IAM1188- President Advises Start-ups on Strategic Marketing Options

Health Karma President Michael Swartz has 10+ years of experience advising startups on strategic options as relates to market opportunities, competitive positioning, and allocation of resources. Prior to joining MediXall, he was a Co-founder and served as a Senior Analyst of Viridian Capital Advisor, a financial and strategic advisory firm dedicated to the cannabis industry, where he led all modeling and valuation work for the firm’s M&A and fundraising assignments.

• CEO Hack: (i) Communication (ii) A team around me that is not afraid to take the challenge
• CEO Nugget: Focus on the problem
• CEO Defined: Holding up the team to be in a position to be successful

Website: https://www.healthkarma.org/

https://www.gethealthkarma.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealthKarmaApp
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/healthkarmaapp/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/HealthKarmaApp

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Transcription

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00:13 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, You've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:41 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Michael Swartz of Health Karma. Michael, it's great to have you on the show.

00:49 – Michael Swartz

Hey, thanks for having me on. I'm very excited to be here.

00:52 – Gresham Harkless

Super excited to have you on as well. Before we jumped into the interview, I wanted to read a little bit more about Michael so you could hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Health Karma president, Michael, has 10 plus years of experience advising startups on strategic options as they relate to market opportunities, competitive positioning, and allocation of resources prior to joining negative medicine, he was the co-founder and served as a senior analyst of Viridian Capital Advisor, a financial and strategic advisory firm dedicated to the cannabis industry, where he led all modeling and valuation work for the firm's M&A and fundraising assignments. Michael, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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01:31 – Michael Swartz

Very excited too.

01:32 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's make it happen then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to start out with what I call your story, your CEO story to hear about all the awesome things you're doing and what kind of led you there.

01:41 – Michael Swartz

Yeah. Well, I've always wanted to be in finance, because I'll bring you back to the start of my career. So ended up moving up to New York. That's the only place you can be for finance. I got into an investment bank and it was what I thought was my dream job. And during that time, I turned 26. And when you turn 26, you get dropped from the family insurance plan. When that happened, I was living in New York, and not much family up there. York is as expensive as can be. And I had to find a doctor. I had to find that the first decision I had was do I get insurance? Or do I have a roof over my head? I mean, rent is expensive. And when I decided that the decision was an easy one, I'm not gonna have insurance, I'd much rather have a place to live.

Finding a doctor was crazy. And during that time, I went through it and I'm like, there has to be a better way. That's what ignited my passion for healthcare, my own experience of trying to navigate as somebody who didn't have insurance. I dove in deeper and deeper looking for what's out there. Is there anything that can really help? I realized people, all of a sudden, with this Affordable Care Act, were now paying so much more out of their own pocket. These deductibles were rising and rising. So the light bulb kind of went off. People, now that they're paying more out of their own pocket, they're ready to be healthcare consumers.

So that's when we started building a place to make that happen, a place that people could go to really shop around. We built a marketplace that gave you the same experience you had when you booked a flight or a hotel on Priceline or Expedia but for medical services. So the search compared book pay and we launched it probably about 3 and a half years ago, 4 years ago. And we were able to drive success. We connected about 25, 000 providers, and started driving thousands of consumers who were searching for a specific service. And that gave us one of the most important things with any young growing company and that's actual user feedback insight.

And what we realized was our original thinking was not exactly the case. People were not ready to be healthcare consumers. People were too confused. They didn't have the knowledge. And all this confusion was leading to hesitation, not only in interacting with our marketplace but interacting with healthcare as a whole. And I compare healthcare today, almost like buying a car at a dealership prior to CarMax having no haggle pricing, where it's like the price you see is the price you pay in the online marketplaces like TrueCar, where you can go into the dealership, know what a good price is, and feel confident.

But before these things, a lot of people were scared to go into the dealership because they weren't confident in the knowledge they had of cars. So they felt that they'd be taken advantage of by the salesperson. And in healthcare, it's way worse. So about 2 and a half years ago, maybe 3 years now, we took a step back and said, we need to focus on the problem of confusion, the problem of not having the knowledge to navigate your own healthcare journey.

And that's what led us to start building health karma, to really give people that personalized experience, where they have a single place to turn to be able to understand their health care situation, give them the ability to find over a million providers, access virtual care, affordable care for primary care, urgent care, behavioral, and then give them the ability on that same place to be able to manage their entire health care journey. And that's where we are today. Health Karma is up and running. We work with small employers and individuals and we really provide them an actual place to go to be able to take control of their healthcare.

06:21 – Gresham Harkless

You kind of touched a little bit upon health karma work. So I wanted to see if you had anything more you can kind of tell us about, you know, how it works and how people can kind of enroll or find out more information. But also what you feel is what I like to call your secret sauce and what you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique.

06:36 – Michael Swartz

Our secret sauce is the consumer experience. Healthcare is confusing. If you have insurance, go onto your health insurance portal. It's usually not the easiest to navigate it when it is. It's confusing. So building health karma, we made sure since inception, even with the marketplace, our secret sauce has always been the consumer experience, making it incredibly easy, and accessible, to be able to accomplish what you're trying to do to navigate healthcare. One of the most important things to that consumer experience is what I call flipping the script of healthcare, changing the language of healthcare. I'll give you an example.

Do we actually care about deductibles, copays, coinsurance, and out-of-pocket backs? A lot of people don't even know what some of these things are. They know what the premium is because we pay it every month if you have insurance. But what are we trying to understand? Are we just trying to understand how much am I going to have to pay out of my own pocket? So with health karma, our focus is that consumer experience, that member experience, making sure that no matter who you are, where you are, When you pick up health karma, you know what's going on. You know how to accomplish what you need to do and you're in control. Nobody wants a decision made for them. Health karma gives them the ability to stay healthy.

08:17 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:27 – Michael Swartz

I think communication. I think it's making sure that you're meeting with your lieutenants. You're getting on the same page. You're getting perspectives from all of them and making sure that you're really creating a culture that encourages people not to be afraid to speak their minds. Now, do it in a way that is not offensive. But we as leaders, especially me, I mean, me personally, if I go into a meeting with all of the team leads, and I think I have the best idea. So I go up and I'm telling them, oh, this great idea, blah, blah, blah. And everybody's just like, yes, yes, yes. Well, I didn't hire the right team. So I think what makes me more effective is the team.

And that's a leader's job. You think of the traditional org chart, it's almost like a triangle. And at the top, you have the CEO. Well, I think of it in reverse. The CEO is at the bottom. It's our job to put people in a position to be as successful as possible. Since the beginning, since starting the company, I've always believed that the success of the organization is not going to be based on the quality of the business model. The success of the company and companies in general is gonna be based on the quality of the people, and the quality of the team. So I think what helps me be successful is having a team around me that isn't afraid to challenge, that is all A-plus players. And with that team, I'm able to be more successful.

10:45 – Gresham Harkless

I love that hack. And so I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. This could be more of a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or it might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, you might tell your younger business owner.

10:56 – Michael Swartz

So I've always been a big believer in the team. But I think what I've learned, if I could hop in a time machine, and really, I think I've always, the team part, the hiring has always been something that I've thought of. But I think I would tell myself, to focus. Focus on the problem. Make sure, I mean, let's take healthcare, for example. Healthcare, how many problems are in healthcare? Very easily, you could lose focus. And if you lose focus, you're not going to create the best experience for whoever the end user is.

So make sure that you keep the company in laser focus. You still have to be building for the long term, but be laser-focused on that. What's gonna take you to the next level right now? And then the other thing is a lot of people, I mean, it's probably human nature. They focus, and they get lost in functionality. They get lost in the solution. And I've seen this happen from time to time. And it's one of the things that scares me the most. I mean, the team probably is, hears me talk about this all the time. Focus on the problem.

Do not get lost in a solution. Do not get lost in a product. We are creating things to solve a problem. If you keep that laser focus on the problem and then laser focus on executing, you're going to position the company for long-term success. So I think that focus, whether it's focusing on the problem and focusing on execution, or like we like to call the blocking and tackling. That's probably what I would say is my nugget that if I could go back in a time machine 5 years ago.

13:10 – Gresham Harkless

And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping that different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So Mike, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:21 – Michael Swartz

To me, it means you are again, if we think of the org chart, think of it in reverse, the CEOs on the bottom and it's the CEO's job to hold up the team. The team makes the company successful. The CEO helps put the team in a position to be successful. You cannot let your ego get in the way. By thinking of the org chart in reverse, you can think about your role as a leader in the way that will position your team. As a result, the company is for success in the near term, the medium term, and the long term.

14:07 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, I love that visual of the inverted kind of pyramid that we so often see. And I think as you talked about, there's a strong foundation within the organization of being customer and client-focused as a CEO, entrepreneur, business owner, whatever title we might give president, it's so important to be kind of team-focused as well too and make sure that that is a point of service that we're able to provide as leadership within our organization.

So truly appreciate that definition. And I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about all the awesome things you and your team are working on.

14:44 – Michael Swartz

Yeah, So if you want to check out Health Karma, again, you can go to www.healthkarma.org. We're on social, so Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, follow us. You can follow me. I have a LinkedIn, Michael Swartz. I think the tag is MrFixHealthcare. You can follow me on Twitter at Mr. Fix Healthcare. Yeah. And look, if your listeners, if you're sitting there saying like, oh my God, I have a bad, I've had a bad experience with healthcare. I'd love to hear it. So if you've had an experience, if you want to talk about healthcare, if you want to learn more about health karma, reach out. Because look, we're building a community and it's people's stories that is what drives us as a company. So I'd love to hear from you.

15:39 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Michael truly appreciates that we will have the links and information and the show notes absolutely love that Mr. Healthcare, you know, tags as well to Mr. Fix Healthcare I should say, as well I think that's awesome and as you said so well a lot of times when you hear those stories, not only does it help us to sometimes alleviate a lot of the stress and frustration that we have, but it also helps to direct organizations and companies like yours that have been able to kind of keep that as a North Star and build its organization systems and services around that. So truly appreciate you for reminding us of how important that is. And of course, doing that, my friend and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:11 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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