Everything Is Fine Until It Is Not Fine

A lot of times people think, oh, well, you know, these people just care about making the sale, but that's actually not the case. We wanna make sure that you're set up in the right way, paying what you should be, and understanding that if you can't take money, you have no business.

You have no business. So you didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Gologli, and on Out of the System hosted by Dr. Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who are creating bold, profitable patient-centered practices and doing it their way. So you're a Cub season ticket holder?

I am.

How in the world do you grow up in the San Fernando Valley and wind up being a Cub season ticket holder? Because like they sucked for a long time. I know this because I'm a White Sox fan.

I mean, they didn't do much better either, but I mean, well, yeah.

Okay. But we won a World Series before they did. So that's all that really matters.

That's right. So my, my dad, He was raised in Belize, so basically Central America. And he's, uh, his whole family moves to Belize when he's young and they first got their first, um, TV channels in the '80s.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and they had WGN. Go figure, somebody pirated, you know, broadcast networks. They literally ran lines and, uh, That's how they got their first like TV channels essentially. And so they became Bulls and Cubs fans. And obviously for me, like being in LA, going to games, they're a lot. My dad's like, if you're not gonna get back into the car unless you say go Cubs. So I mean, the rest is history.

There you go.

Yeah.

All right. Well, there you go. Always amazed how I meet Cub fans all over. And it's, it's stories like that, right? Like, I mean, grew up in Iowa, grew up in Minnesota, whatever. That was the channel. So fascinating. Well, I'm sitting here with Chris Flores. Tried to just screw up your last name, make it something else that it wasn't. Chris Flores of USA Payments. And we're going to talk about what may not seem like a really important topic to doctors, but obviously we'll talk about the journey, your journey in entrepreneurship. You've been, you've owned this company for 10 years. And also we're just going to talk about the whole merchant account payment processing and finance side for doctors. You work specifically in the telehealth. Tell everybody a little bit more about who you are and what you do.

So my background has been in the payments industry for over a decade at this point, but prior to that, it had been in marketing and business development. I had a marketing agency for several years, sold that off when I realized that the payment processing industry was where I strived to be in.

Why? What was it that attracted you to it?

So my clients in the marketing space were Interestingly enough, healthcare-related, supplement-related. And I had friends in the CBD market.

Hmm.

And in that, at that time, if you were selling CBD, you know, 2013 to 2015, people were thinking you were selling drugs at that point. So the banks, they didn't like 'em. And my friends basically were saying, I'm struggling to take payments. Like, we've got a great product, So I ended up digging into that industry. I ended up having a client in the credit card processing space that I was generating leads for. And then come to find out that, you know, that's a very high-risk market essentially. So along my journey of trying to help my friends in that space and also, you know, take care of my client, I realized that there's an untapped world for merchant services, credit card processing, and at that point, you know, one thing led into the next, ended up learning a lot about the industry, learned from a lot of different people, and then ended up starting up my own, you know, company. Great.

So explain. So I hear from a lot of doctors, they go, well, merchant account services are all the same. And the other thing you hear is, what's the rate? Right? In my view, you're in a very commoditized market.

Yeah.

Okay. So answer those 2 questions. Like what, why is it that every merchant account service processing is not the same? And does rate really matter?

So for instance, I'll take you back 10 years. My very first client in the telehealth space, they are one of the biggest brands that people see across the nation today. They came to me specifically because they were struggling. They were on the ground floor and nobody would give them the opportunity. Imagine going from literally nothing to today, they're doing, you know, hundreds of millions every year. And without that opportunity to get started, they would never have gotten to this point because everywhere they were going, whether it was Square, PayPal, Stripe, they were getting shut down left and right.

Right.

So a lot of times people, they don't realize why they're considered elevated risk or high risk. So for instance, in this situation, we have, because of our specialty in healthcare, health tech, telehealth, pharmacies, you name it, we have built a reputation for being able to provide stable, credit card processing and payment processing while also being able to provide really competitive rates to not— we're not here to gouge people. We're here to take care of you and make sure that you're always up and running.

Right. Now, which is really the most important thing.

Correct.

Yeah.

Because if you can't take payments, you're not in a business. You have no business. And a lot of times people say, well, you know, Stripe's, you know, charging me this. That's when we come back and say, number one, not only most of the time do we charge less than Stripe, but we provide more stability than they do. Because the last thing you want is for them to send you that email that says you are being terminated, your money will be held for minimum 90 to 180 days. And next thing you know, you don't know what you're doing. But most people ask why.

Mm-hmm.

And for most healthcare, let's say most clinics, they're not really considered high risk or elevated risk, but for the ones that want to start transacting online, let's say it's an online pharmacy, you're delivering, you know, pharmaceuticals or your telehealth provider. It, it's a situation where now that risk is typically, you've got 3 different pillars of risk. You've got reputational risk, which is typically like the adult industry, casinos, you know, cannabis. Then you've got dispute risk, like the travel industry or supplements that, you know, market, oh, hey, you're going to lose X amount of weight in 30 days. Or there's, you know, other products out there that make claims, and those tend to have a lot of dispute risk.

Mm-hmm.

And then the last one that healthcare tends to fall into is regulatory risk. So when you have regulatory risk, you're running into a situation where, let's say you're prescribing something and that patient were to somehow pass away because something happened, some, you know, what ends up happening is people tend to think that a lawsuit only stops at the business level.

No.

No, it literally will follow you through to everybody that helped facilitate that transaction, the manufacturer, the banks included. And the last thing that the banks want is another lawsuit at their doorstep. So in that situation, when you're transacting in a, in a what's called a card-not-present environment, it adds a lot more liability and a lot more scrutiny to the, to the transaction.

You know, it's, it's really interesting. I try to— we, we have this because we've launched Maverick Payments with you, which is designed specifically for this industry and for our clients. And so we're launching it at one of our masterminds and one of my clients goes, I've got Stripe. What do I, what do I have to worry about? Everything's running fine. I go, everything's running fine until it's not running fine. About 10 days later, he runs a $12,000 transaction for a biologics procedure. And you know where the story is going.

Yep.

And he walks in the next day, his Account is shut down. His money is frozen. I think they might've even gone back in and redrawn back some money. I'm not sure from like some prior transactions, like in the last couple of, like they had funded him, whatever. I don't think that, but anyway, the whole point is it almost completely shut his business down. Like, and he was, I was just like, I hear this all the time. People just think, well, my banker says everything's going to be fine. It's not fine until it's not fine, right? I mean, it's just, it's really mind-blowing. I mean, I've had it happen to me. I mean, now you always have redundancy, but I mean, you know, it's, it's an interesting thing.

It's interesting because at the end of the day, number one, everyone who always says, oh, I've got a great relationship with my banker, like they take care of me. And then I ask the question maybe 6 months later, is that banker still there? Oh no, he moved on to another bank. Like it happens all the time. Yeah. But then you've got a situation too, where, believe it or not, I would say the statistics are like 98, like a very high 90s number, 98% of business owners cannot fund their business past 30 days.

Oh yeah.

So in the event where all their money was held What would you do? And it is one of those things where you are literally, you don't know what you don't know until it happens. And, you know, for us, here's the problem that we have. You're trying to sell a more preventative type situation or solution.

Mm-hmm.

And then what ends up happening is they come to us when they're shut down, looking for a pill to actually cure that situation. And by that point, they already have thousands of dollars held up, but the only thing that we do at the time is get them back up and running within a day or two so that they can continue to add to that cash flow. But, you know, sometimes people don't learn until it happens. Yeah.

So I want to go back. I want to go way, way back. Um, you've had USA Payments for 10 years. When did you know that you were an entrepreneur? Like, did you have, like, did you have a lemonade stand? Tell me, I'm curious about Chris's journey to get here.

Um, 6 years old. I was getting myself into trouble.

Define, wait a minute, define trouble. What kind of trouble? I mean, you're like hooking cars or something like that? Like when you're 6?

So at that point, my mom at the time would buy me a pack of Pokémon cards every week. And what I would do, carefully open up the pack, take out the shiny card out of it and kind of gently reseal it, go down to the park and go sell that pack to the kids. And then I would literally have parents knocking at our door saying, you know, why is your son trying to rip off my kids?

Sounds like something the mob would do.

So between that—

Sounds like something outta Sopranos.

Between that and then growing, growing up a little bit, fast forward, I, I had an eBay store by the time I was like 10, 11 years old selling anything that I could. It's like, My mom would say, hey, where's that? Where's that? I'm like, I have no idea. No, you were just selling stuff at the house. So it got to a point where I started to sell like model ships. I would, you know, have my mom go to downtown LA, buy things from down there and just literally sell things around the world. And—

Were you building the model ships and then selling them or then—

No. So those ones were actually model ships that people would have to build themselves, which was fine because that's what they were looking for. But it was unique type stuff as well.

So, so you're doing this at what age?

That was 11 years old at the time.

So how did your parents respond to this? Like your mom and your dad?

Like they're, they were both, they came from the insurance industry, so they were having to build up their own businesses. To the point where they had been in insurance for, you know, 20+ years. And then, uh, I learned through them import-export because that's what they, another business that they had. So, you know, I, I definitely learned from them. And personally, I believe that, you know, same thing with my own kids, you raise people based off of the environments.

Mm-hmm.

Like, obviously I would love to be able to learn how you got to where you are, and I would assume some of it has to do with your environment that you grew up in.

Some entrepreneurship was incredibly discouraged. My, even though my father had his own law firm, we never thought about his entrepreneurship. He had his own law practice and he died suddenly when I was 13. And so we had to close that practice. And then my mom, She had a high school degree. It was 1981. My dad didn't have life insurance because he had tuberculosis. He had a spot on his lung from TB when he was a kid growing up in the Depression. And so my mom discouraged my entrepreneurship left and right. Like, don't be in sales. You know, those people are always, you know, trying to get you. I had a very opposite environment. Mine was, look at your sister. She's got, she's a college professor. Look at your brother. He's got his union card. He's a union plumber. Why don't you go get it? When I went bankrupt in 2010, during the recession, I had a real estate investment company. My mom came out and she said, well, you're going to go get a real job now. Why don't you go get a job at a bank or at Starbucks? Get yourself a 401. So I grew up in a very non-entrepreneurial, highly discouraged ridiculed environment. But my, I learned very early on after my dad, my dad died when I was 13. After I died, after he died, we sold the house and we moved to a townhouse in North Barrington outside of Chicago. And it's, they had a golf, there was a golf course there called Lake Barrington Shores. And I love golf. I've been playing since I was 6. I went and got a job working in the cart barn and I realized very quickly, like within the first 3 hours, that we kept our own tips and I could easily out-hustle the other kids on staff. And I knew how to clean clubs. I knew how to shine shoes because my dad was a World War II Marine. So he taught me how to spit-shine shoes. And this was 1983, 1984. And I'd walk home with $20 in tips, which was a lot of money, right?

Yeah.

Like, it's still a decent amount today. Like, might be the equivalent of like $100 today. And I just learned really quickly that I could hustle and I could make money. That's kind of the philosophy that I took to my whole entrepreneurial journey, which works for a certain amount of time. It doesn't work long-term because the company grows to a level that you can no longer be the sole person hustling.

Yep.

And you're kind of experiencing a little bit of that, right? Like you're kind of going through that. What would you like to share on that?

I mean, it's a situation where I have a mentor that's taught that you can only do so much up to a certain point. Typically that certain point is the first, call it half a million to a million, but—

Yeah, 100%. Yeah.

Once you get past that point, you really need to have a proper structure in place and people to be able to help distribute all the responsibilities evenly. And it's something that, um, For me, it, it's something recent that I have realized and recognized that it, it's time between, you know, payments has always been a core business of mine, but I've got other companies that I've acquired and started and everything else. And it takes a toll if you don't have the right structure in place. That's the biggest thing.

Is it structure or people, Chris?

In theory, my job is to hire the people to build out the structure.

Agreed. Yeah.

And that's something that, you know, people have asked, why do you struggle with delegation? Why did I, why do I? And it's, you know, that mentality of growing up being told, hey, if you want something done right, you gotta do it yourself.

And I— What a lie that is.

It, I realize.

'Cause Elon doesn't, I'm sure Elon doesn't know how to build a rocket.

You know, I use him as an example all the time. I say, hey, If Elon wants a new Model J, he literally will go tell his, you know, his first in command, I want the new Model J. It's going to be a mix between an SUV and a crossover, whatever. Go make it happen. You got 3 weeks.

Mm-hmm.

Like for that type of delegation to happen, you have to have a good, you know, number 2 next to you. that can direct everybody and make it work seamlessly. And that's something as a building entrepreneur, building business owner, it's still, you're learning every day. Like up until a few years ago, I had very, I had a very small staff. Like I had, it was only 3 people at a given time.

I'm laughing because I've been there.

And then all of a sudden in the last few years, We're upwards of like 50, which I know is not much in the grand scheme of things. It's a lot though. Like, I, I just met a business owner over the weekend that he's got 33,000 people in his organization.

You ever wonder what his payroll week is like?

Oh, he, uh, he explained it. He, he, somebody—

What did he say?

Somebody said, well, you know, and, um, if, if everyone just got a raise, you know, the world would be in a better place. And then he chimed in. He said, no, I've got 33,000 people. A 1% raise is enormous for the organization. Like, so every— everything's about perspective. So he gave me like a 10-minute masterclass on structuring and people, which was incredible. And—

What can you share?

You have to have really good leaders in place and they have to be in a proper hierarchy. Everything from You know, good alphas that lead down to the next, which is, um, your generals, your bravos that are specialized in what they've gotta do. And then what's gonna make up 80% of the organization is going to be your deltas that are doing and implementing and taking the lead. But there's a lot that honestly, I'm, I'm learning in real time at this point.

Yeah.

Because the struggles that I'm sure a lot of business owners have. You know, your constraints are what you know, and you're doing what you know. And I've realized looking back at my last few years, some of the mistakes that I've made, you know.

Humbling, isn't it?

It is. It's—

Well, how old are you, Chris?

34.

Yeah. So like you're in a really interesting phase in life. So you've got young kids, right? Okay. You have 2, right?

Yep.

Okay. So you've got young kids. That's a, that's a massive shift, right? How long were you and your wife together before you had kids?

Um, so I've been with my wife for, I hope I don't screw this up, 13 years.

Okay. So we're going to give him some grace. It's, it's hot in here.

Uh, so 13 years and then, um, now my kids are 5 and 6.

So, yeah. So you have 7 years of Wow, isn't this great? I love you so much, to, I've got oatmeal on my forehead and I haven't taken a shower in 4 days. Right? I mean, so you've got, so you have that massive shift. You go through what some people will call your Saturn return from 28 to 32. So right when you're 28, you're having, you're starting to have kids, you starting to go through this massive life change, right?

Yep.

Like, not just with the kids, but like internally. This is generally, and you're different because you've been an entrepreneur, so like, but Like, my girlfriend is finishing up her Saturn return. She's in her early 30s. Like, everything that she believed that she thought that she knew in her 20s, she's like, oh, that was all bullshit, right? Like, but you're different because you had your own business, so you probably had a different perspective.

The, the 2 perspectives I can give is early 20s, early business building. I was working until literally, you know, the middle of the night, like all the time. Even when I, early relationship, I was working, you know, 2, 3, 4 in the morning, whatever the case may be. Now, obviously I can't do that because otherwise I'm gonna be just useless throughout the rest of the day. Plus then now at this point, I know my priorities and, you know, something that I have not told to many people is a few years ago I had gotten to a point where I come to my realization that I Mentally wasn't at the right place. And, um, I realized I had to reprioritize primarily the family first. Um, it's hard. It's, it is hard.

Look, family first sounds great. It's hard because society tells us, I mean, let's, let's just be frank. You and I are very different from the rest of the world. Like people are like, oh, you should have work-life balance. I don't know about you, it doesn't exist for people like you and I. My work is my life. There is no, I don't turn my brain off. I mean, I've learned how to over the weekends. I mean, you know, I'm usually done by like 12 on Fridays and Christine and I, you know, we went to Venice on Friday night, watched the sunset, walked around, you know, like Saturday when we went up to our friend's house at Topanga, we had breakfast at Cafe 27. Like, you know, we— And then we came back to the house and we hung out and we, the listeners know, we like to do some journeys, some psychedelic journeys. We did that. Like, that's how we shut down, right? But my brain never shuts off from the business. I'm always thinking about the staff. I'm always thinking about the pieces. Like, okay, if we go in this direction and there's this opportunity over there. And so like, what's the long-term impact if I pursue that? Like, do we have the capacity, the finance, and the energy to do it? Are you the, do you find yourself the same way?

Trust me, I just came back from 3 weeks in Spain and a week in Chicago, and people ask the question of, oh, how was your vacation? I mean, at the end of the day, it's like still working in a different place. That's kind of what it is. Um, but do you feel guilty about it? Yes, I do. I honestly do. It's one specifically for the family. It's one of those things where this one was a little bit more rough than usual. Because you're dealing with personnel issues that's holding up certain things. Now, granted, I will say like Spain, for instance, one of my favorite places, we've been a couple of times now.

Well, the nice thing is 8 hours ahead.

So exactly. So you're pretty detached. So it, it allows you to technically, um, enjoy the morning up until like 2, 2 o'clock because it's 8 o'clock Eastern, but The problems that I had on, on this past trip was I was working more than I had anticipated. Normally, I already knew from my previous time that, you know, I can work 3 hours and be solid every day. No big deal.

Mm-hmm.

But some of that personnel issue started to come up and it made me realize that structuring is huge at this point.

So, um, It's really hard. It's really hard. People look at, I always like, you know, now that I live here in California, right? So now we've got the billionaire tax, right? And to a certain degree, I understand, like there's a lot of wealth, like, you know, living, you live in LA obviously. And so like, there's a lot of money in LA. Like you drive through Laurel Canyon, you come down through Beverly Hills.

Yep.

The cheapest house you're looking at is probably what, $15 million? And there's hundreds of them, right? Like all through the canyon, there's a crap ton of money. But the belief that for people, like people don't understand what you and I go through. Like they just, there's no way you can even explain it. I don't think, I think it's just really hard for, I know Christine, she's like, wait a minute, you have to pay a tax on that? I'm like, yeah, babe. That's the way it works. She's like, what? Like she just got her tax bill because when she got her tax bill in April, because she's made significantly more than she used to, she went, wait, I owe how much? I'm not getting back? I'm like, yeah, you're making X amount now. Like, this is how this works. She's like, what the hell?

See, that's the thing is people always ask the question of, you know, why do you do this? Why do you do that? At a certain point, I honestly, I don't typically give a crap about materialistic things, but now you have to be very strategic on how to offset certain things. And it's like, I don't, I don't need a, you know, I don't need 3 trucks, but, you know, I need to—

You got to do something with the money.

Do whatever you got to do to try to preserve as much as you can. So there's a lot of things that they don't teach you. And actually, one of the, one of my goals in my later life here, maybe in the next 10 years or whatnot.

You can run for governor?

No, definitely not.

Come on, run for governor.

Um, I live right above my university that I graduated from, and I would love to be able to go back. I do some stuff with the business department every once in a while, but, you know, be able to actually go back and teach things that can actually help students leave school and actually be able to apply it because nobody teaches you that good credit is going to help you or how to build business credit because it can actually help, you know, allow you to leverage that and grow even further. Or, hey, this is how you learn from my mistakes, essentially.

Mm-hmm.

You know, so there's a lot that you don't learn when you're Coming up and I learned how to bartend. Yeah.

I mean, I don't, well, granted I went to school for, to my degree's in professional golf management. I went to college to learn how to be a golf professional and run clubs, which I did. And I figured out at a very early age, I'm like, kind of good at this business thing. I was really good at taking golf courses that were hemorrhaging cash and making them profitable in a year, which is no small feat. Right. Um, and Did it a number of times, built a couple of courses and things like that, and then left because I got tired of working weekends and holidays. And there's like, you know, there's, if I wanted to start making $350,000 a year, I had to go work in the ultra-private sector, which I'm like, I don't know. I want to be a member of that club. Like, I don't want to run Riviera. I want to be a member of Riviera. So, but yeah, you, you don't really learn much that is applied in real life in college. And you're really taught by people that have never owned a lemonade stand, especially in business. Like, how can you teach business and entrepreneurship and have never started a company? Can you explain that one to me? Why, how does that, how does that happen?

That's the thing is you can only learn so much from a textbook. Thankfully, I did have a few professors that had, um, real life experience with their own businesses. Um, but honestly, when people say, hey, you know, was college worth it for you? The reality is For me, I got really good connections that led me down to the next path. Like, if you take a look at the timeline of your life, you know, how did you get to where you are? One thing led to the next, to the next. So that's the value that I see from it. But, um, not everybody needs to, 'cause everybody kind of follows their own path.

Well, I think it's, I don't know about you. You had asked earlier, like, how did I wind up in this space? I mean, I originally went to school for photography. I won a number of national awards as a kid growing in high school. I won 4 out of 5 national awards in photography nationwide. I mean, that's kind of like being a 5— it's the equivalent of a 5-star athlete.

Okay.

And I originally went to school for photography and was spending every day in the darkroom breathing chemicals. I'm like, I like the sun. Dropped out of that and then went back for a year, went and got in the golf business. And I loved the golf business because I love people and I love, I really, there's a part of me that I really love serving people, right? Helping them. I love helping people feel great and have a great time, but I knew I couldn't make any money. And then I got into real estate investment and I started buying and selling pre-foreclosure property in 2004, just like you saw on TV back then.

Yep.

And the guy that taught me called me up one day and said, hey, I need a coach. I'm like, I've done 3 deals. He goes, that's 3 more than anybody else. He goes, I'll tell you what to do. I'll pay you 6 grand a month. I'm like, okay. Which was again, everything I needed to cover my monthly nut. And then the recession happened and by mistake I wound up in the medical space. I was traveling with a friend of mine. We were here in California. I was doing seminars for a guy by the name of Perry Marshall, front of, 'cause I'm a front of the room. I did cut my teeth by being able to stand in the front of the room selling things. And John Paul Mendoza said you'd be great at this erectile dysfunction thing. And I'm like, the hell does that mean? And he told me the model and I'm like, yeah, advertise on radio and TV, answer the phone, use a script, convert 'em in, sell 'em in, you know, give 'em an injection before they have to know what the price is and like give 'em an erection that they haven't had in 2 years and then sell 'em a package. I'm like, I'm in. That's how I wound up in it. That was 2014, 12 years ago. It'll be, uh, 13 years in, in January. I mean, that's how I wound up in it. I, Never in a million years thought I'd be in medical and I absolutely love it.

Trust me, in the last 10 years of learning from all the different companies that we serve, um, I have people literally listening into some of my meetings sometimes. And they're like, you know, if you didn't know, or if I didn't know that you were in the payment space, you would think that you're a medical professional. I literally am talking to pharmacists. I'm talking to doctors, PC groups all the time, giving them the strategy beyond just payments. And I've learned so much just by being involved and absorbing everything. And it's something that I'm glad to know I know very well because now it's created that specialty for us.

But, um, what do you see going on with doctors? What do you specifically in the medical space? And I know you work with like med spas and things like that. What are some of the things that stand out to you about working in the medical industry?

A lot of times they don't know. They, they have the desire to grow a business beyond their practices.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but they don't understand the world beyond. And that's the reason why I've had to come in and consult and say, hey, you, you can't be doing X, Y, and Z, otherwise you're going to be hindering your business. For instance, like they don't, they don't have the understanding of They obviously understand I can't make medical claims that are beyond what I can actually prove or whatever. Right. But it's a situation where they're really good at what they do, but they're really bad at the business building. They're really bad at—

horrible. So it's like you and I doing surgery.

So I, I, I love being able to connect our clients with Um, I've got resources, I've got marketing resources, I've got platform resources, financial resources, obviously. Um, there's a lot of things where they don't know because it's just not what they do. And, um, a lot of—

It's kind of amazing, isn't it? How little they know about business, but they're very intelligent with what they do.

They've got a very high IQ, but then When you give them the framework of this is what you should be doing, X, Y, and Z, then it starts to click with them and they start to realize that, okay, so if I do this, I get this result. Yeah. And for me, the way that I built my business is, uh, coming from the marketing and business development world, what separated me from the rest of any salesperson, I always tell people this, what separates me from any other salesperson or company down the street is You get me and the value that I bring, because I'm not, I'm not just telling you, you know, how much you're going to be saving with your credit card processing. I'm literally sitting there on the phone or on a call with people saying, here's resource number 1 that's going to help you build your business. Here's resource number 2. This is what you should be doing. This is the logic that you should be using. I literally just had a call last week where somebody who has been working in health tech for a long time, I gave them the framework of what to do logically. And they're like, wow, I never thought about that. That makes total sense. That's probably going to increase our revenue by at least 30%.

And 30%, you know, once you get in with industry, with businesses like ours in the medical field, not yours and mine, but like those practices, they really have a very set fixed expense line. And then the, anything that happens once they get 10 to 15% above that, it's just the incremental cost of the services, meaning the kit or whatever that they have to use. And that's a, that's a big thing for them to realize. Like I tell people all the time, if you raise your prices 11%, you will double your profitability because it's all going to the bottom line. There's not, that 11% doesn't cost you another 5%. It's just pure profit right to the bottom line. And if you have 10% profit margins, you're going to increase that significantly.

So. One of the things that business owners tend to be a little bit afraid of, especially when they have a product or service that is priced, not, not like mine. Mine is, like you said, commoditized, but when you're dealing with something specific, I was talking to an owner of an ED clinic.

This was near and dear to my heart.

This was years ago where they basically said, so they had a clinic where the dad, where the son was taking over the practice of the dad. And he's like, hey dad, I'm going to control the pricing. He was charging like $1,000 for the treatment. He's like, dad, let's, let's raise it to $2,000. No drop-off.

None. I tell our clients this all the time.

Raised it to $5,000.

No drop-off.

Drop-off.

Conversions probably went up.

Raised it to $10,000. No drop-off. He started to notice the drop-off at $12,000.

Yep.

And he's like, okay, let's bring it back down to $10,000. And that's where they had sat. And it's incredible how much money is being left on the table.

Oh, that is our number one thing that we tell people. And some people are like, well, you just, I heard you just tell people to raise prices. I'm like, no, once I teach you how to raise prices and you're now making double your revenue, now, you're going to trust me more, right? Because trust when it comes to, you know, business growth is everything. I mean, it's, it's your baby, right? So yeah, we tell them like, we'll have people doing $1,000 on PRP and after 3 months with us, they're doing $8,000 for the same procedure. I mean, they've added a couple of other things.

Yeah.

You might have shockwave or something like that. Um, my, my best, my best success stories are doctors that went from the insurance side of things, seeing 40 to 60 patients a day.

To now they see 3 to 5 patients a week on cash pay, on cash pay.

And they're doing, they were doing $280,000 in insurance or $200,000 to $280,000 a month in insurance and had 35 staff members. And now they're doing $250,000 a month on cash and they have 7 staff members. You can do the math, right? Like, yeah.

One of my largest telehealth clients, they are a They're probably the top female-focused telehealth brand. They went from, you know, only insurance with copays to, you're talking maybe 6 figures every month to now 7, 8 figures every month cash pay.

Yeah.

And they're killing it right now.

There's no reason ever for a doctor who wants to remain independent there's no reason for them to have insurance. The numbers now is, as of 2024, the average American family of 4 now spends $18,657 out of pocket per year after insurance premiums for healthcare.

So I believe it.

I mean, you know, I'm sure you're younger, but I mean, oh yeah, we still pay a lot. I mean, I have catastrophic health insurance.

That's it.

That's all I carry. Because I mean, I pay everything out of pocket to the first, I don't know, $25,000 or $35,000. And I pay like $800 a month for that. I'm like, this is ridiculous. I mean, but yeah, I mean, it's just become a, it's become a racket. Um, I'm curious. I want to go back to this because I'm curious about this from a leadership standpoint. You talk going from the way your company has been growing. What has been, you talked about getting the right people, right? Like in the right places, the real type of leaders. But what kind of leader have you had to become to get those people? What kind of transformation have you had to go through?

So typically I'm a pretty reserved type person. Oh, really?

I didn't, I couldn't tell that.

But here's the thing. At the end of the day, I've got, I've got people that they understand that They understand what I and we as a whole are capable of. And I've got, I've got a few people that are very strong to the point where, you know, I would call them the fixers if the situation was needed.

The wolf.

Yeah. But then I've got people that are very, um, intelligent, operationally minded people that when you put them in front of the situation, they can go and figure it out. Which is the type of leader that you want. You want people that they don't have to come back to you and say, oh, how do you do this? You want the type of people that can go and say, it's been done.

Now, that's, folks, that right there is like a writer-downer.

But the problem is finding those people and it's—

It's expensive.

It took me time to realize the bar that I needed to set for specific people because—

Was it the bar you had to set for yourself?

Well, the biggest challenge that I had had always been delegation, realizing that I needed to, that I couldn't do it all by myself. And I joke around with this on occasion where I need to have a more lazy mentality. It's hard, isn't it? And it's hard because you, you want to be able to do everything.

And, um, well, you come from a family that worked really, really hard. Right. Are you first generation?

First generation in the US. Yeah.

Yeah. So hard work is like paramount.

It is. And especially being able to see the ups and then some severe downs. Like, it's funny because you were mentioning photography and it's like, I just thought about this. I saw a video that said, you know, if you were born in between this time and this time, you got the best of both. I developed photos in a, in a darkroom, but then I also transitioned to digital photography.

Like this baby right here, I can take the best pictures. So I still, I still like to use this.

It's crazy because so the type of person I am, I've told people I can, I can get angry. I can yell at people if I really want to, but that none of that is ever going to get you anywhere as a business owner, as a leader. The way that you conduct yourself, the trust that you build, it's critical for you to be able to grow and have your, your people follow suit. So me as a leader, I've had to pick a specific persona, run with it and continue with it.

What is it?

It, it's somebody that cares about their people. And I think that's also a hindrance that I have. I care way too much sometimes about the people. And in the last year, year and a half, I've had to make decisions that hurt because I really do grow and create relationships with people. And, you know, I, I used to be of the belief that anybody and everybody could be an entrepreneur, but in the last year I've had to realize that not everybody has it in them.

Yeah.

So with that being the case, I've realized that I also have to do what's best for the organization outside of the emotions of the friendships or everything else. So now—

Did you have to let people go that had been with you for a long time?

I had to let people go that are near and dear.

Dear friends. Yeah.

Yeah. And that's—

And really kind of helped you build, right? But only could take it to a certain level. Did you experience that?

Some of them have helped build. Some of them were more of a detriment.

Yeah, some of them were riding.

So it's a situation where I've learned a lot, especially from the people perspective. And it's take the time to find good people. Don't just take it for what it is on the surface. Oh, hey, they've got a great resume, or, you know, whatever. You really have to see if they're going to be a good fit for the culture. A video I was listening to literally just said like, You know, it's a situation where you're dating somebody for a short period of time and then you get married. You don't know—

Especially in the state of California.

You don't know what the environment's going to be like, but if you're able to date them and understand, you know, how they act in specific situations, you know that they're going to grow into a good leader. They're going to grow, you know, or be able to command that presence. So for me in particular, it's a lot of trial and error and hoping that I can build the trust with the teams that are around me. But, uh, I continue to make mistakes, but trying to learn from it and no one's gonna not make, make any mistakes.

You know, you, I think the, I think one of the, you mentioned a couple of things. Yeah. It's easy as hell to grow a million-dollar company. On your effort. Um, and you'll pay yourself whatever, $200 grand, maybe $250,000, not, and then, you know, running all the things through his company, but you can't take a vacation, right? Like if you, if you take a vacation for a week, you're going to come back to like a million, a bazillion emails, right? So then that next move that you take from like a million to like a million 8, you actually take a step back in profitability. Was what I, and I've done this a couple of times, right? And then when you get up above like 2 to 2.5, and it's all kind of industry dependent a little bit, that's when things start to get better. But then very quickly you realize the people that got you from a million to 2.5 million are not the ones that are going to get you to 10 million. And we just went through this over, I told you in November of '24, I was like, oh God, I got to make some changes. And I started making changes in January of '25. And I hired, I kept hiring people I couldn't afford who were way more experienced than everybody else on my team. And they're coming in going, that person's got to go. That person's got to go. This person might be able to stick around, but they got to like, it was really, really hard. Right. And you're right. Like you have people, I'm very loyal. I like having people that have been with me for a long time. I like knowing them. I like Going to dinner with them. I love when they, we're a virtual company, so I love when they come out and we do meetings. Like, you know, our Christmas end of the year party is, you know, like 3 days and we'll have a great time and like bring your spouse. Like, I love to get to know them all. Right. But it also makes it incredibly hard to let people go because you realize, like, I just had this with a vendor, not a, like a contractor, not a staff member from like, it hit me 2 weeks ago. I'm like, Oh, fuck. They've never done X and that's exactly what I need them to do now. Oh man, I gotta let them go. Like, this is a contractor that has been with me for like 2 years that does really, really good work. They already know.

So it's not like it's, I'm like, look, you're, can you do this?

Well, I can learn. I, I don't have time for you to learn. I need somebody that's done it.

I realized that my personal mistake was I put people into leadership roles that did not have the experience, especially Especially with one of my acquisitions too. So that, that was an issue. Like you care about the people, you want to give them the opportunity, but you can't assume that all people can take that opportunity and run with it. And so for me in particular, the intentions are great. You have really good intentions, but doesn't mean that it's going to translate into success, unfortunately. Yeah.

It's really, it's like, that's when I'm like, I mean, I keep saying it's hard. It's hard because it's hard emotionally. It's not, it's not hard mentally. You mentally know what needs to happen. At least I do. It's hard emotionally. I mean, you have people, and I've had to do this a couple of times. I've had at the ED clinics, I had people that helped us get it started. You know, we're there answering the phone, working 14-hour days, painting walls. And then you find out they're stealing from you, stealing, you know, your version of Viagra and like selling it to their friends. Like, you know, like what? You catch 'em on camera. I'm like, well, no, you don't get to stick around. Like, I'm sorry. Like, I'm sorry. I'm not sorry. Like, you, you gotta go. Like, that's just the way it is.

Trust me. Um, dependent on the type of person that you are, you do get taken advantage of, which for me, I've I've had that happen.

So I've learned, well, so running the club business, I had a day one day, I had a time one day. I was always, I was your age. I was like 33, 34 probably. So I'm running the biggest high-profile club in our company called the University Club. It's like the highest profile club in the state of Louisiana because it's a private club for US, for LSU alumni and supporters. The men's and women's golf team plays and practices there. Part of the Tiger Athletic Foundation. And I had a staff member come in and say, we got a problem. I go, what's going on? She goes, there are about 15 to 20 people on staff here last night. They came in, they broke into the downstairs where the beer is. They took the bev cart out.

Nope.

And I'm like, it's like 8:30 in the morning. I'm like, and they kind of trashed the bev cart. It's downstairs, but it's packed in mud, blah, blah, blah. Like Louisiana mud is no joke. It's like concrete. And I go, who was it? And she gave me the names and I did some research. And that day I had to fire 15 people one after one. And I only had a little bit of the story, so I had to bring somebody in and say, I know exactly what you did. So now if you don't want me to press charges, I need you to tell me everything and who else was included. And then they would tell me everything that they did. And I'm like, oh my God. Right. It was one of those, I was like fishing and I fired 15 people. I, I, my entire food and beverage staff, like 75% of them fired in one day. People, and these were people that had been to my house for Christmas parties. Like I'd gone, like I'm 34, I'm their buddy. Right. And that completely changed me. Like I've realized to a certain degree, my team, they can't be my friends. It's kind of hard, right? Like I can only let most of them in so far. Like Heather, who's my right-hand person, we're very close, right? Like she's, and she's developed with me over the years, but like, yeah, I mean, that's been the hardest. I think that's the hardest thing is like telling, I'm not, at the end of the day, I'm your boss first. What, how about, how has it been for you?

It's hard because, um, Especially in the credit card processing world, it's a very cutthroat industry.

Yeah.

And, um, letting too many people in, you don't know who's, who has negative intentions or whatever the case may be. So it, it is hard sometimes to be able to let people in and then trust them that they're not gonna do wrong, essentially.

And, um, do you still interview everybody?

I have a really good, um, chief administrative officer that she runs everything, um, on that side of things. And only do I interview the people that I know are, um, crucial, uh, typically the sales and marketing side of things.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so not everybody, but the ones that I feel are Major roles, essentially.

How hard was it to give that up?

Honestly, it was a relief.

Yeah.

Because she's really good at what she does. And, um, you know, even for her, she, she'll come and say, hey, I made a mistake, but, you know, I, I'm remediating. I already, I already took care of it. Yeah. So it's one of those things where I'd rather have, uh, I'd rather have people that you know, are willing to understand when it's time to ask for help or, hey, I'm figuring it out. I got it taken care of rather than somebody that just continuously makes mistakes and can't seem to take care of it. Like, you know, people are always going to make mistakes. Absolutely.

How'd you find your right-hand person and how long has she been with you and like, What, how was that process?

5 years now. And, um, you know, truth be told, she's actually a cousin of mine. So it, it's hard, especially I have a joke that is within my organizations, it tends to, instead of USA payments, it should be family payments. 'Cause I've, I've hired a lot of family.

Oh.

Um, which can, can, it can be really hard. Yeah. But in all honesty, a lot of my cousins that are working with me, they understand that it is business when we're on business time. And one of my cousins, for instance, he runs all of our operate— or all of our customer support and everything else. He's one of the smartest people I've met. And you're never going to find good people unless you give them the opportunity. But that's never to say that conversations are easy if things need to change, right? But I'm proud to be able to say that the people who have come from my family, they are, they're busting their balls every single day because they know that we're on, on the mission to build bigger and better and One of the things that I wish I could always tell them on a daily basis is, hey, we have a huge goal. And once we get to this point, I can't wait to be able to reward everyone. It's just, as a business owner, you know where your limitations are. Like, mm-hmm. it's hard when you know that you're at that time where, oh, people are gonna expect raises. It's, it, it's like, okay, I'm gonna make sure that I take care of my people. But it's hard when you're on a budget, you're still figuring things out. And I know, like you mentioned earlier, you're hiring people that you can't necessarily afford. And I think that's one of my things that I'm trying to figure out is I would like to be able to hire people I can't afford, but then what position does it put you in? So.

My experience has been that you can never afford to hire the person you need to hire. So therefore you should hire 'em because if they're that good, they will—

Turn the ROI.

So we, it has taken, it took us a year to fix, to create a consistent pathway in, right? Marketing to doctors is not exactly the easiest thing in the world and it's rather expensive. The best way to this day to get the best quality client is to go be at events, which requires you to be out Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Okay. And no one wants to walk by a booth and admit they have a problem in business. So then that requires me to speak. Well, because of the fact that they won't let me speak during the CME portion because I talk about money, I have to sponsor the lunch. So I have the booth, the team, the sponsorship of the lunch, right? And our average timeframe for someone to become a client after they see me speak is what we've been able to track is like 6 months. So I won't mention the number of how much I lay out. Like you can imagine, right? You get it. You go to A4M, right?

We do conferences.

We do conferences. So I have that and then I have the staff, then I have the gestation period and the best, I hired someone who is 25, 30 years experience of creating these runways and she's the, one of the absolute best in the industry. And has done it with sales rooms of 500 people. And she got that 6 to 9 months down to like 60 days. And, you know, our ROI has gone from this to that on that process. And so not possible unless I hired her. I could have done it, but I would have gotten there a lot slower. And then the other thing is I hired a director of coaching because I was still having to do some coaching. I got rid of that and I got rid of that, which then allowed me to do the thing that I'm best at.

This. Yep.

And to create my schedule last week, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. Guess how many meetings I had?

5? 0?

0. I once read, I once saw a documentary on Calvin Klein. You know who he is? The world-famous designer. And His business partner's first name is Barry, I think. And they grew up together in New York, right? In Brooklyn or Bronx or wherever they grew up. Calvin Klein knows absolutely nothing about what goes on in the business. Barry knows absolutely nothing that goes on the creative side of it. And they've built a multi-billion dollar corporation, right? Like, and that's always stuck out with me because I'm a creative. I'm very much of a Calvin Klein. Like, I create frameworks, I get downloads. That's what I'm here to do. And I now have someone, Heather, to run the business that I don't— I look at bank balances about once a week and I get a report, right? But I don't make decisions on when things are paid. I don't worry about payroll anymore. Like, and what that's done is it's allowed the heavens to open up for me to be able to do the thing that I love to do. And that is show people how to grow their businesses. And we always apply that to our business first. And then, so that's, it's been The last 6 months have been the best. I'm 58. The last 6 months have been the absolute greatest joy ever in my entrepreneurial history. And I've been an entrepreneur since I was 16. It's been the most fun I've ever had in my life because of that. I've hired people that I can't afford. I've gone in directions that make absolutely no sense. I've trusted my gut. Because once you go broke, it doesn't fucking matter. Like, big deal. I've been broke. I'll come back.

Right?

It's just not the end of the world, right? I mean, I've had credit scores of 400, you know, I mean, you go bankrupt, things, bad things happen. That's my advice to you. Just like, go, like, you can never ever afford the thing that you need to take the business to the next level.

Trust me, it's the, the decisions that you have to make sometimes that you're a little bit afraid of that you have to do. So I get it. And, um, You know, this today in particular came in a perfect time because literally, I kid you not, within this last week I realized all the things that I needed to do. And it's all things that we got to start implementing. So yeah.

How important is culture to you and your company?

It's really important because at the end of the day, I have one remote company that is Which is USA Payments. USA Payments, literally, it's all across everywhere. You know, I do miss having a physical office.

Do you work from home?

I have, I have an office for myself. But that office was, you know, I love cars. So during the pandemic, my wife's like, hey, we can't, we can't buy any more cars. We're out of space. There's no more Sure, I can. I'm gonna go—

Don't gimme a challenge, babe.

I'm gonna go get an office so that, but no.

You know, there's therapy for this.

Yes, I know. But with that being the case, everyone being remote, we've built up a really strong culture where everybody is able to work very well with one another. My COO that I brought in, my now CSO, when they came to me, they were very open about, hey, my goal is not to live here in California anymore. It's to live in Tennessee, North Carolina. Is that okay with you? I said, yeah, that's perfectly fine. Let's get, let's get the job done and you can live wherever you need to be.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but then there are other companies that I've had that the culture can be negative if the right— if the wrong people are in the wrong seats. So those are things that I've had to learn and things that I have to deal with. And, um, you know, you're learning every single day.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, I'm like you. I would love to— I, I wish, I wish my chief operating officer, Heather, she lives in Texas. Her husband's in the military, right? Like, I would love for her to live right down the street from Christina and I. Like, it's literally like I have 2 wives. Like, I mean, in a very good way, not in a creepy, like, you know, weird way. Because they both understand me so well, right? Like, you know, that unspoken language of like, you know, they just get it, right?

Yeah.

And I get them. But there's no way in hell that that's ever going to happen. I mean, he's got 6 more years in the Air Force in He would, he's a West, he's a West Texas Albuquerque boy. She's a West Texas gal. She's like, no, we want land. I'm like, yeah, that's not going to happen in LA. Like, you're lucky if you get a half acre. But I do love the virtual company because I can hire the absolute best people.

Are you hiring solely US-based or everywhere?

We have some people based in the Philippines, like operations staff is based in the Philippines. That has its pluses and minuses. They do very, very good work. But you, I worry sometimes about the ceiling because it's more of telling them how to do something versus somebody coming with an answer.

Yeah.

How about you? Do you use offshore?

We do. And that's actually part of my problem that I had too, because I was very, I am very people-focused and one of our first Filipino-based executive assistants that I had, you know, I was so concerned about like, wait, you're up from like—

I'm the same way.

Midnight to here. And I actually tried to change the way that they did it to accommodate. And then my CAO said, you just have to let her do what she's been used to doing all these years. She signed up to be, you know, an executive assistant for us in our time zone. You have to allow her to do that. And, uh, in the same way, you know, 'cause I, I really do care about people's like lives. 'Cause if you're working from midnight to 8:00 AM and then, you know, you still have the rest of your day that you gotta figure out, right?

So never mind the circadian rhythms and the studies that I read of like the impact that that leads to with cancer and things like that. My first wife was an ER nurse working the night shift, higher incidences of breast cancer and those, right? Yeah, but obviously a very stressful environment too. So that factored into it.

But yeah, but I've, I've also realized that being able to be in that remote environment, you're starting to find some really talented people. Um, so you're right. Being able to be in the remote has helped grow beyond just your general area, especially having to hire here in California. That would be expensive.

Oh, I tried to hire an executive. I want an executive assistant based here. Okay. Because we ship books out and I travel. So I want them to also swing by the house and check on the house and bring packages in and check on the cat, right? Water the plants, like all this stuff. So I'm thinking, yeah, I'll hire an executive EA here for like $28, $30 an hour. No, they all want $40. I'm like, wait a minute, that would pay you like $100-something thousand. Like that's more than I'm paying some of my people that are like, what?

Yeah.

So we're not hiring an LA-based DA for me because I'm like, we'll figure out the other stuff. But yeah, it's insanely expensive out here.

Yeah.

It's really, yeah. I chose to move here and you chose to stay here. Let's talk a little bit more about the payment side because I, and thanks for that segue. Thank you for that because I think it's an important thing for people to hear. So What are you, we'd mentioned a bit ago, like doctors don't really understand the business side of it. What are some of the biggest mistakes you see them make when they're making this transition into private practice?

Um, I mean, in the earlier days, a lot of them were trying to focus on insurance and the idea of cash pay, you know, has evolved over the last decade. So that, that's one huge thing that I'm glad that the industry's starting to move towards. But then you get people that are transitioning to, I don't know if you've seen this, like 6 different software platforms or systems because they can't find the right thing for them that works for them, that works within their economics. Like, not to put a plug, but because of that, we ended up developing our own EMR. Like, that is, that was something that we realized, hey, so-and-so stated that their last 3, you know, systems were garbage and they were paying $1,000 a month for, like, here, here's a value-added service for you. It's more cost-effective. You also get to tell us because you know us, hey, I really want to add this feature or functionality. I've got a development team that basically can do it for you within a week or 2, like max versus, oh, maybe that's a Q4 project.

Wow.

So that's part of how we're trying to differentiate ourselves. Not to say that it's perfect by all means, but, you know, reality is it meets the 80% of the market. So the wrong systems, the wrong platforms, you get people that in some cases they've never managed businesses before. They hire way too many people. That's another thing. Some of them especially are, you know, they're, they're not realizing, you know, why do I need a specific type of credit card processing account? Well, you know, who you have right now may be good for your clinic, but now that you're moving more for the online side, you really do need that stability.

Mm-hmm.

Like, that's the other thing is, you know, especially in the peptide world now in GLPs and, you know, hormone therapy, You're not realizing the risks that are involved. And if you're shipping out products, like they really need a more stable, you know, solution. So some of those items, um, you know, proper capital support, um, a lot.

Let's talk about that. Like, what does that mean when you say, and you, like, you'd mentioned this before, like what kind of capital support do they need? What does that mean? And what does that look like?

Uh, a lot of times they don't realize that they need more money to be able to not only pay their overheads, but also grow their business. I've got a client, they spend $500,000 on ads a day.

A day?

A day. And then you've got some of the guys that are, you know, they're not willing to even spend $5,000 a month.

Right.

So The idea that you're growing your business, it's dependent at what scale you want to. Not saying that anyone from day one's gonna start spending $500,000 a day. That took 10 years plus to get to that point. But imagine that same company started at zero.

Mm-hmm.

So it's just a matter of how quickly you want to accelerate and having the right, um, the right resources. But also—

Do you help them get that, like lines of credit and things like that?

Or— I, we have resources that can, we can always connect them to for lines of credit and for, uh, financial building, uh, business credit building, all of that.

Um, are these companies you own or your partners?

No, those ones are partners.

Okay.

But we, we also do have capital, uh, lines that can come from us, but Typically we advise more on the client side first. So if you don't have to tap into that, because that's expensive money.

Like merchant cash advance. Yeah, those are expensive.

That's really expensive. And we try not to. Yeah. Um, but some people, if they have the right intention with the right game plan, they can leverage it and be perfectly fine. Um, I've had to do it.

And you're right, you better have the right plan. You can't just be like, oh, this is going to solve cash flow.

Correct.

No, you've got to, because that cash flow problem ain't going to go away and it's going to get worse.

Correct.

No, you have to— I've used it in the past to take that money specifically to grow something very specifically.

Yeah. Yeah.

With a very specific strategy.

So in particular for me, I'm, I'm very, I try to be very careful on behalf of the client because I don't want them running their business into the ground, but sometimes that's, you can only control so much. Um, but yeah, at the end of the day, just in general, they they make mistakes, whether it's, you know, all that I mentioned to the capital, to not having the right marketing plans, like, you know, trying, like myself, trying to be all solutions for everything. You can't do that.

Yeah.

So there are some really good companies out there that have grown from nothing to millions. And then you have some companies that are led by some of the smartest people that They're barely making enough to, you know, pay their supplies.

So where do you see the medical industry going specifically? Well, I'm just in general, what, what, where do you see, what do you see happening over the next 3 to 5 years in the medical industry? And then what do you see happening in the cash-based side?

With all the new, um, With the Category 2 peptides as an example, moving up so that everyone can have access from a compounded standpoint, you're going to see a huge increase. You know, now people are already in the space.

Oh yeah.

But now that it's like total disregard to like how it's made. Exactly. But which, that's a completely different story for a different day.

I, I have, I got plenty of doctors that have an opinion on that. You and I should just stay outta that.

But now that that's becoming more of a norm, like I have clients that come to us saying, hey, I need, do you have a pharmacy for X, Y, and Z states or whatever? I literally have over 50 pharmacies that I can introduce people to, which we do all the time for specific needs. And you're starting to hear from these pharmacies, business is just growing, growing, growing.

They can't keep up.

And that's the thing is you can, see where the direction that the industry is going. And on the cash pay side, you're going to see even more. Like, it's, it's incredible to see. And it's great for the business owner. It's great for the patient base, because now they have options, more options.

Mm-hmm.

And for me in particular, I care about this because I, I recently had friends and family start to, you know, inquire about other peptides and whatnot, knowing that it's actually coming from regulated compliant pharmacies rather than somebody's garage. Like that makes me feel better. So.

I love, I love being out here in LA. We're at a, I love LA. It's just the funniest. It's like all the stereotypes are true and yet they're not true, but they're real. It's just the funniest moving here at this age. We're at a party in Bel Air. And people are like, yeah, you know, it's of course they start with the sound bath, typical LA, right? Get there at 7 o'clock for the sound bath. I'm like, who starts their party with a sound bath? Okay. And they're, you know, handing out whatever psychedelics and, you know, they got an open bar. It's everything that you would expect. And so I start talking with people and this one guy goes, oh, you're in the longevity space. I'm like, yeah, you know, PRP, regenerative anti-aging, all that. He goes, Who's your peptide guy? Just like that. I'm like, what, what do you mean? Who's my, my peptide guy is Dr. Haas. He's like, no, no, man. Like, I got a great peptide guy. Where are you getting your peptides from? You getting 'em from China? I'm like, no, I'm getting 'em from the US. Like, I'm getting 'em. Oh no, man, you gotta get 'em from China. They're cheaper. Like, it was like this whole thing of like, who's your cocaine guy? Like, what's—

Yeah.

And Christine's with me and my buddy Mark is with me and we're just like, and the guy leaves and I'm like, Only in LA, baby. Like, this is just, it's so funny. Everybody's got like their peptide guy. Isn't that just hilarious?

Well, I, I compare this to back in the 2010s where it was the CBD boom at the end. Yeah. To now everyone is popping up with their own peptide company and, mm-hmm, you know, they're like, oh, you know, you see them online promoting all these things and talking in, you know, medical terms and everything else. And I really want to comment or say, last week you were selling garage doors. Like, now you're apparently an MD. Like, it's ridiculous. So that's the huge reason why I'm very particular with how I work with our clients. And, you know, it's going to be interesting in the next few years.

I want to see it regulated. To get rid of the fakers. Like when I got involved in the regen space, probably, I mean, like, well, we were doing PRP at our clinics, but my first regen client was 2019, like PRP or, you know, '18 or '19. And back then it was third-party stem cells, like umbilical cord, like all of that. And there was nothing, there was not a study to show the impact, the efficacy, right? Compared to autologous. And now we have way more studies, right? Like we have like 12,000 studies that show the efficacy of autologous stem cells and PRP. And all I could think of is it reminds me exactly what's going on in the peptide market right now. Is there anybody and everybody is selling it.

Yeah.

And you have no idea what the source is. What I want is I want the government, and I'm not necessarily one that's like big about government oversight. Like, you know, let me just, let me do my thing, but there is a place for that. Like, I'm glad I'd rather see it legalized so that we can have clarity in how it is versus have it illegal and have a black market.

Oh yeah. That 100%. That's the reason why I said earlier that my friends and family started to want to consume or use And I basically said the only way that I would feel comfortable is if it's coming from reputable, you know, places. And everyone online loves to say, oh, it's triple tested and all that. Nobody knows. What's the testing exactly?

Like what constitutes testing? You coming up? Is it your own testing?

Yeah.

That's the thing that I really respect about doctors now. I mean, I'm, Very, very blessed to work with some really amazing doctors, our client base, like in the regen, it's the regenerative space is our biggest market. It's probably about 60 to 65% of our client base. And we work with some of the real pioneers. I have gained such respect over the last 10 years of what, of their detail and their thoroughness. I mean, Don Buford, Rowan Paul, like Simpson, all of these folks, like, just, I'm just stunned at their, they just finished a 5-year study. You imagine you and I doing a 5-year study? Like, we wouldn't have the patience to pull that off. They're like, no, we planned it like this and we kind of anticipated and we had to figure out all the different ways that things could go and blah, blah, blah, blah. And we created this 5-year study and it proves, you know, the impact of PRP done in this particular way, 8 billion cells. And it's, the study's just stunning. I'm like, Donnie, how do you have the fricking balls? What did it cost you?

I know.

You gave me the number.

I'm like, it's a lot.

Are you fucking kidding me?

Trust me. I, so I'm, um, I'm the oldest grandson on my dad's side, but my oldest cousin, she's, uh, USA or USC UCLA graduate. Um, from the time I was a teenager, she came and started studying at USC. That's when she started doing Uh, her biochemistry studies. Mm-hmm. It's been like, if what feels like 20 years, but I don't, I don't think it's been that long, but it's been years of doing research for stem cell regrowth of hair. It's gone through, I think it's moving into the 3rd round of clinical trials.

Really?

Um, are they getting there? Yeah. It, it's—

How long has it taken for it to grow back? Do you know?

I don't have the exact number, but it's definitely—

Because usually hair grows in 90-day cycles, so it can be like 6 months before you see impact.

I think it's less now because really, so at the point, at this point now, I know it's past the second stage or second round. And— That's a big leap. It's a big leap. So—

Going from 2 to 3 is a huge—

It was, her project was acquired from a huge, huge pharmaceutical company. And, um, it's about to hit market here in the next couple years, maybe. I don't know. I don't know how that works.

It's a couple years, right? It's like whatever. It's, well, it's millions of dollars.

But like you said, it's like, I, I wouldn't have the patience to be able to do that.

Like you and I come up with an idea on Monday, like how can we implement it by Tuesday? Exactly right. Like let's get this thing cash flowing by Friday. Yeah. You're laughing because it's true.

It's true. It's how we work.

I learned when I started in the entrepreneurship space, my One of my early mentors, like, we play a game around here called By Friday. Oh, the hell is By Friday? He goes, if you come up with that idea, you just gotta make money by Friday. It was a really great learning, but you short circuit a bunch of stuff. But it was a really fascinating, he is like, how do we, that's when we were flipping property. How do we, if we acquired something on Monday, we gotta cash flow it on Friday. How do we make money back on Friday? Okay, let's do it. It was like, it was like trading futures on the old stock exchange. Like phones are ringing. It was insane. It's crazy. Um, what about, what else do you see in cash-based practice? What do you see? What opportunities do you see for doctors in the cash-based field?

Specifically the ones that have never gone beyond their, their clinic walls, essentially. You've got so many opportunities now to, um, sell outside of your radius. Um, you, You see so many telehealth companies as an example, on any given day, you're, you know, watching sports and you see something pop up, right?

Or whatever.

But you're not realizing that that's just a very small percentage of the market. Like I thought it was saturated years ago already, but so give me an example.

What are some of the telehealth things that you like that are, that your doc— the doctors could be doing?

I mean, easily you could be adding more revenue to your your practice by seeing your patients outside of what they already do. Now, I obviously I'm thinking more GP-type situations here.

GLP-1s?

Well, no, I mean—

Oh, general practitioner.

Yeah. Yeah. Where you're only seeing them so often, but if you're adding, you know, send out a marketing campaign that says, hey, we just launched, you know, ABC Clinic online. You know, now you have access to your GLPs, you have access to you know, your peptides, you have access to your hormone, hormone therapy, whatever the case may be. And a lot of times most of these physicians, they limit themselves to what they know.

Mm-hmm.

And for instance, one of the, one of the companies that I'm also associated with, it's the creation of your own telemed brand out of the box.

Hmm.

connected to all 30+ pharmacies, more getting added every day. And if you wanted to be a brand specifically for skincare, you know, you can have your own skincare brand overnight, essentially.

Like, wow.

So that, that's what hinders them is the thought of, I, why would I do that? I don't have the client base. Yeah, you do. You have a patient base that typically only comes to you For a specific reason. Well, I'm just a podiatrist. Okay. Well, that podiatrist has a, you know, a group of thousands of patients that also have other problems.

Right.

Right.

So, you know, they all have a patient base that wants to lose weight.

Correct. That's, it's a huge one.

It's a huge one. It's a huge market. So great. Final thoughts, Chris, anything that you would want to share with folks as we wind this up?

At the end of the day, for me in particular, I only want to see our patients, our clients succeed.

Yeah.

So a lot of times we actually do give them more advice than what's probably needed from your payment processing partner. But the reality is there's many times where we tell them we can't help them because they're already in a good place. A lot of times people think, oh, well, You know, these people just care about making the sale, but that's actually not the case. We want to make sure that you're set up in the right way, paying what you should be, and understanding that if you can't take money, you have no business.

You have no business.

So, you know, we're just here to support any business that wants to have a consult and, you know, we're here to continue to help grow your community and the healthcare community.

Yeah. So Chris and I have a joint venture together. It's called Mavericks Payments, MavericksPayments.com, which is under the USA Payments umbrella, but focused specifically in the medical space. So I always tell people, fill out the form, take the phone call, like see what you can find out.

Yep.

I mean, and it's not just about saving money. It, to me, It's about getting money. It's about getting your money in a timely manner and not having to worry about it. So thanks for being so candid today.

Appreciate it.

And we worked out in between our vacations perfectly. You're coming back, I'm going out. So, so yeah, worked out great. Thanks, buddy. Appreciate it so much.

Yep.

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