great point. We had a problem ourselves, and it happened to be the same problem every American business has, particularly small business. It’s not a new problem. We created a solution. Yes, we created a solution with original thinking, thinking that it wasn’t happening yet in the commercial sense. However, it was inspired by thinking that was just common sense that every doctor is already doing in their living room, as I said, or their kitchen, or on the phone.
The original thinking was turning it into a commercial thing, or to actually put it live for my own employees, extending my family, but then we turned it into a platform. The reason we did that was in end of 2020, if you remember, COVID was very uncertain. We were very worried about our customers. Our average-sized customer was probably around 10 employees. That was our average-sized customer. Really, we were doing a service for them, very similar to what I described.
We got to 2020, I’m thinking, and especially in the restaurant industry, we saw incredible pain for the business owners and a lot of our business owners. During COVID, you’ve experienced it. Everyone still remembers it as recent enough. I made this now as a new opportunity, my new problem. My employees or my customer, I wasn’t worried about them being able to stay in business and be able to buy our services.
I saw as an opportunity also to build on top of what we had already created, a platform, to change the mindset from we’re providing a service to let’s perform, let’s create a platform that we can build a health plan on so we can partner with an insurance company, partner with a cost share, partner with– We we’ve got two insurance companies and a cost share, so three risk pools carriers that have built plans on top of our platform. It makes them much less expensive and it makes our platform easier to get to people.
We also created a brokerage that allows us to create plans and collect premiums, and help other brokers through this new model. We created a third-party administration company on our platform, which allows us to hold fiduciary custodian claims account that our carrier partners would entrust with us, and then to pay doctors. It allows us to innovate on the payment of doctors. We understand, because we were doctors, we are doctors, we own clinics, how important speed and certainty of payment is in getting cooperation and getting that part out of the way for them so they can focus on what do you need and what are the logistics.
We do the logistics, they tell us what they need. That way, we can get the coverage piece that I mentioned in the initial problem out of the way. “Hey, let’s just prepay you. Let’s pay you tomorrow.” We created innovative systems with JPMorgan Chase to connect to the fiduciary accounts that nobody else has created. These are opportunities that we went with in original thinking that we went with because we’re stacking on top of things, successes we’ve already had.
The platform idea really was the thing that blew everything up for us. We also build a pharmacy on top of our platform, and a pharmacy benefit management company on top of our platform. Now we’ve built Reef Health, which is a franchise on top of our platform led by Matt Hale and Jesse Curry, who were instrumental in The Joint and Massage Envy’s success. I’m instrumental in it. These are people that are building a franchise to help other franchisees solve this healthcare problem on our platform.
I could have imagined it before as a service, like where the end was or how big it could be. Now, as a platform, I cannot imagine the end. I can’t imagine it. Every time I think I’m getting close to it, there’s a new level of or of value we can create, anxiety that we can relieve, or more certainty we can give with respect to everyday ordinary wage earner being able to confidently know that they can access and afford the best healthcare in the world.
If I were to summarize, is we had a problem we had to solve as immigrants to America. We solved it for ourselves, other people saw it, they wanted it. We helped them, and we’re the cool kids in the block for a long time when we were solving this problem for our friends’ company. I like being the cool kid. I’m not used to being the cool kid and the thing that I’m world-class at and getting my peer group to appreciate it. Then with the mayor of Phoenix, Paul Johnson, we decided we’re going to go be the heroes to entrepreneurs and small business owners all over Arizona.
That turned into all over the country. Then it turned into an ability to solve a business problem because of COVID by parlaying the successes we already had. Now it’s turned into um a platform that’s got others participating, other really smart, capable, mission driven people, whether it’s at an insurance company or at Reef, saying, “Let’s take this a little bit further.” It’s grown into something way beyond what my wife and I and Paul Johnson ever imagined when we started.
[00:19:59] Tom: You’re really creating. Creating this new thinking as you describe this. This is a bit of a disruption to kind of the status quo and how things are done. I’m sure over time, you would bump into a closed door or a wall along the way that you had to figure out, “How do we help folks kind of see this?” I just wonder, is there anything that comes to mind or an example or challenges you saw as you started to grow and go through that?
[00:20:27] David: Yes, let me start with this. The people in the existing healthcare system, by and large, are really good people. Really good hearts, but they’re in a bad system right now. It’s a complex system. There’s a lot of hidden costs. Time, money, attention. The attention suck is incredible. It’s a bad system. Let’s just start with it. I’m going to leave it at that. It’s a bad system. We have some really good people in a bad system. That shouldn’t surprise us that the experience of people using this bad system, regardless of how kind and good the people are, is not going to be a great experience.
What we’ve sought out to do was to create a different system. It’s reproduce the system that every doctor already has created because it’s such common sense for their own families and their extended families and from their own living rooms. Let’s extend that to them. It’s really about thinking like a system. We don’t want to use the existing healthcare system. We do want to use the components of it. We do want to use the great medications, the great technology, the great operating room, the great nurses, the great doctors in the system, but we don’t want to use the system.
We reject the system, but not the people and the components in it. We’ve created a system that can use those components. It’s really, really important that we have to be able with our platform to interact with the existing components of the ecosystem, not the system, but the components of it. That’s a nuance. A lot of people have told me I’m splitting hairs with that. I think it’s really important to making it work. I’ve had some arguments over that for sure, so I understand the abstractness of that.
Yes, there have been obstacles, many of them. Most of them are with trying to figure out how to use components of the system without actually using the system, particularly the billing part of the system, the perverse incentives that are around billing, and the perverse incentives that are around the logistics. Whoever controls logistics controls the flow of money. When the money stops, they also control where the money stops, and that’s called profit, usually. Where the money stops is called profit.
As it moves through, pieces get taken off, and that’s also somebody’s revenue and somebody’s profit. We are continually monitoring and managing the logistics of using the components in the system. When we have experienced the system head-on, it’s because we did not consider all the things that are there. We didn’t do a good enough job of not disrupting the system. When we disrupt the system, it pushes back. I see disruption in a different way. I’m not proud of disruption. It’s a necessary part of what we do, but we hit disruption.
I love collaboration. That is way more pleasing to work in a situation of collaboration than disruption, and especially for our customers. They do not want to be in a fight with the ecosystem. They want to be in a collaborative environment. That’s our job. When we hit disruption, to us, that is evidence that we’re not doing it as well as we can. We don’t see it as “Let’s create more disruption.” We see it as, “Hey, let’s tweak something, let’s apply some more original thinking, some experiential thinking.”
Kobe Bryant said it best. He said he loves tough defense. We love tough defense too. When the ecosystem of healthcare pushes back, we know we’re starting to disrupt something, some revenue flow or some profit, we know that’s tough defense, and that’ll help us get better. Just like Kobe said, “I love tough defense,” we love tough defense too. Our goal is not to disrupt, it is to learn how to collaborate. When we do that well, we are much more successful, and our customer gets less anxiety, less more peace of mind around accessing the great healthcare we have in America.
Our biggest sales objection is too good to be true. How on earth can you do it for that price and nobody else can? The answer always is it’s so obvious to me, but it’s not obvious to the outsiders. We couldn’t do it for our price either if we started with who’s going to pay for it. No, we start with what do you need and what are the logistics around it, and what’s the best way to lower the cost of the logistics and still get you the care you need? If anyone does that, which every doctor in their own living room already does that, the costs go down tremendously.
It’s only because we do that that we can– That’s the only way we can even answer the sales objection, too good to be true. The cost is too good to be true, is with that. Now, not everybody buys that, and we don’t have the opportunity to tell everybody that story or to give people that reason. My experience has been that when I do give people that reason, it’s usually, “Yes, but we don’t believe it’s possible to do it,” even though we’re doing it. It’s not easy to believe the execution.
[00:25:09] Tom: As you’ve grown over the last and expanded over the last 20 years now, where do you see this going?
[00:25:16] David: There’s an element of when you have success, and you’re building on top of the success, at some point you start wondering, “Am I getting greedy right now? Because now I want a little bit more.” 10 years ago, I couldn’t even imagine being at the level we’re at right now or creating the impact we’re creating right now. Then once I get there– I’m sure you’re the same. I hope everybody’s the same. I’m not the only one like this, but I get greedy. I want more of it.
I can tell you, I am addicted to this concept of peace of mind in people when they’re healthy, that they don’t have to be afraid if they aren’t healthy at some point. I also want to create more peace of mind in people who are not healthy or sick or going through the system, but that’s a hard one. It’s about people who are healthy, give them the peace of mind that if something happens, I’m going to be okay. Not that dissimilar to what Uber did when my kids were in college.
When I saw the Uber app, and I saw I could put my American Express on it, and my kids now had the capability of never having to get in a car if they were even wondering if a friend had been drinking or if it was safe to drive or to go out in the street by themselves– They always had this capability. I can’t even describe the peace of mind I had. Uber, I don’t know they ever intended that, that a dad with a college-age child would be able to put their credit card on there and for no cost.
Of course, there’s a cost of them to use it, but there’s no cost to have the Uber app with my credit card on it, to have that peace of mind. It was almost instant for me. As soon as my kids embraced it and they agreed, and it was my money, “Hey, please, don’t ever get in a car, don’t ever go outside, don’t ever go somewhere you think you feel a little unsafe.” Just me knowing they had that capability was incredible peace of mind. I’ve been thinking about that for a long time, long time.
I see a day where we’re not in front of tens of thousands or a couple hundreds of thousands of people. I see a day when we’re in front of tens of millions of people. Not that dissimilar to how GoodRx has created a free way to have incredible price transparency, or Uber app has created an incredible way to have transparent capability of what’s it cost to get from point A to point B. There’s a peace of mind to both of those companies that I’m inspired by that I can see we can do that for this problem with American healthcare.
[00:27:43] Tom: Speaking of being inspired, if someone is inspired or interested in learning more about Redirect Health, connecting with you, how can someone go about getting in contact here?
[00:27:55] David: We’ve created various products on our platform and they’re on our website, redirecthealth.com so you can learn about our products there. Probably, quite frankly, you’ll learn more about this podcast about what’s driving the platform inside the products here. You’re not going to see this on our website. Our website is for the products and our product partners. My email is david.berg, B-E-R-G, like iceberg, @redirecthealth.com. How would I be excited if people were involved?
Number one is the more people that care about this mission and are aware of this problem and understand that we don’t have to be anxious about accessing and affording the best healthcare in the world. Maybe we’re not because we’re an insider, because we know somebody who can practice medicine out of their living room or on a telephone, but most people aren’t. Most people with ordinary hourly workers, hourly wage earners, or normal wage earners, there’s a peace of mind for them too. Just understanding that, and that’s helpful to us is just mission-oriented people and talk about it.
That would be useful. If somebody wanted to put our plans in their business, yes, that’s a home run for us also. Really, I think that where this is going to take off, the masses are going to participate, is just by like just pushing back on this idea that I’m healthy, but I have to be anxious about if I don’t become healthy because I might not be able to access, I might not be able to afford the healthcare system that’s in front of me today. Nobody has to feel that way. I understand that most people do, but I also understand that nobody has to.
[00:29:31] Tom: David, there’s a great time in the show, and we make a little transition and we make sure we ask every guest the same four questions before they go. The first question we ask is, have you had a miss or two on your journey, and something you learned from it?
[00:29:44] David: Oh my gosh, have I had a miss? You mean have I had less than a thousand misses? There are misses every day. The way I think about a miss is there’s no plan that’s going to work the first time. Maybe it takes 9 iterations, 10 iterations to get it right. My thinking is, let’s do something, see what learn, iterate fast so we can get to what’s going to work the quickest. I know the first one’s not going to work. Not when we’re doing something that nobody else has ever done.
There’s a lot of figuring stuff out.
It’s not about just doing what somebody else has done and doing it better. That might be a different game. Most of our misses are about we are trying to do something that nobody else has done, with a mission that nobody else is going after. Quite frankly, even the people who are in the middle of it sometimes wonder if they really want to put their hearts into this concept of we’re going to create peace of mind and alleviate anxiety.
“No, I’m a nurse, I’m here to do healthcare,” is a different level of caring about it. Anyone could participate in that caring. I think about what we’ve built is really a complex system, and complex system theory and design, and management plays a big part in it. Very many well-meaning people will try to tweak little things thinking they’re going to make it better, and nobody notices until six months later, when the whole system is not running as well. It’s like your car is a pretty complex vehicle, and you can change out the the carburetor and think, “It’s a better carburetor, it should work better.” Maybe not.
I’m dating myself by saying carburetors because I don’t even know what they have right now. I don’t think we have carburetors anymore. In the old days, you couldn’t just replace a carburetor with a better carburetor and think the car is going to work. It has to fit together. A lot of our misses are because it’s such a complex problem we’re dealing with. We have a complex answer to it, but it’s a better complex answer. We have to pay attention to how we might disrupt it inadvertently and how we might disrupt the existing ecosystem inadvertently.
We have done it many times, so many times, where we have done things that we thought were well-meaning, and then the existing ecosystem says, “No way. There’s no way you’re going to do this. You’re going to cost us. I know you’re going to save yourself $10,000, but you’re going to cost us $100,000.” We’re not going to let you do that.” We have to figure out how to not disrupt the system.
[00:32:14] Tom: Let’s talk about the flip side of things. We talk about a highlight or a make or a win, or two that you’d like to share. Certainly, you’ve talked about Redirect Health and the growth and things you’ve seen. Is there another instance that you’d like to share?
[00:32:29] David: A place where we had huge success where it wasn’t so certain when we started was during COVID. If you remember, there’s a lot of uncertainty for everybody. Our decision to go from a service company to a platform company and to start building things on top of our platform. That was, as you can imagine, quite expensive. Luckily, we were profitable before that, so we could do it. That was a decision that even when I did it, I didn’t know it was the right decision.
I just knew that we had to leave where we were and we had to go somewhere different. What was working pre-COVID was not going to work now. That was obvious what the answer was, turning into a platform and going to companies that maybe had a much higher spend with more employees and the complexity of having brokers in the mix of that too, and trying to figure out how do we build a brokerage, how do we build a TPA, how do we build insurance companies on top of our platform? It all integrated together.
Remember, we’re not just going to be a carburetor and put it into another car. We had to make it integrate. Big part of us building on our platform was so that the integration would happen naturally. Then lots of reusable building blocks were created during that time. Things that fit together, like a carburetor via reusable building block next to an engine, which is another reusable building block, let’s say, and then you got to make them connect. We did a lot of that in 2020, 2021, 2022, without knowing if it was going to work or not. It’s turned out to be a great success for us. I wouldn’t go back now, knowing what I know. At the time, though, I got to tell you, I didn’t know it was the right direction.
[00:34:08] Tom: The next question we ask, David, is have you used a multiplier to multiply yourself personally or professionally or organizations you’ve run?
[00:34:17] David: What you make me think of when you ask that question is a coaching program I’ve been in for 25 years now. Dan Sullivan, a strategic coach, has been my coach for 25 years now. I visit him every quarter at least, sometimes more than that. He’s really, really helped me think about my unique ability, the thing that people count on me for for success, the thing I’m world-class at, the thing that I’m continually learning, and the thing that I’m always getting better at.
The persistence on it makes it such that nobody can keep up with me with my unique ability. Creating an organization and structure around my life where my unique ability is where I get to live, and attracting other people with other unique abilities so we can create a unique ability team, if you will, with a unique process for a unique mission has been very, very helpful. That concept of unique ability and really respecting it in myself and in others and in process and in mission and purpose, that has been a huge multiplier.
When I say huge, I don’t mean 10x or even 100x. I don’t even know how I can measure it. I would not be able to do what I was doing today without that thinking that started 25 years ago. When I say 25 years ago, I’m still thinking about today. I am still refining my understanding of my unique ability, each individual team member’s unique ability, the uniqueness of our process, and our mission because of those unique abilities. I call it a huge multiplier because I don’t see it ever ending. I see it continue to stack and to multiply on top of itself to the point where it’s clearly exponential. It’s not a linear addition game anymore. It is a multiplier.
[00:36:01] Tom: David, the final question we ask every guest is, what does success mean to you?
[00:36:06] David: That’s very broad, success. I’m going to give you a broad answer. I’m going to say it has to do with freedom. It was the reason why I came from Canada, United States. I just saw a freedom of ambition that was here that it was not happening for me in Canada. That doesn’t mean it’s not there in Canada. I didn’t have it, and I didn’t know how to find it when I was younger, but I could find it immediately in the United States.
This freedom of ambition and of dreaming bigger, and original thinking. That wasn’t as obviously embraced in Canada as it was here. The concept of freedom, getting freedom that matters to you, to me, that’s success for me. Whatever that could be, it could be freedom of relationship, freedom of having enough money to do what I want, freedom of hanging out with who I want, freedom of purpose. Oh my gosh, that’s a big one.
To be able to say, I want to alleviate the anxiety and create peace of mind around access to the best healthcare in the world for tens of millions of Americans, that’s a very ambitious thing to say, but it’s a purpose and it’s real. The freedom to have that purpose and to be able to say it here, that is to me, success is that freedom to be able to have the ambition you want, the purpose you want, to have the people in your life you want, to have the money you want, to have the dreams you want, to have the happiness you want, to have what you want.
[00:37:28] Tom: I love that. David, as we bring this to a close, is there anything you were hoping to share or get across that you haven’t had a chance to yet?
[00:37:36] David: This is a franchise show. It seems like we talked very little about franchise. When I thought about this before, I was like, “Okay, what’s the main, like a main lesson or message or something I want to leave with the audience?” We haven’t even come close to talking about it, which is interesting to me because I had this preconceived notion that we’re going to talk about franchising, of which I know very little about. I had a little anxiety about that. I’m going, “I am the last person to have any kind of expertise on franchising.”
You know you got me started in this. I had this idea and I came to you to learn a little bit about franchise. When we started, Tom, I thought you were going to teach me everything I need to know about franchise in about three hours, maybe three days, maybe 30 days, maybe three months, and then I would be able to go run with it. What I learned very quickly, you got me there fast, is the people who do this, they’ve got 20 years of experience. Just like I’ve got 20, 30 years of experience, 40 years now.
I started working in a mental hospital 18, 19 years old. That’s how far back in healthcare I go. You made me realize fast that this is a different discipline. The franchise business is different. That is why I went out and I got Matt Hale and I talked to him about what I wanted to do. There’s a little bit of cat and mouse where he’s trying to avoid me a little bit, and I’m trying to get him in. We got about a year, and he’s like, “Okay, I get it. Let’s do let’s do this.”
Then he brought in Jesse Curry, who had very instrumental in Massage Envy ‘s success. Then we got Pete, who I think you know, a bunch of different brands too. I’ve seen Matt, Jesse, and Pete with so much franchise knowledge. I realize now how silly it was when I came to you and said, “Teach me about franchises. I want to be a franchisor. I want to build a franchise on our platform.” I realize now how silly it was. If there is a lesson there for somebody who might want a franchise, is you can do it yourself, I’m sure.
That might be the slow boat. There is a faster boat, which is go partner with somebody who has already done it, had the successes, understands the nuances, can make the pivots. The thing I’m most impressed with Jesse and Matt and Pete is how fast they can make little pivots. I’d create a plan that would take me forever to create, and I’d stay in that plan for five years too long. They’re able to make little pivots because they’re experienced.
[00:39:54] Tom: The hope for today is what you shared. You just have a wonderful story and I also think it’s a great lesson for folks to hear that this doesn’t just happen overnight. This was a journey to get there. It didn’t just happen in 12 months or 24 months. Maybe the idea spawned and spurred and came to you and you had that vision, but it’s taken time for it to start being executed and to start expanding and growing.
[00:40:24] David: Yes. Back to Dan Sullivan, in the coaching I’ve had for the last 25 years, another part of that coaching is getting clear on what’s so fascinating and motivating. You could easily see this as a 25-year goal or journey. Yes, since I started with Dan 25 years ago, and I am more fascinated and motivated by this journey than I’ve ever been. That’s because I’ve been intentional about it with Dan’s coaching.
I’ve very been very intentional about the things that are draining and just or boring, and making sure that I’m not getting too sucked up in the draining and boring aspects of life that other people find incredibly fascinating and motivating, and getting the people together so that there’s some things that are boring and irritating and annoying, you’ve got to do. All those things have other people who are just jazzed about it. I’m just not. I’ve been very, very fortunate to have that coaching, thinking, coaching 25 years ago.
When I’m thinking through this journey, I’m not thinking about like I’m at any kind of endpoint right now. I’m thinking about I’m just at the beginning of another journey or in the middle of a journey. Up to now, the last 25 years has really been preparation for my next 25 years. That’s that’s all it is. I got a lot done starting 25 years ago because of what I’d done 20– I’m not that old to have done it that long, but you get my point?
[00:41:50] Tom: Oh, yes, absolutely. That’s right.
[00:41:51] David: Just at the beginning of another, the continuation or beginning of something much bigger than what we’ve already done. I don’t know how to get in front of tens of millions or 100, 350 million Americans. I have no idea how to do that. I do know that I’m closer than anybody else. I want it more than anybody else. I put that challenge out there, because if I find somebody who wants it more, we are going to be best friends immediately. I am going to get on an airplane. I’ll be at their doorstep tomorrow if I find somebody who wants what I want as much as I want it. I promise.
[00:42:23] Tom: Dr. Berg, thank you so much for being a guest on our podcast. Let’s go ahead and jump into today’s three key takeaways. Takeaway number one is when he told the story about how he and his wife are doctors and that the advice that they would give their friends in their living room on their personal time was different from the advice that they would give in their own office. That is what led to the idea that eventually became Redirect Health.
Takeaway number two, I really liked how he talked about using creatively thinking to problem solve. He said a quote in the interview where he said, we have really good people in a bad system. He used systems thinking to create a solution. He said, “I reject the current system, but not the people in the system.” He recognized really great people there. He said, “Let’s collaborate, let’s work together to help continue to refine the system.”
Takeaway number three is when he talked about a miss. His miss was that he thinks about misses all the time. He doesn’t think of it as a total miss. Rather, he thinks that, when you’re doing something new or innovative or unique, the first plan is never going to work the first go at it. You’ve got to just get started so that you can start figuring it out and have lots of little misses, sometimes medium-sized misses along the way. He said a lot of systems are very complex and there’s no one-size-fits-all simple solution. That’s what he’s trying to do here. He recognizes that the healthcare industry is extremely complex and there are a lot of moving parts, so a simple solution is likely not to work.
Now it’s time for today’s win-win. Today’s win-win is sometimes starting with a different question leads to finding different solutions. That’s what Dr. Berg and his co-founders did when they launched their business right. From the beginning, they started with the question, what do you need, or what does the customer or the patient need, instead of who’s going to pay for it? I thought that was a beautiful way of looking at it because when they started with what do you need, it led him down this pathway to start creating a different way of approaching the healthcare system.
The win-win is if you change the question you’re asking, you might find different ideas that spur and create different solutions. That’s the episode today, folks. Please make sure you subscribe to the podcast and give us a review. Remember, if you or anyone you know might be ready to franchise your business or take their franchise company to the next level, please connect with us at bigskyfranchiseteam.com, where you can schedule your free no-obligation consultation. Thanks for tuning in, and we look forward to having you back next week.
[music]
[00:45:38] [END OF AUDIO]
