How He Built MedCram up to 100 Million Paid Views in 9 Years!

Welcome to this episode of the Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm Larry Weddell. And before we get started, if you want to know exactly how to win again and Again, go to wydellonwinning.comwebinar now to watch something I've put together for you. Now let's get going into this episode.

Of Million Dollar Mastermind. I'm here talking with Dr. Roger Schwalt. And where are you located today, Roger?

I am in a small town called Yucaipa, California. That's where I live now. Yucaipa. That's probably half halfway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs.

Okay. And there might be some sand around there.

I'm actually kind of up in the foothills. I live about a mile up, even though I'm in Southern California. Yeah, even though I'm in Southern California. We get snow where I live, really, in uk, but yeah, we're about a mile up.

So is that near the mammoth or mammoth?

Or mammoth? Yeah. Mammoth is a little bit further up. We're closer to Big bear. We're about 45 minutes from big Bear.

Okay, I got the direction now, and some beautiful scenery out there. Beautiful country, and I'm sure it's a great place to Liv. Let's talk about how you built this platform, MedCrem, and in a relatively, you know, the first decade to be, you know, most companies would be thrilled to have 100 million views and 100, I mean, a million subscribers like you have their first decade. That's got to put you at the top of your. Your class. That came out of new companies in 2012, too, in education. So my. My hat's off to you on that. That's insanely great. So tell us the story of how you started that thing and got such a foothold, because, you know, I'm sure there's some compounding that's been going on for the previous years, but getting that compound going, you know, getting the track built, getting the train on the track, getting the schedules built, and, you know, and you do a lot of videos yourself. So how did that idea come to you that this could be a viable use of my time?

Great question.

Other than a great desire to get those medical loans paid off.

Yeah, no.

In a hurry.

So this all started because I was a professor in the School of Allied Health, and at Loma Linda, they have a program called the physician assistant program. And this is a program where if you have some medical background, either, you know, as an EMT or respiratory therapist or even a nurse, you can go to school for a Couple of years, become a physician assistant and make some decent money. So they. These students would come out to our rotation. I was a pulmonary critical care. I am a pulmonary critical care specialist. We still have the PA students that come out, and as part of the rotation, we teach them about, you know, things, aspects of pulmonary, like how to do a pulmonary function test, how to evaluate patients in the hospital. And often I would, after. After a long day, we would sit down and discuss with the students about certain things. We'd lecture for maybe about 20 minutes or so, and it was the same thing every month. We'd have different students. So I'd be saying the same lectures over and over again. Well, one of these times, there was a student by the name of Kyle Allred. Now, Kyle Allred is the co founder of Medcram.com and of course, this didn't exist at the time, but Kyle Allred was a PA student. He's now a pa and he came from a background that was steeped in medical education. His father is a physician, and his father actually started a program, a company called Wild Med Wild. It's basically one of these medical education sites where physicians, nurses can go and get continuing education and go off to these really exotic places like the base camp at Everest or the Galapagos Islands or in Hawaii and learn about wilderness medicine, how to survive in the wild. And so Kyle grew up in that environment where his father was doing these kinds of lectures. And he came to me as a student. Now Kyle's a student here. And he's telling me, he said, Dr. Shooting, don't learn the same way that you used to learn when you were in medical school. And he was right. I used to go to the library. I used to have a library card that I would use for the photocopier machine to photocopy journals. This was, you know, the Internet was there, but it just hadn't reached the maturity that we have today. He says, Dr. Schwelt, students don't do that. What they do is they go to YouTube and they find the shortest video they can find on that topic, and they learn from that topic. And he was right. So there was, number one, there was a need. And that's one of the base things. Whenever you're dealing with entrepreneurial, you'll say this too. I mean, Larry, I mean, if you can identify a need, then your battle is almost halfway done. The other thing that he very astutely pointed out was that there was also a need for healthcare providers, not just in California, but all across the Country. And so what people were doing is they were starting up these schools and they were getting the students in to get these classes done and to give them their degrees. The problem was, is nobody thought about teachers. And so they would just pull anybody who was breathing. Maybe I'm a little bit hyperbolic here, but they would pull people in. And your typical class and people would complain about this is that they would bring in a teacher, they'd throw up a PowerPoint presentation, and the teacher would just literally read the PowerPoint presentation, and there would be no explanation. And so the two biggest problems that Kyle saw, and he saw it personally because he was going through a program, but, I mean, not to say that his program was bad, but he saw that there was a need in some situations for somebody who knew what they were talking about and for them to be able to explain it clearly and to be able to put it on a platform that was obtainable universally. And so Kyle came up with the idea of MedCram. I believe I came up with the name of MedCram. But we decided at that point. He talked to me about it a couple of times and he convinced me. He says, Dr. Sh. We need to do this. This is the future. And. And there was a model for this, and it was Khan Academy. Khan Academy had come out already.

I was going to ask you about that.

Yeah, yeah. So Khan was doing his. He wasn't doing. He wasn't doing as much for medicine, although he did do it for medicine.

But he K H A N for those.

That's right.

Khan Academy.

Khan Academy has been around. He was on 60 Minutes about him. So that's how the idea was born. And I looked at it. No way did I ever believe that that idea was going to get us to whatever it is. 1.26 million subscribers, hundreds of thousands of views. Makecram.com and no way. What I saw at that moment was a way for me to say, hey, let's make a video of pulmonary function tests. And instead of having me having to give this lecture every month to these students, I could just direct these students to watch this video and then come back and then we could discuss the finer points. It would be a way of being more efficient. Basically something called flipping the classroom. And that's exactly what Kyle saw. That was an added benefit as well. So we went to work at it. In 2012, we started MED. The MEDCRAM channel on YouTube. The very first video that we ever did. You can still go out and see it. It was on medical acid base. It's an eight series lecture on how to technically measure the ph of the blood. And deciding whether or not this is a problem with the kidneys or the lungs belongs those in the medical field will know exactly what I'm talking about. But we did that lecture and so you can see our very first lecture, I had no idea where this was going when I recorded this.

Now when you put it up there, you put it up for free, right?

Oh, yeah. All of this was free.

All this was free. And so this is the MedCram channel on YouTube.

That's correct.

And so how did that, what was the result of that? You put up eight videos?

We put up eight videos that we start to expand to other areas like the kidneys, the heart. We just, you know, things that I thought. I looked back at my training and I said, what are the areas that I know that are difficult to understand and that could be beneficial if people simply knew how to explain? And people had always told me, you know, you've got a great way of explaining things. You can explain things so that everybody can understand. And so I did it in a way that not only medical professionals would be able to understand, but also people who are laypeople, who had no training in medicine, but yet were interested in medical issues either that they might have or that somebody else might have, or that maybe actually is part of their job, even though they're not a medical doctor. And so we started to get not only interest from academic students, people who are in medical school, nursing research, respiratory therapists, PAs, but also lay people that maybe have had that problem. So we started doing videos on blood clots in the lungs, on congestive heart failure, on copd, on asthma, on all of these topics. And people would start to watch and view. We got people calling in and it's just started to build. And we got to the point where we decided, hey, there's a market out there. Why don't we put together some courses and then apply to them, something called continuing medical education units, so that, you know, as we, as physicians and medical professionals, we have to be certified in so many continuing education units every year to continue our licensure so we could sell these courses and get accredited. So we created medcram.com where we started to put courses on there. We've updated those as well. And so this was going well. I mean, we were, if you were to look at the amount of income that we were making over those years, it just started building on itself, Building until it reached a point. I'd say, well, I could tell you exactly when the point was. About January or February of 2020, we had reached about 400,000 subscribers on the YouTube channel. We had probably over 100,000 subscribers that had signed up for medcram.com and maybe a little bit less than that, maybe 80,000. I can't remember the exact number, but I know we were around 400,000 on the YouTube channel. And then the COVID coronavirus hit. And, you know, it didn't hit me at first. I had done a Zika virus video when Zika was a big thing down in South America. Didn't really do much. I had done a measles video, if you recall, maybe about five or six years ago when we had problems with measles here in Southern California. It was actually at Disneyland that they had a problem with some measles outbreaks. And the videos didn't really catch. Then we started hearing this thing about in China, how there was this virus and people were going to the hospital and it was kind of an outbreak. And my wife said to me, same woman in the front row there in chemistry class, she said, hey, you should do a coronavirus video. And I did. And, Larry, the thing blew up like I had never seen before. And it blew up so much that I knew at that point that I was going to have to make another video and that people started to listen to what I was saying. More and more and more people were listening. And when you have that many people listening, you better make sure that you're right. And I started to learn and research more about this and make sure that what I was saying was correct. And not only was this important for the YouTube channel, but it was also important for me as a clinician, because I was going to be dealing with this potentially if this virus ever came over to the United States, which, of course, we all know, here we are. It did. And so this has been a real journey for me is how, looking back my journey through medical school residency and my teaching ability has gotten me into this position of being ready to be someone like I am, to be able to do the MedCram channel and the YouTube, to educate and to give people hope about what it is that we ought to be doing for this pandemic. It is almost as though this was a long journey that I was prepared for. Now, in some respect, hey, listen, there's.

A lot of information online, but there.

Aren'T a lot of people who have actually done something. In my case, I've actually built a successful business that's accrued over $5 billion.

In assets under management and has done.

Well even during trying times. Now, if you want to know exactly how I've done this, go to Whiteellumwinning.com webinar Now, I've compressed a decade of learning into five short weeks. Just for those of you who want to give yourself an incredible advantage and are tired of waiting and watching others move.

Is this available for, you know, when you put it up? Of course. This is right up your alley because you were studying the lungs. Right. And this is. This is the disease that goes for the lungs. Right. If I'm. That's right, the clotting and all of that stuff. So is this something the public can go, you know, or people listening to this, can they go on how much of this information is available on the YouTube and how much is behind the paywall?

Yeah, so all of it is available for free. In fact. In fact, when we got to this point in the country where we believed that we were going to be overwhelmed, where people were going to be on ventilators, and they were. I know for a fact that there were some people that were managing ventilators, there were some physicians that were managing ventilators that really weren't trained for that because they didn't have anywhere else to go. They didn't have anybody else to help. And so we had a ventilator course on our website that we had developed years before. I talked to Kyle, and we both agreed that we were going to. Instead of paying for that course, we made that course free for anybody that was going to be doing it so they could have a sort of a refresher course on how to manipulate and use the ventilator on patients with COVID 19. So not only did we make all of our Covid, and to this date, all of our Covid videos are all free available. You can either see them on YouTube, and if you don't like the. The YouTube commercials, you can come to medcram.com sign up over on our website for free and. And have the whole course there commercial free. So you can do that as well. Yeah. Wow.

How. Yeah. So right place, right time, and of course, all of that pursuit of excellence and clarity and precision that served you so well coming up through your schooling paid off well. Because making sense out of this nonsense and conflicting arguments has got to require a disciplined approach.

Yeah, you've got to. And it's interesting, too, because we, Kyle and I are both very. Not to say that we don't have our own political beliefs, but we're Very clear that we believe that politics has no place in the delivery of healthcare, period. So you'll notice that in our channel is that we don't delve into the politics. We may talk about. Like, for instance, we talked about when Donald Trump became ill. We discussed, you know, what he was on and what was going on, but we didn't get into the foray of any of the politics. And because I think too often people go to where they normally get information and they're concerned about how is that information jaded through the viewpoint of the people, the editors. We want to be very clear. We've said this from day one. We simply follow the data and what does the data show? And then you decide what. What you want to believe.

Yeah, well, I'm really glad to find out that this is available. And because both sides of the political aisle say they're following the science when they're. They're obviously not following the same science.

Right.

And so one side science is not necessarily the other side science.

But.

So what's happened when this thing exploded? What's happened with your views of the last year or two?

Well, we went within a year from 400,000 subscriptions to over a million subscriptions in that year.

And that's paid subscriptions. I mean, you know, you got on the radar.

No, these are subscriptions on YouTube. So you all have to just click on. Yeah, but in terms of subscriptions to the website, those are also. All you have to do is just sign up with an email. So we, we have been, you know, our business model, if you want to look at it as such, is we use the YouTube channel to bring attention to ourselves in terms of MedCram by giving very, very astute and useful and accurate information. And so for those people that are, are not medical providers who don't need to have continuing medical education, hey, this is just a free outlet where you can get good medical expertise, advice, and that's great. So they come to watch our videos, and to the degree that it's monetized, we'll get some income from that. So that's a great. I think that's a great, legitimate way of doing it.

Yeah, you use it to build the brand, establish credibility, and then is kind of a get acquainted type thing, but also public service and so.

Exactly, exactly.

Got to be very fulfilling for you to hear the stories and the feedback. Feedback from that.

Absolutely. Yeah. No question. And then to the degree that we have medical professionals in our YouTube audience that are interested in getting continuing medical education, we encourage them of course to come to medcram.com as well. And even those people that don't. Aren't medical degrees, don't have medical degrees or are interested in medical, but just want to learn more about diseases, they can come sign up and they can learn as well. I would say the majority of the offerings that we have on our website are actually free. There are some that we've put a lot of time into where we've had to get medical accreditation from a continuing education company. Of course, that costs money and time and so we'll actually charge for those as well. So that's been our business model.

Well, I appreciate all of this incredible insight and I wish you the best going forward. I'm sure you have a lot of plans and of course this virus is going to continue to mutate and we'll be having reasons. Things are going to always be happening on the health front.

But.

Right, right.

How is your practice done? You know, how is the entrepreneurial side of the practice done?

Yeah. So we. I belong to a medical group called Beaver Medical Group, and I joined them when I graduated from Pulmonary Critical care back in 2007. I quickly became one of the partners and was elected to the board of that group. We recently merged with Optum Medical Group. So we sold our business basically to Optum Medical Group. So now I'm an employee of the company that I used to own and it's doing well. We're expanding, we're fulfilling a need in our area. And now with the backing of Optum, which is a very large. Which is part of UnitedHealthcare. UnitedHealth Group, it's serving our area of the Inland Empire very well.

Yeah, those professional associations, a lot of them in the medical world, are consolidating, it seems like, with these big groups. What's the advantage for you to do that because you're giving up your autonomy to a certain extent. Do they provide the. I guess they provide the back office support, the insurance support, the legal battles, the lobbyist, this type. That type thing.

And not only that, they can also do it at a very beneficial economies of scale. So they have a lot of. Obviously, economies of scale is big, you'll understand, in terms of economics. So we don't have to. Now if we've got to expand, we don't have to take the risk of our economics to expand into areas where we're needed. Now we can expand into areas where we're needed and have the backbone of one of the. One of the largest companies in the United States.

Now, how does that make a difference financially?

Well, financially, if we were to expand and it were to go down, we would all, as a physician's groups, we would be at a financial disadvantage. Realize that when we own the company, obviously we have to pay everybody, and then what's left over, we divide up amongst ourselves. But we've got to pay our employees first. We got to pay all of these people first. And so if we were to expand that, we would be taking the risk ourselves. Personally, we know that we needed to expand, that the business model showed that we needed to expand. But because of competing health groups in our area that were putting a lot of pressure on us, we needed help. Instead of waiting for us to get to a point where we desperately needed help, it would be better to do things while things were working very well. We saw the way the future is and as you said, how many things are. Are coming together, it allows us to deliver healthcare in a better way.

Yeah, and it just shows that every business, you know, it just shows the medical world, it's a business. It's a business, and you get out with a medical degree, you perform a service with health, and, you know, all of that, but it's still got, at the end of the day, you got to get paid. You got to pay the nurses, you got to pay the staff, you got to cover the insurance. It's a business.

It is. And one of the things that we're tackling in medicine is to how we can stretch that dollar as much as possible. So the way that most of the business in our area works, and it may be different in other parts of the United States, is it's a capitated situation where the person who is, who is insured with medical insurance pays a certain premium, and that money basically goes to all of the health care services in the area and basically have to take care of that person no matter what happens. So we try to make sure that that person is as healthy as they possibly can be. It's. So in other words, we get paid more money the healthier that person is. Right. It's not one of these situations where, hey, let's do an endoscopy. Hey, let's do this. No, it's. We'll do the endoscopy if it's necessary, but we would rather have you in a situation where you didn't need to have the endoscopy. We'd rather you be in a situation so that you're healthy, that you're doing all the things that you should be doing. So to stay out of the hospital, to stay out of. Out of, you know, high expensive procedures. So that way everybody's incentivized to be on the same team.

Yeah, absolutely. Fantastic. As we wrap up here, I appreciate your time and I want to give you a final word. You can give from your background, your lessons about navigating life, moving up the ladder, and they want to be difference makers. You know, like you said early on, I wanted to amount to something. I didn't want to waste my life, you know, I didn't want to go through. I want to equip myself that I could be useful, to have some kind of meaningful life. And congratulations, you've excelled and aced that course, too. The stage is set for even bigger success and influence down the road. And so when you look back in your life and things that you have done, that has allowed you to stay on track and to maximize good situations, difficult situations, you know, what would you pull from that as a final word and pass on to those that are coming up and trying to get their heads organized about winning?

I would say this. When I look at my life, the things that I think have shown to be beneficial is when the times in life when I have focused on making wealth is when I have not done it. The times that I focused on doing a service as best that I can possibly do. That's when things have fallen into place and all of those things happen in terms of wealth naturally. So I would recommend highly is to look at what you've been given, to look at the circumstances that you've been given, because you can't change that at this moment in life, and to look at the job that you have to do and to do it with the best ability that your hands can do. And if you can do that, people are going to notice you. And there are lessons that are going to be learned in those situations that are going to be applied at a much larger scale. There's something in mathematics called a fractal. A fractal is a pattern that repeats itself, but the scale gets larger and larger. Let me give you an example. An electron goes around an atom, A moon goes around the earth, a earth goes around the sun, and the sun whips around in a galaxy. It's exactly the same understanding, but it's on a much bigger scale. The lessons that you learn in these seemingly small things that you're doing today are going to be practical lessons that you're going to be able to apply on a much bigger scale if opportunity arrives, if success arrives. So concentrate on learning those lessons and and carrying them with you down the road.

Fantastic. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Look forward to getting over a medcram and seeing some of your videos. I've gotten excited about getting some factual information on some of these Covid related subjects and some of the rest. So thanks very much.

Thank you so much, Larry. It was a pleasure to be on with you today.

If you enjoyed what you've heard and are dead serious about finding out for yourself exactly how this works in the real world, I've taken the most valuable business lessons I've learned over 40 years and put them into something for you to watch. Go to whiteellawinning.com webinar now in order to move up as fast as possible. I'm Larry Wydell and I run the Million Dollar Mastermind. Go Go Go.