Andy Schoonover - CEO & Founder of CrowdHealth | Why Healthcare Is Broken

You have the buyer of health care, the health insurance plans, wanting health care costs to increase. You have the seller of healthy, big hospital systems. Clearly they want the price to go up because they want their profits to go up. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why health care costs go up. An incorrect assumption that insurance is guaranteed that insurance is safe because it's an entrenched institution that has been there forever. One out of every six health care claims are denied so there seems to be a false sense of security with insurance. You've got these masses, massive deductibles that you have to pay before the health insurance plan pays a dollar. What we'll ask you to do is you pay the first 500 bucks and then everything else we're going to submit to the crowd for funding. And so you don't have to worry about how much is this going to cost? What is my co-pay? What is my co-insurance? What is my deductible? What is my thing? It's like it's 500 bucks. We want zero people going bankrupt using crowd health due to medical bills. As opposed to 250,000 using health insurance. Welcome to success story. I'm your host, Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network. HubSpot has been a huge supporter of the show since day one. And I chose to partner with HubSpot because they support entrepreneurs. At the end of the day, I'm an entrepreneur, a lot of people that listen to this show or entrepreneurs. And it's hard and HubSpot creates solutions for entrepreneurs so it's not as difficult. One of the number one problems that all entrepreneurs have is keeping customers happy. It's one thing to acquire customers. Keeping them happy, boosting customer satisfaction is a whole other can of worms. It's not easy. But there is an all-new service hub from HubSpot and it makes it infinitely easier to scale customer support and increase customer retention. 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We were doing remote patient monitoring. So we were monitoring folks directly from their home, those folks with chronic conditions. So if you had high blood pressure, diabetes, whatever it may be, we were monitoring your blood sugars, your blood pressure, your weight, all of those things. And had a call center of nurses who would watch that information. And if your blood pressure spike, or your blood sugar spike, you would call you to intervene prior to go into the hospital. I sold that company in 2014 to a private equity firm. And as many people do when they leave their companies, they lose their health insurance. So I went to healthcare.gov. I thought it was the only place I could get health insurance. And I got a plan for me, my wife and my two girls that was about $1200 a month. And it worked until I actually had to use it. So my little one who was one at the time was having her recurring ear infections. And so we went to the ear and I was a throat doctor who told us that she needed tubes in her ear. She had perforated ear drums. And so we went to the hospital, got tubes in her ears. It's a 15-minute procedure. And we got the bill soon thereafter. It was $8,000. I was just blown away by the fact that a 15-minute procedure in our current healthcare system could be $8,000. And not only that, my health insurance plan set me a note via snail mail interestingly. And so it wouldn't pay for it because it was medically unnecessary. And so at that point, I was fed up. I was pissed off. I called my health insurance plan. I said, I quit. If you guys can't pay my bills, then I'm not interested in being your customer. And so I quit. And me, my family have been uninsured for the last two years. And during that time, we built tools to allow people to operate outside of the existing health insurance system. And we've saved about $10,000 a year by doing that. And the culmination of those tools is crowd health, which we raised a $6 million seed ground back in April to start and launched marketing back in April. And excuse me in October, and have been flying since. It's been an incredible experience to see people really resonate with the fact that health insurance is not serving them well. And that they can do something else that are much lower cost. So that's a great succinct or just sorry, I appreciate it. So let's unpack why why is insurance so broken? So you know, I'm Canadian. And when I came down here, I had to navigate all of this because yes, some things are covered in can, most things are covered in Canada, but obviously nothing is covered down here. So this is, I'm still learning as I go. So I don't have the 30, 40, 50 years of experience dealing with this system. So it's very new to me. And it's something that's obviously very topical. So why is why is health care so broken in the US? First, like, walk me through that because I think that's interesting. And even that one thing that you mentioned where I'm paying 12 hundred bucks a month for insurance. And then I go to the hospital, I get a, I get a procedure done for my daughter, and then it's not covered. How is that justifiable? How is that something that hasn't been rectified in the history of the United States? It doesn't make sense to me. No, it doesn't make sense to me either. Unfortunately, I think, you know, look, the problem with health care to answer your first question is, you know, some, a lot of people think the rising health care costs is a result of a very complex system. But it's not all that complex. If you think about the fact that health insurance plans actually have no incentive to reduce costs. And in fact, they're and they have an incentive to increase costs in the affordable care act. So was that seven, eight years ago, they maxed out the amount of profit that a health insurance plan can make to 15% of premiums. So if you think about just using easy math, my premium is a thousand dollars, they can only get a hundred and fifty dollars worth of profit out of that profit and administrative costs. So they actually have to raise premiums to be able to raise their profits. So they are incentivized to see your monthly premium to go up. So in essence, you have the buyer of health care, the health insurance plans, wanting health care costs to increase. You have the seller of health in big hospital systems. Clearly, they want the price to go up because they want their profit to go up. So now you have the buyer and the seller of health care, both wanting the price to go up. It doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out why health care costs go up. And here's the other thing too is even if United Health Care wanted to negotiate. Right now, our system is ruled by big hospital systems. So I live in Austin, Texas. We have two hospital systems. United Health Group, even if they wanted to negotiate with the local hospital, they can't because they have a duopoly. If they lose one, they lose access to most of the companies in Austin, so they have no negotiating power. So there's this mutually beneficial thing that the hospital systems and health insurance have going on here that they just raise prices every single single year. And there's no market forces to actually reduce those prices. And that's why health care expenses are so high. And so there's just perverse incentives within our system to increase prices. And that's ultimately what the what the problem is. Now the so it's not it's it's not great. I understand that we live in a while, at least in this part of the world, we live in a society that is driven by profit. And that's something that is pretty standard with business. Now I'm not saying it's good, but I mean, it is the de facto. It's kind of how the US how the US works. People want to make more money and they have to find ways to make more money. And that seems to be unfortunately something that is going to impact somebody's health and well being. But the part that I really don't understand is even if they are making money off you, how can they justify denying that claim? So that like I'm already upset that they're they're making a lot of money that's fine. I can't complain about that. You know, everybody needs to make more money the health stakeholders that they have to to make happy fine. But how do they justify when you are paying something like that? What's the what's what what would make it a medical necessity versus a non medical necessity? It seems like somebody having a constant recurring significant health event should be something that could be considered a medical necessity. Yeah, it's so opaque. Like there's no clarity and transparency into why they will agree to pay some medical bills and not agree to pay other medical bills. And I think it kind of goes back to this, you know, 15%. If they're hovering at that 85% of of your premium being pallied on bills, they get pretty stingy with that, you know, that last amount of dollars. So they got to keep it to to 85% to maximize their profit. Here's the here's the crazy stat that I didn't know before really diving in. One out of every six healthcare claims from plans on healthcare.gov, which is where most people go and get their their healthcare if you're not getting it through your company are denied. One out of six are denied. Right. If you live in Tennessee, it's one out of three. If you live in Texas, it's one out of five. I mean, one out of six doesn't seem super high. But if you have an $8,000 bill and there's a one out of six chance that they're not going to pay for it, the vast majority of the American population is not going to be able to pay that $8,000. You don't have $8,000 laying around in an account somewhere that's like, oh, just in case I have a big medical bill in my insurance plan, well, pay for it. I have as $8,000 like it just doesn't exist. Right. And so that's why we're seeing 250,000 people last year who had health insurance when bankrupt due to medical bills. Like the whole point of health insurance is so if you have a big catastrophic event, you won't get into financial distress. And we had 250,000 families last year go bankrupt even though they had health insurance because of medical bills. That just doesn't seem right. Right. And that's just entirely the prerogative of the insurance provider. And there's is there no is there no like ombudsman or anything you can do to appeal that decision or sue them like, what's is there any recourse whatsoever? There there is. Fortunately, I mean, there you can take it to the state. You know, if this if most of these plans on an individual level are regulated by the state and so you can take it to the state, but that's just a big bureaucratic, you know, regulatory agency. And so to pay, you need to pay it right next month. And yeah. And if and if the bill collectors are calling you, right. And it's going to want to ding your credit score. Like you I mean, all that happens before us, the state can typically engage. Right. And so you're you're kind of sucked into a big bureaucratic, you know, black hole. So there are some, but it takes a long time and oftentimes it's, you know, you never hear and things like that. So it's it is not an efficient process for sure. So you you after that event with your your daughter, you know, okay, I'm done with this. I'm not paying for insurance does not doing anything for me, but I have to figure out something in case yeah, a 500,000 or a million dollar bill happens. Then I do have to figure out how to to deal with that event in my life. So this is this is the inception of crowd health. Correct. This is this is you were figuring it out on your own. You actually turned it into your founder. You realize there's an obviously a huge opportunity there, but that's still not you know, Salad easy and even we were talking before we started recording like building out this category. So walk me through building out, building out a category and then building out a company in that category. Sure. And so yeah, so one of the things I was thinking about is like, okay, so what happens if I get a big bill, you know, what happens if I have cancer or you know, big surgery or whatever, you know, basically two percent of people, you know, have those big catastrophic feel. So it's so it's a very low probability, but it could happen, right? And so, you know, as I was thinking about how other people get their bills paid, you know, when they don't have the money to do that, you know, a lot of people go on these crowdfunding websites like go fund me, you know, and so you submit your bill and and so and most of the time those bills get paid. I think it's probably the number one category and go fund me as these big medical bills because people can't pay for them again, Alvin Scherne's plan. A lot of times you're not paying for these things, and so they go to and so what if we could build a a crowdfunding site that has some incentives for people to actually go and fund these, right? Like a young child having cancer is, you know, much more emotional and, you know, worthy of giving, right? Then my five-year-old has a broken arm or, you know, my two-year-old or one-year-old needs ear tubes in our ears. Those aren't nearly as emotionally kind of and they're not as they quote unquote sexy problems as somebody who has says cancer, right? Exactly. Exactly. So what if we built a system where if I give to you, right, when you need help, you're more likely to give to me what I need help. So we built in a system where there's a law reciprocity, right? So the way that ours works is you will submit money into an account that account is yours every month. And so if you're between the ages of six and 54, it's 175 bucks. A little bit more of your older, a little bit more if you're younger. And then you can use that money to fund others when they have needs. And so we're going to ask you every month, it's like, hey, here's 10 people that have needs this month when you fund them, yes or no. So it's totally voluntary. If you say yes to everybody, then you are one of those people that will step up when others are in need. If you say no to everybody, you are one of those people that is stingy and won't step up when everybody else is in need. And so when you have what I have a bill, right, and I've been stingy, the probability of other people being like, yeah, I'm going to give to the stingy guy is really low, right? The probability of somebody giving to me if I'm this super generous guy is really, really high. And thus far, everybody who's been generous has gotten their bills paid, right? And so you've built this reciprocity. And it's actually, look, it's the way communities have worked for thousands of years, right? If I'm in a community of people and something happens to me, and I'm the Grinch, then there's not a whole lot of other people stepping up. And unless you're Lucy Lou or whatever her name is in the Grinch, I don't know if I know what her name is, but if you are the nice person on the block who brings you cookies when you move in, like the probability of me coming and helping you is much, much higher. And so we're using that that reciprocity within a crowdfunding type of platform to pay for medical bills. And the beauty of this is we're getting bills paid at about 50% of what health plans are paying for bills. So that $8,000 tubes in my daughter's ear, I put that out on LinkedIn and somebody of doctor, and your nose and throat doctor read it and came back to me and says, we do those all day long for $1,500 if you'll pay in cash, right? So if I paid in cash, I could have gone once this ear nose and throat doctor and save $6,500, right? That's 80% savings. And so these doctors are willing to take significant discounts to what the health plan will pay them if you pay them in cash at the point of sale. And so that's where we're getting the vast majority of our savings is physicians hate health insurance as much as we do. And so they will take significant reductions so they don't have to wait 90 days to get paid. They don't have to haggle with the health insurance company. 30% of their time is spent with health insurance companies. And so they now have 30% more time that's focused on patients, which is as opposed to paperwork, which is what they really love, right? And that's where we're getting our savings. So you're doing two things. So the crowd health is a community, it's a platform and it's not only leveraging the fact that you're speaking directly with physicians and specialists to give a reduced cost, but then it's also a crowd funding component that allows other people in the network to pay for whatever it is that you need. And I guess, you know, if I'm trying to, the concept is great. It makes a lot of sense. I actually think that when somebody dives into this for the first time, I sort of take my perspective and I look at it the first time I always think like, well, to love reciprocity and it's not guarantee, but there seems to be almost an incorrect assumption that insurance is guaranteed, that insurance is safe because it's an entrenched institution that has been there forever. So there seems to be like a false sense of security with insurance. And if you haven't been screwed, like you've been screwed, then you won't understand that nothing is a hundred percent. So that's where I see people looking at this alternative form of, I don't know what you call it, is it's not insurance because it's a different thing. So it's own category. Yeah, it's its own category. I mean, it's really an alternative way to pay for healthcare, right? It's a, you're taking personal responsibility over your healthcare bills as opposed to giving that responsibility to a health insurance plan. And as a result of that, you're going to save 50 percent. And is it guaranteed that your bills are paid? No, you know, is the probability really high? We think so. We think it's way higher than you getting your bill paid from a health insurance plan, given the one in six that I just mentioned. And that's from the Kaiser Family Foundation, like that's not my number. It's a legitimate, you know, think tank coming up with that number. So that's where I think people are really not misunderstanding. You know, the other thing is you've got these masses massive deductibles that you have to pay before the health insurance plan pays a dollar, right? So many of them are six, eight, 10, $12,000. Before you pay before the health insurance plan, plan pays a dollar. From ours, you know, one of our key metrics is we want zero people going bankrupt using crowd health due to medical bills, right? As opposed to 250,000 using health insurance. And so the, the, what we will ask you to do is you pay the first 500 bucks. And so you step into the hospital, you pay the first 500 bucks, right? And then everything else we're going to submit to the crowd for funding. And so you don't have to worry about how much is this going to cost? What is my co pay? What is my co insurance? What is my deductible? What is my thing? It's like, it's 500 bucks, right? And you can have solace in the fact that, you know, most people have 500 bucks in the bank that this is not going to bankrupt you. And that's the whole point of health insurance. And so that's what we're really really trying to push is that just kind of simplicity. I know that the mechanics on the back end are a little more complicated because this is the first time people have heard this probably. But in essence, it's super simple. You pay the first 500 bucks. Everything else is submitted to the crowd for funding. You can choose whatever doctor you want. There's no doctor networks anymore, which is a huge benefit, right? And so it's just way easier to use after you used to it. Then your typical health insurance plan and walk me through this because the other question that I would have going into something like this is what about people that abuse the system or perhaps flip the question, maybe people that do they don't mean to like quote unquote abuse, but they do have recurring significant health expenses. Is that the target customer? Is that someone that should even be in this network or are there people that makes sense to be in this network and people that it doesn't make sense? Yeah, I mean, now we want it to be fair health care. You know, not unfair health care, which it feels like with insurance plans, that's the case. And so it will accept anybody with the exception of two groups. One is smokers because your costs are 4x, what the normal non-spokers are. And then if you are over 300 pounds, again, your costs are massively higher than everybody else. This is not fair for you to participate in this. If you have a pre-existing condition, then the fair thing we think is for you to be responsible for those, 100% of those in the first year. And then the crowd will help you fund those after the first year. So 25,000 in the second year, 50,000 in the third year, 100,000 in the fourth year. So it's just a fair way of doing this. And so no, it's not for everybody, but we think that the vast majority of the population fits within a range that makes sense for us. Most of the folks who are signing up right now are 1099 type of folks, or they're solo preneurs, or they are in a small company that doesn't offer health insurance. And our existing customers are mostly those types of folks. That makes sense. So you're an entity of entrepreneurs basically. Yeah, no, it sounds like it. Well, that's the thing. I feel like somebody who is just an entrepreneur who loves to try new things out. For me, I love to try stuff out like this because it's so new and it's just a different way of doing things, actually sort of segues and dovetails into another question. As an entrepreneur, I am curious, how do you build something? How do you build this category? What are the actual steps that you took? Because again, when you spoke about you're disrupting an entrenched institution, you're disrupting insurance, they have tons of money, like they're not going away anytime soon. They can lobby governments and they can do whatever they need to do. Insurance is not new. So how do you build something and how do you attract people to this? And what was your thoughts when you first started this company? Yeah, well, I think one of the big, big hurdles, right? Anytime you're starting a company, it's just fear. You know, a lot of this, I operate out of a sense of fear. And so I'm, I can't say I'm like this fearless leader because I've been super fortunate. My last company did great. We had about 400 employees when we sold the company. So it went awesome. So I'm in a position now where, you know, one, I can take that risk. And two, you know, a lot of the people in healthcare are fed in some way by health insurance plans. And so there is a, a disincentive to go after the people who feeds you. Don't bite the hand that feeds you, right? And so that's why no other companies out there are trying to do this. And that's why a lot of the other entrepreneurs aren't trying to do this is because they, they rely upon health insurance plans to do this. And so I'm in a pretty unique position to be able to go out there and and give this a shot. And you know, when I start things, it's because there's a gap. You know, there is a gap there that's that's so big that it's worth a swing. Right? This is a, this is a home run swing. And I think that we, we will connect and and the last couple of months have been crazy in terms of people getting signed up and, you know, open enrollments been in the last couple of months. And so it's been the feedback has been incredible. And so we've been lucky in that way. But for me as an entrepreneur, it's go swing at something that could have a significant impact on the people around me. You know, and this is one of those companies that can have a significant impact. You know, I'm, I consider myself and even everybody on my team are missionaries. I mean, we are, we are on a mission to change the way that health care is paid for as opposed to mercenaries, which is just, they're in it for the money. And I tell most entrepreneurs, I'm like, hey, if you're just in this for the money, it's going to get really hard. And so, you know, is money a big enough of a motivator to drive you to do something, you know, that is game changing. And a lot of times it's not, it doesn't make it through. So if you're, you're mission driven, that's where I get, you know, really, really excited about, you know, the companies that I build. So this has been number two, my first one was, you know, helping old people, you know, with their chronic conditions. And my grandparents were a huge influence on my life. And so they were in their 80s when I started at that company. And, and they were primary driver of that. And that was my mission to help them live, you know, a more healthy, healthy life without having to go to a nursing home. So that was, you know, be missionaries for your, for your, your, your start out. And that's, that's to me the easiest way to do this. I just want to take a second and thank the sponsor of today's episode HubSpot. Now, HubSpot has an incredible podcast network, the HubSpot podcast network. My show success story is part of it. But if you love great podcasts, you have to listen to imperfect action hosted by Steph Taylor. She cuts to the chase. She dishes out actionable strategies on online marketing, content creation, social media and more. Steph is your marketing obsessed friend. She's been in the trenches for years. She shares what works and what doesn't. So you skip that costly trial and error. If you crave friendly, educational content that gets results imperfect action is your new favorite podcast. Check out imperfect action wherever you get your podcasts. You, you, you mentioned the missionaries versus mercenaries. And one of the other interviews that you did, you actually had five, five key things that you wish somebody told you before starting company. And I was actually one of them. You had a couple of really smart hiring lessons in this in these group of five, five lessons. Another one that you mentioned was beware of big company experience. And I completely agree with you. But walking me, walking through why that's so important as a founder trying to hire their first few employees. Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't you see a big company on somebody's resume. You ultimately think that, you know, part of the success of that company has to do with the person that you're, you're talking to and forget oftentimes that these big companies are big. There are thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. And they have tons of resources. And they have everybody doing, you know, lots of stuff for them. So they don't have to do a whole lot, right? You have executive assistance for executive assistance, right? And so, you know, I have just, I have learned throughout my, I guess, you know, 20 years now being, being entrepreneur real, you've hiring somebody from a big company is a really hard thing. They have to overcome a lot of the big company bad habits. They are not as gritty oftentimes as, you know, people in startups. And I mean that by like, just get it done, right? Like forget about who gets it done, you get it done. And it may not be totally in your lane, but just get it done. And just big companies just don't oftentimes allow people to do that, whether it's because of your accuracy or administrative or whatever. And so I like the grittiness of people who are, you know, in startups and have been in startups or fresh out of college, right? Who are like, I don't know, just tell me what to do it. I'll get it done. Like I, I love that. I love those, those gritty, and I'll take gritty over super high horsepower, you know, any day. One of the other things I've said, it might have been that interviewer, maybe maybe somewhere else, but give me, give me somebody who's will work their ass off over a straight A student any day, right? The people who work their ass off know what it's like to fail. They get back up and they keep going after it, right? The guys who get straight A's, they don't know what it's like to fail. And when they fail, and they get a B, it's like the end of the world. And I'm like, dude, we're in a startup. We fail every single day. And if we're not failing, then we're doing something wrong. You know, we're, we're not driving fast enough. How do you, how do you find that in somebody though? How do you, how do you actually find that in somebody when you're interviewing them? How do you find, I guess, like a little bit of like a grit plus chip on the shoulder plus, you know, just, just figure it out curious person. What's the interview question to get that person in? I think it's, it's less interview questions. I'm terrible at interview questions. I'm just, I'm bad. And so I actually have them do stuff. Right. I'm interviewing somebody right now. And I said, okay, build me a corporate financial model. And he kind of looked at me like, I was like, Hey, you're going to get it wrong, right? But like, how do you even think about that? Right? And so it makes it, it requires them to ask really good questions, right? It asked them to really think about what drives the business. They, they have to dig into the business and really try to understand it. They have to be good at excel, which I think is the most important tool of business from my perspective. And if you don't know how to do that, it's really hard to, to excel. And so, you know, I'm actually having them like do some work. You know, the other thing I said is like, Hey, here's crowd health. Here's what we're who should I go after? Right. Write me a two page on who I would go after and how would go after them? Right. And it forces them to create some ideas, to do things on paper. And it's between those two activities, I can tell most of the time how they think, right? And can they think outside the box, get creative? Or do they think really very much inside the box box and have a really hard time with, um, with great, the gray, right? And that's where we are in startup land. It's, it's just gray. Like it's not black and white. Like you just kind of figure out and operate in the land of gray. And if they're not comfortable with that, it's probably not a good fit. And do you do that for, do you do that for all roles that you bring in just most to, to, that's smart. It's, no, it's hard idea because I mean, look, I mean, part of this is like, you got to think analytically, right? Regardless of what role you're in, I don't care if it's a sales person or a marketing person or an operation person or whatever, it's like, you need to think analytically and you need to have some kind of comprehension on how to do Excel. And if you don't know how to do a financial model, like a P and L, like, you're going to go figure it out, right? Which is a big part of, of, of a startup. Like, this is not, you know, in a 100 page user manual, right? Like did she have to go, it's like, no, no, we just have to figure this stuff out. So go figure it out, right? Go out, figure out how to make a P and L. And you don't expect as much from some positions as other positions. But I think it is a good tool to, to get a really good sense of how people think and, and can operate. And let's, let's flip that when you're building a company in a category, you're looking for certain people, certain mindsets that you're bringing in, but also walk me through how you market something that no one's ever heard of before or they've only had their first exposure to what's, what's the, the playbook for that? Yeah, you're going to be so different and so much better than the alternative that people were like, duh, like, why did I think of that? Right? Duh, you know, and that's hard oftentimes. Like, and it's hard now, right? Because I'm marketing, and we spent our all million boxes over the last three months, you know, marketing. And we've gotten some really, really good feedback, but a lot of people just look at you like, what the heck are you talking about? Right? And so, you know, one of the things you have to realize is that you have to pick a group of people that you think will really resonate with your, your brand, right? And what I'll tell you right now is the people who are resonating with our brand or the people who are typically very high and kind of personal responsibility. They're like, I want to take care of my own healthcare bills and not have a health insurance plan get in the middle of this. And so we've been all in on those those types of people. They are the Bitcoin people. They are Libertarian. They are those types of people and they're entrepreneurs, right? Like entrepreneurs are tend to be like, hey, let me control my own destiny, destiny as opposed to just relying on a health insurance plan. And you never know what they're going to do, right? And so we've been all in on those types of folks. And it really has resonated with them. So it's really like find your customer who does it resonate. With and go from there. I will say that we spent a million dollars of unmarketing, but we tried about 20 different distribution channels to get our message out. And we tried digital to traditional to print to all kinds of different things. And even within those, we've segmented a lot of different ideologies and political spectrum and thought all of those just to see if is there a group here that this tends to resonate with? And I think we've found who those early adopters are going to be. And so that was our approach. Very interesting. I just know how difficult it is. So I can only imagine building a marketing strategy for an industry that doesn't exist yet. I can't imagine it's easy. I'm just looking at you. Kind of emotional getting fired up, right? I mean, because if it's not an emotional cell or purchase, it's going to be really hard to get people to actually buy, especially like something like health insurance, which is typically like, oh my god, I don't. Though the last day of the month, every month has been our biggest day because people wait into the very last moment to figure out what they're going to do with paying their health care bills for the following month. And they find us and they're like, oh wow, this is really, really cool. But it is the last thing you want to deal with. And a part of that is because health insurance sucks. I mean, it really does. And so we really want to make something where it's like, no, no, this way to pay for your health bills is actually pretty cool. And you're just going to save a ton of money and you're going to help other people. And you know, that's great, right? That's a great alternative to what we've been forced into. One other thing that you mentioned, and I've heard this, I've heard this said different ways before, but I'm curious to understand how to apply to to crowd health. So do things that are unscalable and then learn how best to scale them. So what does that mean in a broader context than how did you actually apply that to crowd health when you quite literally need, you need a certain mass of people to make the entire business model function? I mean, it's hard. And it's like, we're almost like threading a needle, right? I mean, you really are. And I think I've said that in that interview, too, is doing things that are unscalable. I mean, there is a, there is a desire from the beginning to automate as much as you can, right? And, you know, for me, it's like, man, everything that has to do with the customer, I want to own and manually do so that I understand what that customer is like and what they're thinking and how they're reacting and things like that. And so there was this idea internally at the company of, you know, there's these little chat bots down in the, the lower right hand corner of your website. And so they're like, okay, well, let's just come up with all the questions that we think people like, you know, have and what the answers are to all those questions and we'll chatbot it because that's the best way to scale all the interest that we'll get. And I was like, no, no, no, let's not do that. Let's all get on the chat and all the answer to these questions, you know, all 10 of us, including the CEO, I think I've spent more time on that chat bot than anybody else answering questions from prospective customers because now I know what they're asking. Now I know what their objections are. Now I understand our customer a lot better and that's an unscaled way of doing something that I think will help us scale because now we understand the customer a lot better that you just don't get from a chat bot, right? And plus us chat bots are so annoying if you type in one letter wrong and drives it bonkers, right? And so one of the things that we, you know, are on scaling too is we have your personal care advocate like you will have somebody that you can talk to every single time that you call into crowd health, right? The same person. So you're not going around, you know, a big call center and you have to explain your daughter has tubes in her ears and they're cost me $8,000. You don't have to do that 20 times to get an answer. You're talking to the same person every single time, right? And that's an unscaled way of doing things. But we think in the long run, if you have a health condition, you will call that person and we can help you and guide you to a really good doctor who in the end of the day is going to be way less expensive than if we did it in a way that, you know, his call center oriented and you may not have gone to that great doctor. And so we think in the long run, it's going to save us a bunch of money. It's just a way better customer experience. Some of these things that these big companies do to scale is a terrible, terrible customer experience. I mean, call into your cable company, right? I'm trying to cancel my security sister right now and I can't freaking get somebody on the line, right? As a terrible customer experience, we want to have an awesome customer experience and we think in the long run, that's going to allow us to scale a lot faster than if we had lots of automation or lots of outsource call centers and all that kind of stuff. And as this industry, this category grows, there's obviously going to be other competitors. So what do you think is going to be the defining factor that differentiates crowd health when there's 20 other alternatives that also do a crowdfunding healthcare coverage, spends coverage model? Yeah, I mean, I think we got to grow fast quick. What is differentiating Tesla and Apple and all these other companies that have kind of defined categories, right? To find their own category, you didn't find their own categories. I mean, it is a huge, it is a big base of people who are relying upon you. And if the more we faster we scale, the more people we have, the lower costs we can then get. And so you're actually driving costs down as you scale up. And as you're driving costs down, you can actually lower the price for your customers. So that's kind of the core goal here is to scale up, to get the price down even lower than what we currently have. And we think there's probably 20 or 30% that we can drop it from where we currently are. So and then I think again, we're not going to get swayed by the, you know, do it, do it quick and cheap. We're going to do it slow and probably a little bit more expensive on the administrators side because we want an awesome customer experience. I mean, I may ravage customer experience person. And I think that this is going to scale with people telling people others had crowd health. It was so easy and they care about me and they pick up the phone when I call them. And they're not declining bills and all these things like that's what I want crowd health to be. And if you can kind of build up that brand, then I think that goes a long way from some of these other, you know, wannabes. I want to, I want to pivot and ask a couple of rapid fire questions to close out and just get some insight from from your career and your experience. But where do you, what do you want, what's the impact that you want to have on the world as an entrepreneur with crowd health? If you could summarize it, what do you want to be known for when you're all, you know, you're all set and done? Yeah. So as an entrepreneur, I mean, I really think and that my current gig, I think hopefully this is a 25 year gig. It is, you know, significantly reducing the way we are significantly changing the way we pay for healthcare costs. Our goal is 400,000 people saving a billion dollars over the next five years, a year. And so that's our, our goal. I really truly believe that we can change the way that healthcare is paid for, which will alleviate so much suffering in this country. That's what I get fired up by. Great. Amazing. If people want to connect with you, go check out crowd health, socials, website, where do they go? Yeah, join crowd health.com is our website. We're on all the socials at join crowd health. So come and visit us there for sure. Do you want to drop your socials too? I don't know if yeah, what's your favorite? Like your LinkedIn or whatever it doesn't matter. LinkedIn is ad join crowd health, Instagram ad join crowd health, Twitter and Facebook are all the same join crowd health. I meant, I meant like for you for you. For me, yeah, for you, yeah. You're the, you never know. I think you have a great, listen, you have a great story. And this is like not your first rodeo. Like you just, I put it out there in case, I don't know, you're into building your own brand or whatever you're on your own podcast. I just want to get a, you're out social. Twitter. Yeah, go, you can go Twitter. It's scoone over and then Andy. So let last name first name. And then you can find me on Andy's scoone over at LinkedIn and my, I'm not an Instagram person. So go to join crowd health on, on Instagram. That's me. Like I post everything on, on Instagram because I wanted to, to control that voice. So I think you can go on it. It's kind of, it's kind of fun. I mean, we take a fun approach to healthcare as opposed to, you know, this, you know, old-white guys and suits. We are a, a young crew at our 30s and 40s who are having fun and we think we're, we're gonna change the world with this. Good. Awesome. Yeah, I was looking at the Instagram. You got some memes on there. It's a length of vibe. It's good. Very good. All right. Let's, let's go through some rapid fire. Biggest challenge that you had to overcome in your own personal and professional life. What was it and how did you overcome it? Yeah, man. Not to maybe TMI, but my wife and I, we lost our first daughter about 10 and a half hours after she was born. So talk about, you know, just incredibly huge challenge that people can take and let it destroy them or it can take and say, okay, how does this, you know, impact me as a human being is, you know, a person who's, who's in a marriage and, you know, our marriage is in much stronger now than it ever would have been without losing, without losing grace. And like I said, we had two, two daughters after her. And so a huge challenge. If you had this used one person, obviously, there's been many, but one person has had a major impact on your life. Who was that and what did they teach you? Oh, man. Yeah. So my first, not real boss, but my boss's boss, Chris Nassetta, out of college, I was working for a hospitality company. Chris was the CEO of a post hotel and resorts is the largest hospitality rate in the country. He, uh, man, his focus on people and just like loving on his people and, and not treating them like crap, but he see a lot of people doing nowadays. The love of people is incredible to me. He's now the CEO of Hilton hotels. And I'm seeing it, even when he's at Hilton, he's just, he figures out a way and a company of, they must have hundreds of thousands of employees to just make his people feel loved from, from the CEO's seat is just an incredible thing. Amazing. And that's like super, super, super important to you. He sounds like a very, a very good person because that's hard to do as CEO, very hard to do as CEO. He had to choose one source to learn or grow. It could be a podcast, audible, something that you've loved, and you just help join your journey and you would recommend other people go check out. Man, it's sitting on the shelf behind you. The book is Playbigger. By a number of authors, you'll find it on Amazon. Yeah. Yeah. It is such an incredible read if you want to build a company, especially trying to totally disrupt, you know, not even disrupt an industry, building a new category, something brand new that's never, ever been thought of. Go look it up on Amazon, Playbigger. It's an incredible, incredible read. You could tell your 20-year-old self one thing, what would it be? Man, my 20-year-old self, I would probably say nowadays, don't do college and go work at a business. Interesting. Why is that? Yeah. I mean, I think that, you know, college was pretty much a good school have fun. Anything, as I saw Elon Musk the other day, say anything you really want to learn, you can learn on YouTube for free. And I truly believe that's the case. I mean, college was a great time. You have fun. You get in the trouble. You do stupid stuff, which may be just a part of maturing and maybe I was a late matur. But I don't believe you learn a whole lot in college, and I can't tell you a whole lot of things that I use today that I learned, you know, back in college. Especially the first couple of years, you know, when you start being specific in finance and things like that, you start learning things. But I would probably not do college and try to work at a startup, even if it's at an intern or something and learn by doing. And last question, what is success mean to you? Yeah, it's people, number of people impacted. I think too many times in today's day and age, we worry about how many zeros are at the end of our bank accounts. And to me, it's like, how are you changing the way that people are living in this world for the better? And health care for me is the clearest example. And so I really think that, yeah, I mean, success is how many people you can impact in the short life that we live.