IAM119 – Software Developer Equips the Healthcare Industry with Technology for Smart Claim Servicing

As a determined software developer and over 5 years experience of in Health Care Informatics, I believe how we combine technology with healthcare, will ultimately shape our future generation.

• CEO Hack: Books and mentors
• CEO Nugget: Have a vertical alignment
• CEO Defined: Huge responsibility to do the right thing

Website: http://www.sano.ai

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:27

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Duke Tran of sano.ai. Duke, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Duke Tran 0:37

Thank you. It's great to be here, man.

Gresham Harkless 0:40

It's great to have you here. And I knew you were doing some really awesome things. So what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Duke, so you can learn a little bit more about him and all the awesome things that he's doing. And Duke is a determined software developer and over five years of experience in Healthcare Informatics. He believes how we combine technology with healthcare will ultimately shape our future generation. Duke, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Duke Tran 1:04

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 1:05

All right, let's do it. So the first question I had was just to hear a little bit more about your CEO story. And what led you to start your business?

Duke Tran 1:11

Yeah. So I want to step back and just tell you a little bit about my personal story and how I got started to answer that question. So last April, my wife and I, actually had our first child, her name is Faith, to be honest, man, it was one of the happiest days of my life. All right, for some reason, children really bring the book the sap out of you. But unfortunately, when she was born, she had a pretty sizable hole in her heart.

And at the age of three months, she had to undergo heart surgery, and my family and I had to almost spent two months at the hospital due to complications with her recovery. We were so excited when we were finally able to bring her home. However, the aftermath of our extended stay at the hospital was a stack full of bills from all faiths, and different care providers. My wife was struggling to try to understand everything we were receiving, but I was able to spot a lot of errors in our billing because of my background in medical claims. That's when I saw the opportunity to enhance the way how medical claims are processed, and in turn to improve patient care. For this reason why I eventually had to create Sano, a technology startup so within healthcare to provide smart claim services.

Gresham Harkless 2:24

Interesting, Yeah, obviously, I'm sorry to hear that about your daughter, but great to hear, obviously everything turned out okay, but I can't imagine going through something like that, basically, probably highs and somewhat lows, to kind of have your daughter come through it, and then get home and have to deal with hobbies, kind of, I guess the whole aftermath, as you spoke about of everything that was done correctly, or not done correctly, and having to figure out exactly how to navigate all that.

Duke Tran 2:49

Yeah, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 2:51

So I guess Could you tell me and tell us a little bit more about Sano, what you're doing, and how you kind of service the clients how you're helping to kind of equip IT with the Healthcare Industry?

Duke Tran 3:02

Absolutely. So going back, as I said, it's a technology company within the healthcare industry, we're not the healthcare themselves, we just provide the technology. And what we focus on is the billing for grown medical practices by providing software as a service that allows for a better claims processing point for providers and patients' outcomes. And it will be a way where we can actually automate claim processes, and also in return business processes there because doctors want to get paid on time, right?

Gresham Harkless 3:34

Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess the process itself is not as streamlined as it could be. And that's kind of like we're saying, Oh, I guess helps in and helps out?

Duke Tran 3:42

Yes.

Gresham Harkless 3:42

Okay. Now, I wanted to ask you for what I call Sano or yourself the secret sauce, what do you feel kind of distinguishes you or makes you kind of different and unique?

Duke Tran 3:51

What I believe really stands out and is unique, which I haven't seen in a lot of companies is having a balanced leadership, which by that I mean, the people I get involved with, such as the board members and advisory boards have a particular background of the whole Healthcare Industry's perspective, in terms of one will be the health insurance, providers, officers, doctors, technical personnel. Actually, I try to have very balanced so that we all can share what we know about our background so that we can actually solve this one problem.

Gresham Harkless 3:51

Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, I imagine like when you have so many different constituents, when people that are involved in you know, stakeholders within kind of like the whole entire, I guess, claim process, you probably have a lot of people that you have to make sure that I don't know, for lack of a better term, they're happy and they're getting the service that they want, and they're getting the end result that they want.

Duke Tran 4:45

Yeah, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 4:46

Yeah. And I know you said you work a little bit in the industry. So you definitely have like an on-the-ground-level kind of outlook. And you also have the kind of tech know-how in order to implement that correct?

Duke Tran 4:57

Yes, sir.

Gresham Harkless 4:57

Awesome, awesome, awesome. Well, cool. What I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app, a book, or a habit that you have. But it's something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Duke Tran 5:10

Yeah, my personal CEO hack is two things books and mentors. For the past summer, I gave myself a challenge, trying to read as many books as possible, I was able to finish a lot by combining either paperback or even Amazon's audible and reading as much as possible. And for mentors, it's hard to find a really good mentor out there. And I was fortunate to find a couple, mainly because they're out there just amazing. They help you grow better yourself and your business. And the person who you're using who gives you the straightforward inputs is probably the best guy, the guy who makes you get a little bit mad inside, but he's right at the end of the day. Those are what I call true mentors. That's definitely rough there.

Gresham Harkless 5:57

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I've always heard that from anybody that's been super successful, to be able to, have somebody that will tell you exactly what you need to hear not what you want to hear or not tell you anything, but something that kind of somebody that can kind of give you that quick kick in the butt, so to speak. And then, as you mentioned, like, being able to kind of read all those books and taking all that information. Sometimes that's kind of like an informal, I guess, mentorship you can sometimes get from some of the best experts in the world.

Duke Tran 6:23

Yeah, absolutely. I agree.

Gresham Harkless 6:25

Awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word or wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you could happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Duke Tran 6:36

Yeah, absolutely. If I have a time machine, I will go back and probably kick myself in the butt a couple of times, but one thing I would definitely say is to have a vertical alignment. And what I mean is that in any cut type of a decision, you make it hard to fall in the line of yourself, really. And my vertical alignment is pretty simple. It's God's country and family and everything else. And so that really is usually the thing that makes my decisions. And I stand by it either with my family or with the company. So it's easy to make decisions when we had those steps going for you.

Gresham Harkless 7:10

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. It's kind of like knowing your why and understanding everything that you're doing. So when you're trying to make a difficult decision. You're trying to figure out what they should go right or left if you can kind of look at those, like you said, country and family, correct? Yeah. If you can go through that kind of filter, so to speak, I imagine that it probably has helped you make some somewhat might be difficult decisions.

Duke Tran 7:10

Yeah, yeah.

Gresham Harkless 7:22

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is a definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different, quote-unquote, CEOs on the show and kind of look at entrepreneurship and business and exactly what that means. So I want to ask you what being a CEO means to you.

Duke Tran 7:46

To me the very beginning, I actually had to step back and really, really think about this. At first, it just meant just a title to me, to be honest. But as I transitioned into a role, it started to grow a lot more into me. So if anyone out there looking into becoming a certainly known company, definitely, it's a huge responsibility, accountability, really, you're doing something for a purpose, you see that there's an opportunity. So now that you're going to have a lot of people Betting on you, so whether you succeed or fail, see that CEO title, it's gonna stick with you, right? So to me, first is the title, but I'll also the behind the scene, meaning of its, and be able to do to always do the right thing, and having that type of mentality and driving force. And I think when you look at it, it's a subpersonality CEO is some people have what it takes, and some people don't. And that's the truth.

Gresham Harkless 8:47

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. And I love like how you mentioned like, you have that kind of idea or mentality and whether or not you're in a quote-unquote, CEO role, of course, you know, title, you still kind of have that CEO mentality within you or whether you want to or not sometimes, and it kind of something that kind of leads you and kind of takes you through everything that you're doing.

Duke Tran 9:07

Yeah, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 9:08

Yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome. What Duke, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then also how best people can get a hold of you.

Duke Tran 9:21

Yeah, absolutely. First, I want to say thank you, to you, man, for what your company is doing, if anything else I need to add is that if anyone out there who's listening to this and would love to get in touch with Gresham, he's out here serving us on the CEOs, right, the one that's starting up and definitely he's doing something for the better so that we can actually get our name out there. If they are listening to this and if somehow getting your information, that's the best out of it. But if anyone wants to know more about my business, it's easier to just grab my email. I'm always on LinkedIn. My email is dtran@sano.ai. And I believe my LinkedIn, it's will be posted up somewhere here. Yeah, that's two ways you can definitely get in touch with me.

Gresham Harkless 10:08

Awesome. Well, I appreciate you, Duke. And thank you for the shout-out. But it's easy to do, and kind of showcases entrepreneurs and business owners when they have people like you on the show that are doing some awesome, thanks. So that makes it a lot easier for me. So, again, I truly appreciate you and we'll make sure to have the links in the show notes just so that anybody can follow up with you. But again, I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Duke Tran 10:28

You too, brother.

Outro 10:29

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

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