Tom Lindsay Jr. & Steve Rigby, Accelerated LLC | Disrupting Healthcare

The only podcast you need for your business, let's do this. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast, I'm your host, Scott. Join me as we explore and demystify the latest trends, technologies and strategies used to achieve massive growth in 10x businesses. I'll be sitting down with sales, marketing, and business leaders. The second, what's work for them, the spell myths, and deliver actionable insights that you can use to ensure repeatable, sustainable, and predictable revenue in your business. Welcome to the sales versus marketing podcast where I speak to sales marketing and business leaders. I'm your host, Scott, and I am super excited to be sitting down today with Thomas Lindsay Jr. and Steve Rigby. These are the two partners of three. There's three of them, but I got two of them on the phone today at Accelerated Consulting LLC. Thomas is a serial entrepreneur. He was before he became an entrepreneur and a founder, a president CEO and COO at a large HR payroll admin company, just helping employers with insurance and compensation solutions. He managed over 200 individuals, adventure employer services, and then on the other side, we have Steve Rigby, who is the other partner. He is longtime tech, where he was sales and business development manager at a variety of different tech companies coming from IBM, Dell EMC, through to where he is now at Accelerated LLC. Accelerated LLC is turning the American health care and health insurance market on its head. First of all, they've created a market for their own product from the ground up, offering a health-sharing solution that is affordable and reliable for people that cannot afford group insurance and obviously don't want to be bankrupted by health care costs. Their business is doing a lot of good. It's very interesting. Their business model and how they've built it from the ground up to very senior leaders. I'm going to give the mic over to Tom. He's going to kick this off and introduce himself, the company, then we'll speak to Steve for a bit. Then we'll just go on. Tom, take it away. Give us a little bit of an intro as to what Accelerated is doing and a little bit about your background. So my name is Thomas Rock-Linsey Jr., by the way, thanks, Dad, for that. I've been in what's called the professional employer organization industry or PEO industry, which is a company that takes over as the employer for small and mid-sized companies and handles everything employer-related, payroll HR, employee benefits, etc. I've done that my entire career from the time I fell off the turn-up truck until, and while I'm still doing it now, the role changed about three years ago when I resigned from the company that I had co-founded in 2004, and it went into the sell side. I'd always been on the op side as the COO or CEO of the company, and decided it was time for a change, almost a mid-life crisis, not quite mid-life yet, but maybe I am now, but not then, and decided to jump into the sell side free up some time. We had just had a boy who was turning the volume, and I wanted to spend more time at home, and so I resigned, went on to the sell side, totally new territory for me, I always called it the dark side, because I'm being on the op side of the business side. I always felt like the product and service we had was so amazing, and so awesome that it was... I sell it. A little did I know, it's not that easy, I've come to learn that, so there is definitely a whole different ball game being in marketing and in sales, but I dove in, and I spent a lot of money taking courses and going to conferences and becoming certified as a click funnel software, and just drive revenue. Everything I can to bring in business. The thing that happened there was when I left the company, I lost my health insurance, I had Cobra, but it was way too expensive, because my salary, basically my income was cut in half when I made this move, and I couldn't afford the premium, so I went out shopping as an individual, which I had never had to do before, and I always been on the group help side of things, and I was shocked that I couldn't find anything that was affordable, and even wasn't that affordable, the benefits were terrible, so overall it was just a ridiculously poor value, I know Canadians don't struggle with that. Yes, we don't have to worry about that as much as you, but I know it's a serious issue, and obviously that's a huge, that's a huge dollar, that's expensive, if you just need to switch. 150 bucks, basically, a month, just for the premium, and then deductibles, copays, and everything else that you have to come out of pocket when you go to use it, so I was blown away, and it put me on a search for something, because I actually went uninsured for a little while, not being able to really afford it, and that's when Steve and John at Accelerated, which is my company that I co-founded with John way back in 2002, or something like that, but anyway, they had been trying to solve the same problem for some of their clients, smaller clients, and such, and so they stumbled across a company called Cedera, which is a medical cost sharing program, and they introduced it to me, I dove in, tried to learn everything I could about it, because as an insurance guy, the last thing you want to do is get healthcare without insurance, that's kind of crazy talk, but as it turns out, it's the greatest thing ever, and so I joined, and Steve's actually joined, and now it's one of our core products, a company called Pure, well not a company, but a trade name called Pure Health. So you left corporate, and just because you were dealing with the struggles of trying to figure out how to find healthcare, how to afford healthcare, that actually covered the problem that your company solves now. Exactly. Okay, so I'm just trying to connect the dots, so that makes a ton of sense. How did you decide, or why did you decide to start this company with Steve with John because it's a big difference from just knowing that healthcare is expensive too, and you're coming from a large enterprise company or large, I don't know how big they were, but you're going to space nothing about, you just know that there may be other people with the same problem as you, so how do you make that leap over the first steps that you took to do that? Well, I'm been in the health benefits, health insurance industry, my whole career, so the concept isn't new to me, I know health insurance, it was this concept of it not being insurance to being a community, being a health share organization where you don't have an insurance company anymore, you just have a group of people who voluntarily getting together and saying, hey, let's help each other pay for these costs, so the hard part for me was overcoming that aspect of it, that hey, this isn't insurance, and so you don't have the protections of insurance, you don't have the government overseeing the insurance. It's not a regulated industry. Not regulated, yeah. Exactly. So that was a huge hurdle for me to overcome, but after doing extensive due diligence and research and meeting with the company and getting to know them, I'm like, okay, this is doable. And this business model didn't exist before this first iteration that you guys sort of rolled out, was it something that you had to build from the ground up? Well, that's a good question. The concept of medical cost sharing has been around for around 30 years on our religion, it's health sharing ministries, you might have heard of those, well, that's the same concept where the members of the church are people. The organization, they all share these costs, but it's not like a service that you could purchase outside of some of these tighter knit communities or circles up until now. Yeah, I mean, over the last, since Obamacare, the concept has taken off and people have kind of flocked to it. And the organizations have opened up, you know, who's eligible to participate, to, you know, just if you're a Christian, you can join. But the one that we are a part of is called Sadeira, and it's not a religious based organization. Yeah. That's crazy. This is all new to me. So I didn't know that, I didn't know that there was still, is that still a thing where religion separates who can join these particular types of groups in some cases. And in 2019, that's still a, that's still, that's still a thing. Yeah, that's, that's, that's insane. So I totally get the business model and I think that it's a huge issue in the states. So you've commercialized it and, and how do you bridge that gap for businesses because they obviously may not have heard of this, you know, if I'm a Canadian going down or if I'm from another, maybe I'm from working in big business, I've worked in enterprise and I've, I've had group benefits in my whole life. So how do you, how do you bridge that, I guess, educational gap for somebody who is just learning about this for the first time and will have the same sort of apprehension that you did, but may not have the background in healthcare and may not understand that this can be a valid way to deliver a service to somebody. So how do you bridge that? Yeah. Hey, Steve, you want to take that? I sure will. You know, that's a great question and we always, well, wherever we talk about medical cost sharing with a person who's potentially interested, we always start off the conversation with, you know, we're going to talk about something that's unique, it's different than what you've experienced before and most importantly, it may not work for you, right? We kind of lay that out right up front and we can then we just educate them on, you know, what it is and how it works and how it differs from more traditional insurance products that they may be more, more comfortable or more, have more experience with. And sometimes they just can't get their head wrapped around the concept of it, you know, you don't have an insurance card. When you go to the hospital, let's say you have to go to the ER, you know, and they always ask you for your insurance, well, you don't have insurance. You know, with this program, you're, you're a cash pay patient, you're a self pay patient. And you basically get billed by the hospital or the provider and you turn those bills into the sedera medical community who they then share them and then they will reimburse you for those medical expenses. So it's a completely different way of operating. One that when you start to understand how it's designed and how it's meant to work, it's actually really refreshing and it's something that, but again, not everybody can live with it. Number one. And then the second thing is, too, is that one of the things that is sort of, I will say it's really the deciding factor for somebody as to whether it makes sense for them or not is their preexisting medical history. So because the medical cost sharing organization, it's not like insurance, there's no underwriting, there's no denial of participation, everybody can participate. And the pricing is basically set on how old you are, it's a tiered pricing model. As a result of that, you know, sedera is not, they're not taking over the responsibility of preexisting medical situations. So we quite often get into conversations with people about, you know, these what is, like, well, you know, tell me about what happens if I was diagnosed with breast cancer or what happens if this, what happens if that? If you've had those conditions prior to joining the medical cost sharing organization, it may not be the best solution for you because those expenses aren't shareable for a period of time. And we can go into the details of that, but they basically look back three years. If you've had, if you've had any injury or illness that you've been treated for or diagnosed or had symptoms of over the past three years, in that first year under the membership, those bills are not shareable. In the second year, you've got some shareability, in the third year, you've got more shareability, and then ultimately after the third year, it's no longer looked upon as a preexisting condition. So we quite often get into details with people. And by the way, if we're talking to an employer group as an example, these are conversations that you tend to have one-on-one individually with the employee afterwards and say, you know, if you've got concerns, if you've got some preexisting medical history you want to discuss, you know, I'm a licensed, you know, life and health agent, we can have those conversations confidentially outside of the employer being present for that discussion. So we always get into those conversations, and then at the end of the day of the employee or the individual, because you don't need to be a part of an employer group to participate, but the individual or employee needs to decide whether it makes sense or not. And it's just sometimes it doesn't. You know, in the case of, you know, my personal situation is I had a knee replaced prior to joining Cedera. So in my first year under Cedera, if I had any medical complications to that knee, then those wouldn't be shareable with the community. I understand. Yeah, but everything else that happens to me, you know, if I were to have a heart attack as an example, I'd be good to go. So and actually, so Steve, why don't you give a little bit about your background and how you came to be involved in this, but this as well. And then we can, I want to have some follow-up questions and whatnot, but go back to where you came from. Sure, absolutely. So I grew up in the information technology world. I started my career at IBM in Toronto, actually. And I worked in information at IT, data center, all that kind of stuff. And had more of a technology based career for quite a few years before I transitioned into operations and then ultimately made them move into sales and business development. I held a number of executive roles in technology from a sales and business development perspective. And then about five years ago, my other partner, John, was starting to do what we're doing today. And he kind of pulled me aside and said, Hey, I'd love for you to come and work with me on this. You know, what do you think? I was burned out on travel and had been doing it for a very long time. I thought, Hey, it sounds like a really refreshing change. So we got into the business of, as Tom mentioned earlier, of providing professional employer organization or PEO services to small, medium-sized companies. And after doing that for a couple of years, you know, we realized that our clients were always asking us for help on the healthcare side. You know, all the options that were available to them as a smaller, medium-sized employer were not really very good and were not affordable, not only for the employer, but not affordable for the employee. And so we started, as Tom mentioned earlier, we started looking around a little bit and we actually, quite by accident, found this company, Sidera, out of Austin, Texas and really analyzed, you know, what it was and how it worked and Tom's fantastic at doing the research. He's a very detailed, oriented guy and he can really drill into something and learn about it. And Tom evaluated Sidera against every other medical cost-turing organization in existence and we compared it to traditional insurance. And at the end of the day, we just found something that we thought was amazing. So we started sharing that with our clients who were looking for more affordable healthcare for their employees. And that's kind of how we got into it. That was two years ago and fast forward to today where we are members ourselves, we're selling it to our clients, we're selling it to individuals who are like Tom, who came out of a corporate environment, had fully paid healthcare and now find themselves in a situation where they don't have a good solution. It's an ideal offering for somebody in that situation. We didn't actually talk about the real numbers there, but Tom mentioned that Obamacare was sort of a pit, when it went into effect almost 10 years ago was a pivotal time, but the reality of it was prior to Obamacare, there was only 100,000 Americans were participating in various medical cost shares. And now fast forward to today, that number is over a million and a half. So what it tells you is that there's a problem that needs to be solved and it's being people are turning to cost sharing is a really viable solution. We're thrilled to be a part of that and we're trying to ride that wave and help people provide. Well, the cost of insurance is just absolutely out of control. I mean, every year, it increases 10, 15, 20%, plus the benefits get worse, right? The coverage that it's offered for that money is reduced. So it's a double-slide. Isn't it also the leading cause of bankruptcy in the States? Yeah. Yep. And there's a projection which is super scary about millennials that they're going to spend over half their income on healthcare in just a few short years. And so it's really a problem for them. I mean, I think there's a little, you know, if you're 27, right, you think you can stay on your parents' coverage until you're 26 under most policies. So I mean, if it wasn't for that, there'd be a huge number of people that are, yeah, yeah, without coverage because, you know, how they are, too, they never think they're going to get sick or hurt anyway. Until they do. Until they do. And then it's a big help. I actually had a call with a business owner today that just got a renewal quote from their carrier for health insurance and it was a 20% increase over last year. And he was going on about this and I told him, I said, I'll be honest, 20 is, 20 is the new five, you know, where it used to be a 5% increase was palatable. Now it's like you're getting 15 to 20%. And, you know, and so in order to combat that, companies are then taking on higher deductibles. So instead of a $2,500 deductible, they're taking a five or a $7,000 deductible, which on paper might look good for the employee because their premium stays roughly the same. No, but wait till they have to claim something, right? Wait till they have to go to the hospital and have a $7,000 deductible. I mean, it's, it's just ridiculous. So that's why we're so passionate about what we do. And we're actually changing people's lives in a really positive way. It sounds kind of, kind of corny, but we literally are when people are calling us up and saying, you know, what, I'm so thankful. And when I talked to Stadera, we had a medical need and they were so amazing. You know, a true story. This is a great story. One of their members, a woman out of Texas, her name is Juliet. She had a baby and was a Stadera member at the time and the baby was born a little bit early and had some complications. And long story short, it all worked out fine and Stadera took care of her and at the end of it all, she ended up calling up Stadera. She was so blown away by what had happened during this difficult time for them and how they supported them and how they helped facilitate the payment of the bills. She was so blown away, she actually called them up and said, I want to come and work for you guys. And she ended up getting a job and she manages now the whole Texas territory for Stadera as a sales, as a business development rep. And I mean, that's just a great story. I mean, you know, I talked about how the insurance company called me about my knee and all they wanted to talk about was the anesthesiologist, anesthesiologist Bill. In her case, when she calls Stadera, the very first thing they said was, how's the baby? How are you guys doing? Like, it wasn't about that. It's just a human. Yeah. And so to hear her tell that story is actually really incredible and it just really illustrates how what a great thing this is and how different it is and we were thrilled to be a part of it, honestly. So. So you're truly disrupting the insurance, the medical insurance market in the States. Like, there's a model that you're the model that you're bringing to the table is really something that I've never experienced on Canadian. So I don't count. I don't think, don't take my word for it. But I still haven't heard of this model that often. So what, what was your, you know, you, you, you're entrepreneurial by nature and you built out, you build up this business and I guess you kind of found a, like a niche product market fit for this one particular product and now you're sort of doubling down on that. And how do you, how do you build out a business? And I kind of alluded to this before, but how do you build out a business where there is no, there is no strong market. It's not like you're taking over market share from other literally like medical cost sharing companies. You're probably taking it over from insurance companies. So do you have a strategy that's worked well? Is there certain channels that work better than others for finding new clients? I'd love to hear your input on that. Well, it started with on the, on the group, what we refer to as the group health side. So working with an employer to try and provide a solution for them and their employees. That's how it started for us because we already have a lot of those clients. I mean, we have thousands of employees that are clients of ours through the PEO relationship. And so we started rolling out Cedera and some other actually unique products that are, that are in the virtual direct primary care space. We won't go into a lot of detail around that today, but we started rolling that out to our clients and had some really good success with it. And then it was about a year ago that Cedera decided to offer their product, not only to employer groups, but to be able to make it available to actually individuals. And to, to be able to do that, you have to have what they call a sponsoring entity. It's a group that basically facilitates the, the adding of individuals to this, to the solution and accelerated, became a sponsoring entity. And we saw, we just saw a huge opportunity. And thought, you know what, we're just going to jump into this. We're doing it already on the employer side. Let's do it on the individual side. But then we needed a strategy as to how we were going to, to do that. So Tom and John and I got together and we built a business plan on, you know, how we would market this. And it's through, you know, Tom meant earlier, click funnels, click more. You may be familiar with it. I know the software. Yeah. Or well, so it's an, it's an inbound. So click funnels is just an inbound landing page, really. That's just, so you're, you're, you're, you're pushing people to this landing page. Um, they're, they're consuming the, the information. Are you, your marketing strategy, do you have gated content? Or is it just, uh, an email list that you're capturing and then you're retargeting? Like what has worked well through click funnels? So I mean, let Tom jump into this because he's the click funnel man and he can really explain it to you. You're probably more precisely than I can. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Click funnels is just the tool and really the, the strategy behind using the tool is, is some of the things that Russell Brunson, you know, through his books, you know, talking secrets and, and, um, expert secrets. And so we've been employing that, uh, model and social, and using, you know, content marketing just to create a massive amount of, you know, awareness around the, the concept through social media and then running ads, uh, and then driving traffic to the landing page where, you know, you, you get, um, part, uh, one of, um, Dr. Josh Luke's book, um, called Health Wealth for You, which is a book that talks about this very concept of, you know, kind of taking control of healthcare away from the big corporations and the, you know, the medical industrial complex and, and, um, becoming, um, a, um, educated, you know, healthcare consumer, right? And, and so that goes perfect with what we're doing. And so we, we work with him to offer that as a, as an incentive to, to, you know, give us your contact information. And then, you know, we take people to a, a webinar and, and, uh, teach him about the, the whole concept and, and, you know, we, we kind of start with what's, why it's broken, you know, the, the healthcare system in America or the healthcare delivery system, the way we pay for healthcare is really broken in, in the country. And so, you know, we, we start with that and educate people on that, how it's broken, how it's broken, and, and the fact that there is actually a solution. There's much better ways to pay for healthcare than insurance. And this is one of them. So, so let's talk about that. So where do you see, um, the future of, of healthcare health insurance in America? Where do you see it going? Well, I don't see it going anywhere soon. Um, hopefully we don't end up with, uh, a single payer system under Medicare because, the only thing the US government does well is, you know, kill people through wars and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. My personal opinion. Now, I, I'm a, I'm a limited government kind of guy. I see the free market provided solutions, but we really don't have a free market in healthcare here. It's, it's a quasi governmental, heavily regulated, uh, system that, you know, really squashes competition. And so, uh, you know, my, my hope is that we, we move more towards deregulation and, and more solution, you know, uh, non-insurance solutions like what, what, uh, Cedera and, and is offering in virtual primary care and direct primary care. There's a huge movement going on right now from a, uh, primary care standpoint where physicians are leaving the hospital practices and, and just going back to kind of the way it used to be, which is their own private practice, but they don't take insurance. Instead, they sell monthly memberships to the community around them. And that's called direct primary care. And you can, you know, for like a hundred and fifty dollars a month, a family can get unlimited access to a, a primary care physician and it's like the old family doctor again. And there's no insurance involved in that, and that's, that's growing by leaps and bounds. Um, and then Steve mentioned when he was talking, you know, there's a virtual version of that with the virtual primary care and, um, that's kind of marrying the best of both worlds of, um, the direct primary care and telehealth together. So we think that's a kind of a winning combination of, you know, virtual primary care or direct primary care if you have a provider nearby. And so there are for the bigger things, you know, what would be traditionally the, the major medical. And that works extremely well, works for me, it works for millions of people currently across the, the U.S. and it's, you know, up to 60% less than traditional health insurance just in the monthly cost, not imagine the out of pocket that you have when you go to actually, you know, get treatment. So it really is like all, all the, everything you're saying, all the content marketing, uh, webinars, um, you're, you've released a book that speaks to, it's all about education because I think that to truly disrupt, it's, it's a hundred percent education based, you know, you have to be that subject matter expert because again, I don't think that tons of people, enough people know about this to have that paradigm shift in the entire industry that you're speaking about. That's necessary. You're spot on. You're exactly right. I mean, fortunately, there's a, a huge motivating factor, which is cost, right? Mm-hmm. If you didn't have that, this would be a really hard sell. But because the cost is just so burdensome and the savings is so significant, people are, you know, willing to, like, spill our, our options, they just need to, you know, learn about it, right? And, and understand it. Yeah. And we, we try and educate too with using real, um, examples, and I'm a great example of that. You know, um, I was on a major medical traditional insurance plan through my wife's employer, and I, uh, I was having a lot of knee problems and I went to an orthopedic surgeon and, you know, he said, you know, Steve, you need surgery, uh, you've got arthritis badly, you've got no cartilage, you've got a crack in your femur, I need to go in and do my best to clean that up. But, and my insurance company wouldn't let them do that. And they basically said, and they forced the treatment protocol on me and my doctor that he said, this is not going to work. It'll take us nine or 10 months to do this. It was a series of, of painful injections into my knee that you said right out of the gate, it won't work, um, and it's going to prolong the inevitable. So we, I was on a $5,000 deductible insurance plan. So we went through that whole nine, ten month period. You said sure enough. We need to have surgery. I had done, paid my deductible, um, a couple of months later, I got a phone call from the insurance company out of the blue. And so I love this part of it. They, they didn't say, you know, hey, you know, how are you or anything? How's your knee? It was, uh, oh, I see you had surgery a couple of months ago. And although your doctor was in our network and although the hospital was in our network, the anesthesiologist was not in our network. So you owe us $1,500. Get out of here. That's horrible. So anyway, so I get that done. And then a few months later, my knee is still not where it needs to be long story short. I ended up having to have a complete knee replacement. Another surgery, another $5,000 deductible. And you know, it's, that's kind of the way the healthcare system is built. So I use that example as real life. And then we tell people now had I had been a seder remember at that time, uh, that whole thing would have cost me $500. I could have done it immediately when I needed to have it done. I wouldn't have anybody dictating where I had to go when I had to do things or what I had to do. And when it came to my second knee surgery because it was connected to my first knee situation, I wouldn't have had to pay anything further. Everything would have been included and would have cost me $500. So we use that as a really great way to illustrate the difference between what you're experiencing now and what's possible with the medical cost sharing option, which is really a community of people that are just all banding together to pay for everyone's medical expenses. And there's two really, there's two really key things with that example, Steve, which is so fantastic. And one is like, is the fact that, um, you know, physicians or insurance companies have, in essence, been practicing medicine through those treatment protocols, right? Because they tell the doctors and the hospitals what they can, what they will pay for, right? By telling them that it dictates the treatment. 100%. So, and they're not, you know, they shouldn't be doing that. And then there's the, um, the, the other element, which is the note, no, no, no works, you know, no, you don't, you don't have networks with, with this, um, but also the balance billing. So the balance billing is a big hot topic now, you know, Congress and there's several states that are starting to pass laws that, you know, minimize or prevent the insurance, or the, not the insurance companies, but the providers from, from billing you for services that were performed out of network or that the insurance didn't pay for. So like Steve's case with the anesthesiologist, you know, he forgot to ask the anesthesiologist whether he was a network, you know, it's a joke because, you know, you don't have to, you shouldn't, I know, I know I shouldn't have to do that. So that, that's a big problem, you know, we're, it's happening all the time. We'll go to the hospital, they get treated, but they have, sometimes you don't even have a choice of what hospital you're being taken to, right? If it's an emergency situation, you're thrown in the ambulance, you're not, you know, they just take you and you might end up out of network and, and that can bank, literally bankrupt you because the out of network benefits are, are so minuscule. So we're, and then you become responsible, you know, for paying those, those, no, the story, the story you're saying, I've, I've heard, and you see all these articles and you see all this coverage about how horrible the, the, the healthcare issue is, and obviously, it's a, a hot, a political topic when you, when elections come up or, when anyone's, when anyone's discussing major issues in the state, it's always healthcare. Um, so you're playing in a, in a hot space, and I think that, I think that your, your message in your story is very powerful. And I think that if you can deliver that in scale, um, you, you, you're in a, you're in a niche that people will definitely buy into that people need access to, um, and you're doing, you're doing good work, but that brings you to another question. Where do you see your business going? Like, where do you want to go? What levels do you want to take it to? Or are you, are you happy with where it is right now? Tom? Where? Yeah. Um, I'm not happy with where it is right now. Well, like, I want, I want to bring this to as many people as humanly possible because I know what it did for me, right? It was the difference between, you know, being able to afford healthcare and not having access to healthcare, really. Um, it allows me to be independent and be, you know, on my, be self-employed. Um, at a, at one point, I thought about, you know, going back to work and just because of the, that, that situation, the benefits, being without healthcare or without health insurance, you think you don't have health insurance, you think you don't have access to healthcare. That's the way we're taught. So that was, you know, very scary for me, especially with, you know, I got a, uh, 14-year-old daughter at the time in a two year, two year old son and it was like, that's not something you want to do. So when I found Cedera and was able to join and it was just a huge relief. And now I can continue on with my quest as, uh, as a small, um, business owner with John and Steve and not have to worry about that. So, and with the gig economy and everything that's happening, the kind of, the migration of the, of the, of the, um, workforce, you know, to more of a, uh, gig economy type workforce, people need what Cedera and other, you know, health, um, sharing organizations bring to the table. So what I want back, super long way of answering your question, which, what I want to be, I, I want to deliver, you know, uh, this to, my goal is to deliver to 5,000 individuals, you know, over the next, um, 18 months and really, that's just the starting point, you know, we, we want to bring it to, you know, I'd like to see a hundred thousand people brought to this, uh, arrangement over the next couple of years, really with, with Cedera. No, that's very exciting. Now, let's bring it back, um, because I just like, uh, this was a good conversation about health care, but I just want to sort of open it up to people that may not be focused on the industry like yourself. So just like lessons learned for, for, you know, you're an entrepreneur, um, and, and, uh, Steve, I want to ask you this question as well. If you were going to look at your career progression and, and you've gone through all these different iterations throughout your career of what you've been doing, what would a lesson be that, you know, you would tell your 20 year old self, um, it could be professional, it could be, uh, it could be entrepreneurial, uh, one thing that you would really go back and change if you could, um, that would be for somebody who is younger, either as an entrepreneur or as somebody earlier on in their career, because that would be a good lesson for, uh, for people that are listening. Yeah, great question. So, you know, I spend a really large chunk of my professional life in a corporate environment working for, you know, Fortune 100 type companies. And while I learned, um, a tremendous amount about working environments and myself, actually, you know, I always, I always told people, I spent 13 years at IBM at the beginning of my career and I always told people the two best decisions I ever made were joining IBM and leaving IBM because at the end of the day, when I moved into smaller companies, I, I really figured out what was, what was available to me and how you could work. You can, you can create a situation for yourself, especially in this economy that we've got today, this getting economy to Tom mentioned, you can create a better work balance for yourself, you can create typically, you know, a more fun work environment and not be limited by the sort of, um, the culture, the large corporate culture that's been in existence. Now, I will say that big companies are changing. My wife works for a pretty good size software company that actually just got acquired by Microsoft recently and they're evolving how their employees are treated and how people can work and where you can work and how you work and that's all good, but I really think my advice would be to really look at, you know, what can you do that can create a high level of satisfaction, that can really make a difference and allow you as an individual to, to spend time in other areas of your life and not, and not be, uh, be all consumed by a, by a corporate sort of a situation. Yeah, that's good. Tom, do you have any, any other insight that you want to add or is that? Well, that's pretty good, Steve. You know, for, for me, I guess, um, you know, I would say to myself back, you know, when I started to really be a better networker, um, I think that's one of the areas. I was kind of like a, I was pretty much a hermit, you know, I just, I was in the ops on the upside of the business and I was, you know, I had head down and, you know, and, and I didn't get out as much as I should have to industry conferences and, and, uh, you know, really developing those external, uh, relationships that would, uh, have, you know, serve me well down the road, you know, not that I don't have any, but I, I see now that it could have been much greater how I invested that time. And really, you know, no, you know, that your network really, yeah, yeah, it's an investment in the future, you know, when you, when you, when you do that, when you expand your, and grow your, your network. Um, and would you say for, for, again, question for both of you because, uh, Tom, you were speaking about how you move from the, uh, the product side to the sales side, uh, and Steve also, you've, I'm sure you have some reference to sources. Where would you suggest people go if they want to make this kind of move in their career? So it could be, uh, somebody who is entrepreneurial by nature, but they're just trying to move within an organization, uh, so they're trying to get, you know, manager, director, VP and they're trying to grow, or it could be somebody that's trying to make the switch. What's your go to resource or resources, just for consumption of knowledge to make yourself a better professional? Well, for, for me to, and it's been, um, everything Russell Brunson, um, everything Gary Vaynerchuk, um, I've really looked, those two guys are pretty much, you know, consuming everything that they put out, uh, from a sales and marketing standpoint. Um, I think, you know, John Lee Dumas is a guy who really, I first stumbled upon when I was starting thinking about making the transition. And his podcast, uh, EO Fire, was, has been, is amazing and, and it really, you started to open my eyes to, uh, you know, all the other possibilities that are out there to see what he's done with his business, uh, over the last four years or so since he started. Uh, so he's been, he's been a great resource as well. I think basically among those three, uh, I've, those are, those are good names. Those are, see if anything to add on that. Yeah. For me, it was always, uh, and I've been very fortunate throughout my career. I had great mentors. You know, I worked in organizations that actually large companies where you got to an executive level. They actually forced a mentor on you, not an individual, but they would, they would force you into going and finding a key top executive and having that person really work with you. And it really provided me with an opportunity to learn a tremendous amount about everything from operating the business to leadership to, you know, technology, whatever it happened to be. And so I think it's something that not enough people take advantage of and it doesn't have to be within your organization. It can be virtually anyone, you know, but, but really figure out where it is that you want to go, target somebody who's had great success in that area, reach out and develop a relationship and have them work with you as a mentor. To me, it's invaluable and something that everybody should do at, at certain levels of their career. No, that's good. Um, and that's, that's all I really, I have on my end. Do you have anything that you want to add that I didn't ask or that you wanted to highlight? Not really, Tom, unless you have anything, I mean, if people want to learn more about this, you can go to you got purehelp.com, which is our, our landing page that has some information on medical cost sharing and people through that web page can reach out to me and Tom and John and, and we can schedule a call, um, really help them understand whether it's on an individual level or on a business level. Or if it's even just want to learn more about what it is, I mean, it might not be the right time for you, but you're curious about how it works or you might want to get involved from a, uh, from a partnership perspective, you know, just feel free. We're pretty, uh, we're more about educating at, at this point. And, uh, the, our view on this is that the more that you educate, uh, and enlighten people that the business opportunity will just continue to come. And that's a great, yeah, agree. Is that the best way for them to reach out to you directly? Is, uh, the website or LinkedIn or is a website? Yeah. Well, probably the, Tom, the website's probably best got purehelp.com. We're on the website. It's great. Link, you can reach me on LinkedIn. Um, you can text me. I'll give you my phone number. It's 602 295 1184. So you're a sales guy. I love text messaging. Uh, but yeah, you, again, from the website, you can schedule a call with us. And I think our, I think our, I think our contact info is actually on there as well. Well, there you have it. Accelerated consulting, uh, with Steve and Tom, uh, very cool work they're doing. As always, if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave some feedback below, hit like, hit subscribe, leave a rating, any rating as long as it's a five star rating. This is the sales versus marketing podcast where we speak to sales marketing and business leaders. I'm your host, Scott. I hope you all have a great week. Have a productive week and we'll talk again soon. Bye now. Welcome to Scott's thoughts where I speak about key points that we just learned about in these sales versus marketing podcasts. Uh, in the last podcast, we spoke to, uh, Thomas Lindsey, Jr. And Steve Rigby from accelerated consulting, LLC. They are bringing innovative healthcare and, and health sharing options to the American public. Uh, they are both entrepreneurs as they founded and our partners in this company, they built it from the ground up. Uh, they built it where there was no market. So there is truly a blue ocean strategy, uh, to their, to their approach to bringing this product to market, to bringing this company, uh, and finding successful, successful product market fit, excuse me and, uh, and, and being, being, uh, exceptionally successful in what they're doing now. The two things that really stood out to me that I really wanted to double down on was, uh, their marketing approach, uh, through education and their focus on aligning with mentors. So they spoke about a lot, but these are two things that I think are applicable, uh, agnostic of any industry or position that you're in. Uh, so one thing that they've used to, uh, amazing successes, they use a, they use a program called ClickFunnels. And essentially what it is is it's a software that allows you to create landing pages and it's really, uh, uh, it allows you to create bespoke, uh, inbound funnels for customers. Um, but it's, it's just a software. So the approach and the, the manner in which they use it is the true secret sauce. So what they do is they provide education. They teach people. They have a book. They have webinars. Uh, they have educational information positioning themselves as subject matter experts. What does this allow them to do? By positioning yourself as a subject matter expert, they have educated individuals on a solution to a problem that everybody knew existed, but nobody knew there was a solution to this problem. So by, by educating individuals, they, they basically took market share from large insurance companies by providing, uh, providing this new product, this new way of doing things as nobody's ever heard of before. Um, it's incredible. It's incredibly difficult and the only way to do it is through education and positioning yourself as that SME. Um, if you wanted to incorporate this into your business, uh, you obviously don't have to just use this strategy. If you are in a new, uh, a new industry or you are carving a niche out for yourself, uh, the ability to educate your customers to establish trust and to position yourself as an SME or a subject matter expert is a strong way to market a product in any industry, regardless. It's just a necessity when you're in an industry as new as what they're doing, which is in healthcare sharing. Um, so that's one thing for marketers to, to take note of and to use in their strategy. If they aren't already doing it, you want to be an educational source for individuals. The second point that I wanted to drive home was the point that Steve spoke about when I was asking him, uh, how or, or what he would tell his 20 year old self. And the point that was really strong, he spoke about the importance of mentors and he was fortunate enough to work for large tech companies, which actually aligned their employees with mentors. However, he was well aware that not every single company will do this. So it is, it is something that you have to, if your company doesn't do it, or for example, uh, it doesn't forget about the fact that this company did this for a second actually, because all we want to really, all we want to really capture here is the importance of aligning with the mentor and aligning with the mentor that can bring to the next level that can teach you things you don't know. Um, this is something that he took advantage of when he was working for IBM, but this is something that regardless of where you're at in your career, you could be very junior all the way up to, uh, VP or, or C suite, you have to have a mentor who can guide you who's done it before, who knows how to do what you're trying to do and who can give you advice because there's no reason to reinvent the wheel. Um, and the other thing is the benefit of aligning with the mentor is that it gives you perspective. And this is something that I've said before, um, and it's something that I think is very valuable. I can't remember where I heard it from, but, uh, this essentially the, this, the insight is as follows, you can google anything, but google doesn't provide you perspective, but what a mentor can give you is perspective. So you can google a strategy, you can google how to do this, you can google how to sell, you can google how to market, but perspective and, and, and experience are things that you cannot google. And that's what a mentor brings to the table. So, uh, regardless of what you're doing, any industry, any position in your career, or if you're an entrepreneur, especially if you're an entrepreneur, um, align with mentors because they will accelerate you, they will take you places, uh, that would take you at an exponentially long amount of time to get to on your own. Uh, so it's just best practice if you don't have mentors in different aspects of your career and your professional life, you should go and find them, go and seek them out. Um, so anyway, that's another Scott's thoughts. I really hope you enjoyed that podcast. Uh, it's an industry that I, I didn't know much about. Of course, I'm, I'm Canadian, so I don't have to deal with many of these issues, but I know that this is a hot topic for Americans, and I think that what, uh, Tom and Cever doing this incredible work, and I really do believe that they are, they are the true definition of, of Carvingon in each their, their businesses, the definition of going into a blue ocean and, and creating a market for themselves. Um, so, so that's a, that was a really, really good one. Uh, and I hope you enjoyed the Scott's thoughts as well. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast, the sales versus marketing podcast, share it with your friends, families, co-workers, colleagues, peers. It would mean so much to me. And if you haven't already, uh, please reach out. If you have guests that you'd like to see on this podcast that you think would be a good fit, you can email me directly sdugglesclarry at gmail.com, or you can hit me up on LinkedIn, LinkedIn.com slash in slash sdugglesclarry. And if, uh, if you send some names over, I'll be sure to get them on the show. Anyways, that's all I have for now. I hope everybody has a great week, has a productive week, and we'll talk again soon. Bye now. Thanks for listening to the sales versus marketing podcast, brought to you by R.O.I. Delivering strategy, technology, and insights to both sales and marketing leaders and teams globally.