Matt: From the crossroads of America and the Hoosier state of Indiana, this is Get IN, the podcast focused on the unfolding stories and extraordinary innovations happening right now. In the heartland,

Austin: The most successful folks, you know, plans fail for lack of counsel with many advisors. They succeed. That’s a proverb, ancient wisdom, and it’s still true today.

Matt: I’m Matt Hunkler, CEO at Powderkeg, and I’ll be one of your hosts for today’s conversation. I’m joined in studio by co host Nate Spangle, who’s our head of community at Powderkeg. And on the show today is Scott Lingle, co founder and chairman at Remodel Health, along with Austin Lehman, CEO at Remodel Health.

Scott Lingle is the co founder and chairman of Remodel Health, a software power leader in the health benefits space. Uh, the company is a four time Inc. 5, 000 SaaS business in the employee benefits space that is just disrupting the industry. Previously was a VP of sales in UnitedHealthcare, runs several operating companies.

We’re going to get into all of that today. Austin Lehman, I know from a decade ago, uh, he’s currently the CEO of Remodel Health, has [00:01:00] started his own businesses previously, um, and he’s been at the helm at Remodel for since 2018. After a decade of working in finance, helping so many high growth tech companies grow and scale.

Um, and in 2023, Remodel Health surpassed a hundred million dollars in savings for customers as on track to reach 1 billion. Austin, Scott, we have a lot to cover. I’m really excited to have you here. Thanks for being here. Yeah. Thanks for having us excited to be here. I definitely want to get into the origin story, but first we’d love to just learn a little bit more about your own individual backgrounds.

Do you both, um, have kind of your own first entrepreneurial memory and Scott, do you mind maybe going first of your first memory that was maybe some entrepreneurial inklings?

Scott: For sure. Kind of always knew I was born and made to be an entrepreneur. It took me a long time. I didn’t pull the trigger until age 45.

We’ll get into that. I love that. But, uh, paper route. Uh, so how I kind of knew, so my brother and I had a paper route. And they had this contest every year for new starts where you [00:02:00] go door knocking and, you know, I was like a 12 year old, 14 year old kid and we would door knock and it was like huge competition between me and my brother to see who could get the most starts.

And then it wasn’t so much like getting paid as much as it was like earning points and you got like things like Walkmans and things like that. Killed it doing that and knew that someday I was going to start my own thing. I love that.

Matt: I was a paper out kid too. Cool. Love it. Yeah, age 12 to 18.

Nate: As you’re aging yourselves.

Yeah.

Matt: Yes. Right. Paper used to be this medium that people had. I don’t even know what that is, Nate. Ha ha

ha. How about you Austin? What was your first entrepreneurial memory?

Austin: Yeah, it was actually living in Speedway, Indiana. And we did a, we were selling candy, uh, at our, I went to one of the Speedway elementary schools right there.

And so I remember walking around and hitting some kind of tier where you got, uh, some kind of video game that was a really cool thing that I brought home. I think it was a Mario game at that time. Oh, that’s cool. Uh, sold a bunch of those. I remember one guy that was maybe a diabetic or older and he said, I can’t eat it, but I’ll give you the [00:03:00] money to buy your own candy.

So that was a real win. I love that.

Matt: So humble beginnings from there to the business you’re running now. Do you mind just giving the listeners kind of a brief overview of remodel health and, and everything that you do?

Austin: Sure. So it’s in the health insurance space and it’s shifting from group to individual health insurance.

So the way I think about it is similar to in financial services. Pension to 401k, so everybody transitioned that in the 70s and 80s as new legislation came out. New legislation has come out that has also facilitated that transition from group to individual health insurance. For really similar reasons, pensions got really expensive.

Uh, and so they had to switch to 401k. And group health plans are getting really expensive and so we’re switching to individual. And so we’re right on the front end of that wave that really is happening and happening across our industry.

Matt: That’s a really helpful way of framing it. That’s very cool. Talk to me a little bit about the software.

How is that kind of a unique competitive advantage for what you’re doing? Because it seems like it’s really contributed to. A lot of the fast growth that you’ve experienced. So we built technology to create.

Austin: So the thing that group plans have done a pretty good job [00:04:00] of is creating a seamless experience, a seamless enrollment experience.

And so we had to replicate and as much as we can make it feel like that. So it’s on the front side, it’s brokers, it’s administrators evaluating. What would it look like to do individual plans instead of group plans to do the new way, the 401k way instead of the pension way. And then you have to then, all those individuals have to make their individual plan selections.

Again, think about Pension, one person makes all the decisions. 401k, you each make your decisions about the plan. So it’s very similar. And so now we have to create a platform where all those individuals can enroll in plans. And one cool thing we’re just talking about today actually, um, was we’re a, we’re health insurance guys that start a tech company.

And so we started with that, we’ve got a relationship with the carriers, we know how to make commissions on those kind of things, and that’s been a real advantage and a real strength in the market for us.

Scott: So there’s a lot of change management, we save money a lot, but there’s a lot of change going from like a fully insured group plan to the individual market, and our software really just helps with that change management.

That’s very cool.

Nate: People may, may not [00:05:00] know, I did start my career in the health insurance benefits, uh, space. I was at Apex Benefits for two years while I was in Orr fellow. We know those guys well. It is, uh, change management was something that I had no idea I was going to learn about at a young age, but it’s very real.

The pain, it’s like, pain. Implementing new programs, the open enrollment process, all of it. So I, I, I resonate with what you guys are talking about.

Matt: We’re not going to take our listeners too far into the weeds.

I’m curious, Scott, with your background, just kind of being a VP at United healthcare, how did you kind of make that transition from executive at a big healthcare company to entrepreneurship?

Scott: That seems like a big jump. And, and not only that late in life, 20 years at what used to be golden rule insurance.

And they got bought by United along the way. And while there, even though I knew like someday I’m going to pull the trigger and be an entrepreneur, I kind of built a company within a company and I built a new channel of distribution. And in doing that just gave me a lot of confidence that I knew how to build like winning [00:06:00] teams.

And then finally at age 45, me and the co founder, a guy named Justin Clements, uh, he was the number one sales guy on my team. We started dreaming up what it might look like and, uh, we went into that. Was there a mentor or two at UnitedHealthcare that made a big impact on your career? Oh yeah, for sure.

Plenty of mentors. What did you learn from them? I had a boss, uh, by the name of Susan Fowler. And, um, and what I learned mostly is just how to delegate really, really well. Mm, so how do you do it?

Matt: What’s the secret? I’m still working on it. Yeah,

Scott: I think the key is, you know, I’m kind of obsessed with finding A players.

Yeah. And, you know, you surround yourself with A players and then give all your work away. Yeah. And, uh, she did it well and then I learned that, that pattern from her. I love that. That’s great.

Nate: Well, I think it’s super interesting, right? You talk about, and I think we’ve had this conversation off air when, when I’ve originally met Scott of, You have a 30 year, 25 year career in insurance, but you knew you were destined to be an entrepreneur.

What were some of the reasons [00:07:00] that you didn’t venture out earlier?

Scott: I think you get kind of addicted, uh, Nassim Taleb’s got this quote that I love that says two greatest addictions are heroin, And a monthly salary. And so I got into this pattern at UnitedHealthcare where I was doing well and kept getting raises and promotions and you get kind of addicted to it.

And so I just stayed in that lane way too long. Do you remember that Golden Rule insurance had the golden handcuffs?

Nate: Give us the story of how you guys started Remodel Health. Leaving United and then you went to another company for a couple years there and then you left to start Remodel Health.

Scott: I talked earlier about Justin Clements, co founder, good friend of mine.

Uh, at the time we’re at United Healthcare having a really good run and he was my number one sales guy. He’s got a million ideas. He’s like your typical founder with a billion ideas a day. And he and I started dreaming up, uh, what it would look like. But before we actually made that, that big leap in entrepreneurship, we went to a small startup, uh, that I got recruited [00:08:00] to down in Tampa, Florida called Health Insurance Innovations.

And they were, uh, insure tech, kind of like a Remodel Health. And we joined there and I brought him and a number of other like studs on my sales team along and we killed it and grew that thing from like 20 million to a hundred million and took it public and did an IPO. And I actually got to be on the road show.

And we went to like 30 cities in 10 days, started in London. It was incredible, crazy learning experience.

Matt: What is a software sales tip or tactic that doesn’t get talked about enough that you feel like was instrumental in the success of, of At that company and now at Remodel Health,

Scott: I don’t know if it’s a software tip, but what I’ve learned in these smaller type companies is when you have an unbiased, when you have sales minded founders, I feel like you get to product market fit quicker than when you have tech minded founders and probably because, you know, we’re just wired to like go sell stuff and then You learn by going out and meeting with [00:09:00] customers where the holes are and you come back and you tell the tech guys versus like build it and they will come like, unless you’re Google or Facebook, I don’t know that that happens a lot.

So we were totally like the sales minded founders that were out there selling every day and that’s how we found the problems. Love that. So how did you have the idea for

Matt: Remodel Health from that experience of taking a company public?

Scott: So at the time, keep in mind, this is like 2015, Obamacare passed like in 2011, and Obamacare is the Affordable Care Act.

It created this whole massive new, you know, opportunity in the marketplace. Um, and what me and my co founder, Justin Clements, recognized is that there was this huge arbitrage with the individual market. And mainly it was You know, lower income and middle income Americans could get tax credits literally like up to half the cost to fund these products, but only if you weren’t eligible for a group health plan at work.

And so that was our lane, like that’s where we had all our knowledge, all our contacts, all our skills. And so we said, you know, what if we could create a [00:10:00] solution that would like pivot from like group health plans to the individual market, go in, cancel the group plan, make them eligible for these tax credits.

And what would that look like? And we had no idea on tech, like we knew how to sell. Uh, we had a buddy of ours that we, we called him up. We said, Hey, you think you can build this? He’s like, yeah, for about 10 grand, I’ll build you your first version. And that was our MVP. That’s awesome. And then Justin, to his credit, uh, is the main sales guy.

He went to town and started selling his butt off and it worked and it crushed until about 2017 when the bottom fell out. And at that point in time, uh, literally Obamacare was failing, uh, and our product was tied to that. Like we were only as good as like the Affordable Care Act market. And what happened is like all the big brands pulled out.

United pulled out, Aetna, Cigna, Humana. And total, you know, death blow, like I thought, okay, game over. And, uh, we went from about six employees down to one employee. We lost a ton of clients. Uh, we weren’t getting [00:11:00] much sleep, uh, Justin and I, big faith guys, we were saying a lot of prayers at the time, not getting a lot of sleep and praying a lot.

And really the pivot was, um, really just getting more focused on instead of, we didn’t have a niche. And you guys have heard the saying, there are riches in the niches. And so at that point in time, we said, okay, let’s double down on what is a real core market. And it was churches, uh, nonprofits and schools.

And we kind of got really clear and focused on that lane and it really started taking off in spite of, you know, all the big brands pulling out. And that was really the big, you know, aha moment where we turned the corner.

Matt: How did you choose that particular market out of all the things you could have done?

What what gave you the, Faith. Yeah. Go all in on those. As a, as

Scott: a, as a faith guy, one, feel like I was inspired from, from God, me and Justin both would say that. So that’s number one. Number two, really just looking at the data and seeing like, okay, who are we helping the most and talk to our [00:12:00] clients and who, who’s, you know, you know, really wowed and thrilled with this product and we give us five out of five.

And that’s how we kind of got to the final answer. That’s really smart.

Matt: Yep. And Austin, what are your memories of starting your own first entrepreneurial venture beyond the candy sales? Right, right, right. You know, when you had kind of like your, your first like professional post school, all right, I’m, I’m out here doing it.

Austin: Yeah. So started a CPA firm doing that outsource CFO for technology companies. And that’s actually where you and I got to hang out. You had the best name of a business ever. Oh, It is very well branded.

Matt: Like. Literally, Nate was like, guess who’s gonna be on the podcast? Austin Lehman. You mean Lehman’s terms?

Austin: Lehman’s terms, yeah. Everyone, other than my parents. My parents didn’t like it because they thought I was putting them in my terms when they hear that they hear the last name, but everybody else, uh, uh, liked it. But yeah, so is that, and then that business, uh, as that grew, that’s how I got to come across Scott and Justin, and I was, you know, understanding.

The problem and beginning to try to solve that problem for some of my clients. So actually was trying to solve this for some churches and [00:13:00] nonprofits and beginning to, and I had done Excel spreadsheets to try to solve this problem of the high cost. They’re getting these big rate increases, didn’t know what to do about it.

And so we started to spreadsheets and said, Hey, these individual plans. Might be less expensive. And so I’m doing it on Excel spreadsheets. Meet with Scott and Justin. It was Justin, you know, talking me into a meeting in the middle of busy season when I should not have been talking about health insurance, but he’s a sales guy and, you know, roped me in.

And so then we had a long conversation. I’m like, man, if I was building technology, I’d build something like this and two guys, United healthcare. If there’s two guys that could solve this, it’s guys like this. So I actually started out doing outsource CFO for their business. And no, no pay, just an equity trade in because I believed in the business.

Uh, and then I started, my broker started using them and we were really focused on that church non profit market. And I think pretty quickly became the number one performing broker. And so we saw real synergies to come together there in the, so fall of 2017, we really wanted to do a series A raise and we needed to get to a million in revenue.

Uh, they had focused all sales, sales, sales. I’d focused on the [00:14:00] customer experience side of that and getting happy non profit clients. So then we said, maybe it makes sense to bring our two companies together. They were maybe 500, you know, K out of 300 K revenue. It’s got us real close to a million. Then we joined forces that fall of 17 and had a good sales year and crossed over a million there.

And the, and so that. And we’ve got, you know, conversations on the series a side of that.

Matt: Yeah. That’s really cool. Well, I I’m really fascinated by your background just as a CEO operator. Um, obviously I think sales is a common thread with founders and CEOs a lot of times, but you don’t always get the like finance background and I imagine it kind of gives you some superpowers.

And some, some ways that a lot of other CEOs don’t look at or think about the business. What are some ways that you look at businesses differently when you talk to other CEOs? And I know you’ve had them as clients in the past with your previous business. What are some of the ways that you think about business that you think have been really helpful in operating remodel health as the CEO?

Austin: Yeah, I mean, I think one thing that we talk a lot about, uh, and I’ve had this good conversations with [00:15:00] Scott and Justin because they both saw them, you know, they had the sales ideas and tons of ideas and really brought in the operating focus as they brought me on to lead the joint company spring of 18.

One of the biggest things that we’ve done is so Justin, uh, his fingerprints are all over the business. He got us to our first million, but there was 100 different ideas. And so. A, you have to prioritize ideas out of that. But B, the thing that we probably weren’t doing real well in the early days is saying, when we do a new idea, it means we’re not doing an old idea.

So sometimes we would, you know, like this thing, but we wouldn’t actually opportunity cost to go, Hey, by doing this one, it means that the one that was a priority four months ago is moving off the list. And are we okay with that? And do we actually think that this thing is the, so is that something that we really brought into to focus and I, as some of our leadership team, you know, Richard’s been there, Richard Perrin, that was our tech leader has really forced that prioritization and it’s been so good then to go.

We, when we pick up this new thing, we are saying, it’s not, you know, it’s not just the thing that we’re thinking about for these two weeks. It’s the thing that we are more excited. It’s bigger opportunity than the thing that we were talking about [00:16:00] three months ago. And we, so we have, there’s a conscious versus an unconscious of just the thing of the moments for the thing we’re always working on.

Matt: So there’s that. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I never do that.

Nate: Oh wait, on to the next thing.

Matt: I love that. That’s a great perspective. And I love that so much. Meg on our leadership team, it holds that seat really, really well. Sort of like the integrator and

Scott: I definitely were the visionaries when he came along.

We didn’t have an integrator and he was the perfect integrator.

Matt: Do you all use EOS as a model? Kind of informally, maybe.

Austin: Yeah, we like the framework. I will just say myself with it, it can get too Constraining. Yeah, constraining, too formulaic. And I remember reading the book and saying, Man, if you did all these things, when would you actually go out and run a business and do new things and go And I remember reading the book and there was a certain chapter where a company talked about All the things they’ve done and all the steps they’ve done and I’m like, this is too much.

And I went out and researched them and they were an Amazon seller and they got taken out [00:17:00] by Amazon. Fascinating company. Well, I think because if you sell through Amazon, there’s just so much risk. Amazon can copy you. And so they were out of business. And so it was just. It’s nuanced for me. I’m not a full, I like the framework, but if you, uh, go all in there, you may miss out on the creative side of just of the things you need to do to keep growing a business.

But we like the overall framework.

Matt: Yeah, yeah.

Austin: Very helpful.

Matt: We’re very, very similar, uh, and aligned in that way. I think that’s great. And experimented with going all in and then we’re like, whoa, hang on a second. Yeah. Yes. We’re, we’re missing. I mean, I think when you’re a small company, agility has got to be your number one competitive advantage.

That’s right. That’s right. And so if you’re like, no, this is what we’re doing for the next 10 years. Yes. That’s it. How do you?

Austin: It can take out agility. That’s exactly the way to say that. A good example I think about that, you know, just kind of piggybacking on that. Yeah. We saw an opportunity in the market.

So we, you all, our views would be always start with a niche and find a niche you can win and make sure it’s big enough. But start there and then expand. And then it’s hard to know when you. Make the expansion pivot. And so we saw that opportunity spring of [00:18:00] 23, where the, the, you know, a new product could come in the market.

The industry term is ICHRA or ICRA was something that had been passed through Trump and comes live in 2020, but starts get market adoption really in 23. And so we see the opportunity from a, you know, and it’s like, is this the right time? We do need to continue to serve this profitable niche that we have, but is there some opportunity, is this the right time to product expand?

And we really wrestled through that over like a six month period. But if you’re just. Uh, you know, just doing EOS, you might go, no, we just have to make the thing we’re doing better. Yeah. And it was, it ended up being the right call. Um, I would say we had these good debates about, hey, the old thing’s got to go, the new thing’s here.

And I was like, oh, the old thing’s going to keep growing. And it turns out the old thing grew a ton. Yeah. And the new thing also. So it ended up like we, 23 was this exceptional year where Both hands. Both hands. Now, our team would say that it’s challenging then to go, What are we working on? What’s the focus?

I mean, so we definitely like some of our employee engagement stuff drop some cause people were like, it’s hard to know all the things like we took on a lot in 23, but now we are seeing the [00:19:00] momentum as we come into. You know, in a 24 with taking on the new at some of these new initiatives.

Scott: I think the other thing Austin brought to the table as the CEO is really thinking more deeply about core values and our why and I remember the first year he came along we decided to really say hey.

Uh, the main mission we’re trying to solve here is save these organizations a ton of money. And we threw this party for all of our customers saying, Hey, we repurpose dollars that we’re going off to health insurance companies back into these ministries and businesses. And the first year was like we celebrated a million dollars in savings.

And last year, We just celebrated a hundred million, but he was really the key driver on that. And like getting centered around core values, which was a big deal for our culture.

Matt: Yeah, that’s huge. And I, I think it’s interesting that you kind of zeroed in on that, even just in talking through like chasing opportunities, like it worked out for the business, but like the fact that you’re keeping in mind, our employee satisfaction score went down, you know, that was a trade off temporary trade off sounds like.

Yep. I think so. They’re going to pop [00:20:00] back up. Yeah. Yeah. And I, I think, um, It’s just, that’s how you think about entrepreneurship, right? Like here’s an opportunity. There’s, there is going to be a cost, right? That’s I, I, now we’re getting back to the CFO background and it’s like, there’s a balance sheet, right?

Yeah. Like there’s a, there’s a yin and yang to everything. Totally. Can we talk a little bit about some of the bigger challenges? I mean, kind of pulling on that thread a little bit. Are there other moments just over the last few years here that, uh, were particularly challenging for Remodel Health and how did you get through those particular challenges?

Austin: Yeah, I mean, a lot of dark days. I think it’s, it’s never an overnight sensation. It’s always a 10 year, you know, um, and so there was a moment, uh, around the same time for both, uh, both Justin and I were when the carriers pulled out where we thought that, you know, so it’s probably 2017 timeframe where we’re like, this, this business is over.

Like we’re, we’re done. I mean, I remember commiserating with one of my teammates, Zach, uh, Parker saying, Like we, we went to, to a pizza buffet at two in the afternoon and I think we, [00:21:00] we, I don’t know if we got drinks, but we wanted to, I mean, cause it was just like, this is the end. And I mean, Justin, it was like, there was in the last couple of weeks where it’s like, if we don’t close a deal in the next two weeks, we’re done.

Yeah. I mean, that’s the moments that happened that, you know, after everyone’s like, Oh, you know, must be nice. Must be great. Yeah. Your pocketbooks must be just padded real big. And you’re part of the, you know, 1%. It’s like, no, no, no. It’s like lots of dark days, hard to survive. And in that case, I think something came out the 11th hour and it was interesting in Zach and I’s case.

So Justin, I think there was a broker he’d been working on and a, you know, a business came through and saved that. And in Zach and I’s case, we go to bed that night very discouraged thinking the business is over and we got the next day. And I was like, has your, you know, Uh, has your passion for this changed?

Like, do you still feel it’s called to serve these ministries? And we’re talking about people like

Matt: Wheeler Mission, right?

Austin: Giving Wheeler Mission hundreds of thousands of dollars to go and help homeless people on streets. I mean, that’s the, so has your passion changed, Zach? And he’s like, no, I said, mine hasn’t either.

I still feel just as called. So we got to solve this, you know, and so, and there was a massive pivot, as I think Scott alluded to, from going to mostly insurance [00:22:00] commissions to go moving to a SAS subscription model. And that was our pivot that happened because of that hard time. So it’s oftentimes.

Scott: And I would say too, not only, so the big aha shifting to the SAS model and getting tech fees, recurring fees, which has been incredible for a business.

Oh yeah. But also at the time we were like 100 percent dependent upon brokers. And when the bottom fell out of like the Affordable Care Act market, Burgers wanted nothing to do with touching that market, you know, no big brands, the reputation was at stake. So we really made a pivot into direct sales and developed a whole new direct sales channel, which like helped us like crazy.

And now we’ve kind of gone back where it’s more like a 50 50 model, but it was a good learning experience.

Matt: It sounds like those kind of. Trough moments, looking back, were like key inflection points. They end up being inflection points. Yeah.

Austin: And very similar, because that one you go back, you know, that’s five, six years ago, but very similarly, this year ago, where we were serving the ministries, you know, serving the nonprofits, having a big impact.

And it’s going well. It’s, it’s not a failing business. It’s a [00:23:00] growing business. But now the brokers are coming back. You know, ICHRA comes into the market. So we see this new opportunity and we’re wrestling through, you know, and I, we went to our team said we got to start focusing on this new market because it probably is growing even a little more quickly.

You know, diversify our business. This is just a smart thing to do. And they it’s like, well, did we do something wrong? And I said, no, no. Everything we did to this point, a great book for that actually was dual transformation was a book that Justin found and I think from a friend of ours, uh, uh, Brad. And so we read this, this book and it was very helpful to how do you have a good operating business, but that you need to now, you know, you have something that maybe isn’t even, you know, Bigger opportunity.

And so bringing the team along with that. So that was a real challenge for at the board level. Lots of tense moments. How do we need to be profitable? Do we need to be growth focused? All the tech companies probably dealing with that. And we really had some battles around. No, no, no. We need to have, have some profit.

No, no, no. We need to grow. You can tell, you can guess who’s on the growth side, not the profit side of that. And we threaded that needle pretty, pretty well in 23 by the end. And we both didn’t, no one won. Right. I mean, it was, it was a compromise and [00:24:00] that’s the best decisions happen. But those were tense moments to debate that stuff.

Nate: Well, can we talk about that, uh, the experience, right? So going from the outsource CFO to then taking over this new joint venture, I mean, that has to be. Challenging is something that you like built from nothing, right? And it’s like, yeah, I trust my outsourced CFO to take over this new company and lead us to the next phase of growth.

Can you talk about what was going through you and Justin’s mind there and how that whole process went down?

Scott: I think it hinges on what we talked about earlier. Uh, Justin and I are wired to be more visionaries and we recognized in Austin a numbers guy that actually knew how to sell. And how to communicate really effectively, which is kind of rare.

Very rare. Um, you’re a unicorn. Oh, thank you. And, and to be able to put him, and we, we noticed like, you know, this guy runs pretty, pretty, you know, nice business in, in layman’s terms. And so, um, we said, you know, I think this guy could run it better than we could. Now, it wasn’t, wasn’t an easy call, right? Um, Justin, you [00:25:00] know, at, at some point, you know, had thoughts of being the CEO and, you know, I think it was a lot of just really tough discussions and, uh, we’re glad we made that call.

Nate: I mean, that is, that takes some serious internal reflection and, and to know, like, hey, I think this guy can run our business better than we can. Right. And kind of taking your hands off the wheel. We’ve had a numerous amount of, um, Of entrepreneurs and executives on the show that have talked about that moment when they, I’m just thinking back to Doug Booth talking about he’s like a flying guy and he’s like, I just took my hands off the, off the, whatever it’s called for the yoke and the plane corrected itself and yep.

I think that’s just, uh, that speaks a lot to you guys and your character and well, we talked about challenges. I’d love to hear about, I mean, some of the successes. I know that things have been going really well. Some maybe Inc 5, 000 accolades in there. Talk to us about what’s working super well at Remodel Health.

Scott: I think what’s cool is, uh, we talked about all these challenges in the first, probably half of our life, the first four or five years, nothing but massive, you know, headwinds every day, like, you know, big brands pulling out of the market [00:26:00] and what seems to have happened in the last like four or five years is government passed this new tax law, ICHRA, and all of a sudden we’ve got like massive tailwinds.

So. It’s been a huge boost. And once you start getting momentum and making things like IBJ fast 25 and the ink 5, 000, it just becomes easier to do like recruiting, like finding a players. Like when you’re, when you got this fast growing rocket ship, like everything gets easier now you do have challenges, but in terms of like, I think the key in any business is, you know, finding a players.

And, uh, that just got way easier. Once we got momentum,

Matt: What got harder?

Austin: Speaking of yin and yang. I mean, prioritization becomes, so this is the first year. That we have all of our channels, this, you know, this is the first year that all of our channels have good growth, really good growth prospects. Um, you know, we’ve had to work hard to get those up and running.

So this is the first year now where there’s people going, I want resources and they have legitimate, like it was last year. It’s [00:27:00] like, ah, you didn’t do anything. So you’re not getting a lot, you know, this year it’s like, so we, we, we sit and we go, so it’s a good problem to have no question. Totally. When we go, there’s.

Good growth in front of us. But prioritization of that prioritization of profitability. Profitability is just smart for businesses. It’s more sustainable.

Nate: It’s also smart for you guys are a tech company. You don’t need profits.

Austin: That’s what we heard two or three years ago, but we’re hearing different things now.

And so, um, yeah, so, and so it’s, I mean, I think it’s a prioritization. It’s been the biggest challenge that I’m experiencing is to go now there’s 24 things we could do. And they’re all like it used to be. It’s like, in 23, it was very clear the thing we needed to do. In 24, it’s like, there’s four or five things that are really interesting that we could allocate resources to more than we have.

Nate: So what strategies or tips do you have for other entrepreneurs that might be going through a similar stage? What are you guys doing? What kind of inspection?

Austin: Yeah, good question. I mean, we definitely are very much like smart people, uh, coming together as how ideas. So it’s, we are not a top down, [00:28:00] like I’m going to show up or Scott’s going to show up or just going to show up and tell everybody how, like, that’s not like the smartest people are the people closest to the situation.

We just listened to a good podcast that Brad Jacobs on founders who he was talking about that he’s begun to ask his key team or all his team members these questions. I’ve begun to ask questions, three questions, you know, What can we do better around here? What’s the stupidest thing we’re doing? And if you were CEO, what would you do?

Are the three questions I’ve started to ask team members. And we’re beginning to bubble up those to the top to go. We need the best ideas to come to the forefront. And then we need great people. I just was meeting with our managers, directors, and they had all these great ideas. I’m like, these are great ideas.

But to be clear, this is not, The eight of us sitting around and me having a 25 item to do list out of this. This is you all formulating your thoughts and solving these problems for the business. And though those of you who solve these problems well, we’ll rise.

Matt: Yeah. I love that reframe. That it sounds like a pretty easy trap to get into too, of like.

All right, I’m going to crowdsource these ideas and now, okay, what, now I got to go do all of these things. So [00:29:00] good on you for kind of finding a way to enable the team to make it happen.

Scott: The other, uh, big pivot change we made in 23 and now in 24 is thinking about growth, not only organically, but M& A and we pulled the trigger on our first deal.

Yeah, congrats. That just closed a month ago. And then that, I’ll give credit, there’s a buddy of mine in town, David Trogdon, That had a nice exit in medical supplies. And, uh, it was really his idea where, uh, they did this playbook over and over again, and he kind of taught it to us and we’re like, can we try this?

And it was crazy. We have probably 20 competitors in this space. Yeah. Um, and we literally came up with the idea and said, Hey, let’s start cold calling our competitors and see if they’re willing to take the call. And then are they willing to have a conversation about some kind of M and A deal. And I was shocked, like I started making cold calls, uh, on LinkedIn, hitting them up on LinkedIn and like first 10, 10 out of 10 responded, which I thought, wow, I didn’t think that would happen.

And then [00:30:00] like five out of 10 wanted to have the call. So it ended up being a little easier than I thought. Now, of course, we were probably the number two player in the category out of 20. It had nice growth come along, so it made it a little bit easier, but, uh, that’s been interesting. Big learning experience.

Matt: I love that. Talk to us a little bit about what you’ve learned through that M& A process, doing your first successful, uh, acquisition. I think. There’s so much opportunity right now for entrepreneurs, just given where the market is. There are a couple of other members in our community that are doing a similar kind of like rollup strategy right now.

And just because there are a lot of founders who are just tired of dealing with the ups and downs. And so if you’re like, Hey, we’ve got a groove, we see opportunity, we’ve got tailwinds. What a, what an awesome time to be able to run a playbook like this.

Scott: What I learned is I was thrilled to have Austin CEO.

This is his wheelhouse and his superpower is putting those deals together. So. We were able to do that deal for almost like no money down, which is crazy.

Matt: That’s amazing.

Scott: And, uh, and I’ll let him get into that, but [00:31:00] that’s like, we didn’t have a ton of cash. We were sitting on to go buy a business. So he got super creative.

Also thanks to David Trogdon, cause he’d ran this playbook before, but I’ll let you kind of go with it. What was David Trogdon’s company?

Austin: Uh, medical device, I think, or medical supplies of some sort.

Scott: Great SEO there.

Austin: Yeah. And we got advice from David and then another guy. We’re part of C12. That’s a Christian CEO roundtable group.

Super helpful. And these guys had already done playbooks. And I mean, we literally like copied, I mean, they let us use their letters. The letter I sent out for when we bought this company. Was 95 percent you know, from this cause it was good and their integration had gone well. So there’s just not a reason to, to recreate these things.

But you know, so the mentioned, Scott mentioned we did two things that did seem to serve us well as we went into that phase. The first one is by pivoting toward profitability. No one else in our space is profitable because they’re all pure tech companies and all more early stages raised investment. So with being the only profitable company, it created opportunities.

A, we had some cash the way I think we put about a million [00:32:00] dollars of cash into the deal. And we had that because we, we threw off a couple million of cash. And so that was something that worked out well. That was a balance. You know, I was going to our profit, they were going to our growth, but we, the where we landed gave us money to actually complete two acquisitions, one smaller one, but this was the larger one.

So in each one we came up with about a million. So we spent the two million in acquisitions that we, that we made. But then the second piece of it is that profitability also positioned us well in the market with these other companies. If we’re able to tell the story to say, I remember being on a board call and they, they saw the revenue growth, but they saw that we went from losing 2 million to break even to make 2 million over a two year span.

And I remember one of the guys was like, how did you do that? You know, that’s, you know, so it did position that well. And then we actually get a credit to the CEO, Victoria, who we were working with. She said, Hey, I think this is a compelling story. I think the journey you’re on is compelling. And I think we want to be a part of that.

And she let us actually present to their board, which is a real credit to her and a humble move on her part. And so Scott and I got on a call with them and said, here’s what we see, here’s where we see the market going. And there is something that’s just [00:33:00] true about companies that are larger and more profitable, uh, are, are worth more in the market than smaller companies.

They’re, they’re tend to be more stable. They tend to, you know, attract. It’s a, it’s a ton of time to acquire a company, whether they’re big or small. And so you, you know, so, so we pitched that to them and that made sense to them. And so they said, Hey, we’re willing, we believe in you all is what that really came down to.

And we’re willing to roll into your company with just that. We did give a little bit of cash to get out some, you know, to not get out, but to, to pay some of the early investors, some of the early employees, they were waiting a long time for cash. So some people did get paid out, but the large investors. So we’re willing to go along for the next run because we believe in the industry, the direction you’re on.

Matt: That’s incredible. More to come, maybe?

Austin: Uh, I mean, I think we’re open to it. I think, uh, the thing I’ve found, we’ve raised investment, and we raised investment back in our, our, we did two seed investors in 2015 and 2016, and then we did a series A in 17. Uh, people keep. Who we acquired did investment even earlier than that.

So there’s some folks out there that want to see some chips off the table or [00:34:00] some, you know, de risk a bit. I’ve learned that it’s not that dissimilar to a bank. You put money into a bank and you expect to get interest return. Investors think about that very similarly. And so we’re in that seven, you know, to 10 year kind of run where we do need to provide a return for our investors who have, you know, given us this opportunity to put money in, to allow us to grow, but we’re doing the things that I tell our team all the time.

We’re doing things that good businesses should do. And the things good businesses should do, investors also want to be a part of. So it’s not, it’s not like, let’s go be a really dumb company to, to, to get investors to mess with us. No, no. Let’s do like, it’s smart to diversify. It’s smart to be profit. Like these are smart moves we’re making that as an employee of the company, you should want to be a part of a company that makes decisions like those.

In turn, that also will achieve investment returns for our, our investors.

Matt: I love it. And we’re almost ready for Nate’s favorite part of the podcast here. But before I do, one of the things you mentioned was your CEO group. Um, which is something we’re obviously really passionate about. Yeah, huge, huge. Could each of you share maybe like one thing that you feel like, um, CEO groups in particular have helped you along your [00:35:00] entrepreneurial journey?

Scott: Yeah, for sure. So I, I’ve had this rule that I’ve lived by pretty much all my life called the 3 percent rule. The 3 percent rule is in a given year, invest 3 percent of your income into your own personal development. And that could be books, could be courses, could be coaches. It could be mastermind groups and that, like this year I’ll, I’ll invest over, over six figures in, in personal development.

One of them is longevity health clinic. I’ve got this concierge.

Matt: Tell us a little bit about that.

Scott: It’s called longevity health dot clinic and uh, it, they kind of model after like Peter Atiyah outlive if you’ve read that book and you go out there for three days and you get every test known to man, every MRI, CAT scan, blood work.

You name it. And they create this data set on your body. It’s kind of like we run our businesses on our on on data, but we don’t run our bodies on data. And this is a way to have kind of a data driven approach to run in your health. And so every month I have a call with [00:36:00] a trainer, a dietician, um, And a doctor on like, you know, are we moving the needle on all the things that we’re doing?

So it’s pretty cool. But anyway back to your question.

Matt: Yeah

Scott: So cool. So, um, i’m a huge advocate of surround yourself with smart people and i’m in number of different masterminds where um, It pays off in dividends and, uh, the one that I love here in town that I’ve been a part of for a couple of years now is called Tiger 21.

Matt: Oh, yeah.

Scott: And David Trogdon, who we talked about earlier, we wouldn’t have had that idea without David. So that was all a result of Tiger 21.

Matt: That’s so great.

Scott: Yeah.

Matt: How about you, Austin?

Austin: Yeah, CEO group’s been huge. I’ve gotten one, started my first business in 2011, started one in 2012, and it is massive to join forces.

I mean, starting out, you’re the only employee, so you need people for that reason, but then eventually when you leave the organization, you have team members, there’s conversations you can’t have with your team or shouldn’t have with your team, but you need sounding boards and it’s very helpful for people that are in this trenches.

So I mean, massive. I recall going to that group in 2013, uh, when I was, and I just was ready to [00:37:00] end it all. I was doing, I just, I was done. Businesses wasn’t making it. It was failing and I was ready to quit and I remember that group saying, well, are you Is this something that you’re hearing from God that it’s time to, you know, end it or, or, you know, I said, I, I, no, I, I think I haven’t really heard anything like that.

I, you know, I, I’m just in, you know, and they’re like, well, if God’s not spoken to that way, are you supposed to stay in this a little longer? And they really gave me that perseverance message. And if they, things would have just ended there. I mean, it was, you know, at the end. So that was a 13 and then it happens again.

So been in that consistently now for 13 years and cannot recommend it highly enough. That’s so good. I think the most successful folks, you know, plans fail for lack of counsel with many advisors, they succeed. That’s a proverb. Ancient wisdom and it’s still true today. Absolutely. Crazy. Three thousand years ago and it’s still true today.

Nate: That’s awesome. That’s a mic drop moment right there. both for sharing. Holy smokes.

Matt: Nate, it’s, it’s time for your favorite part of the show. Guys, it is time for my favorite part of the show. This is the lightning round. We’ve adapted it a little bit. We’re gonna, we’re gonna share a little bit of the lightning round.

Uh, Matt and I are gonna go and we’re gonna ask you some, some quick hitter questions. So, we’ll go here, here, here, here. Yup, [00:38:00] sounds good. Sounds like a plan? Sounds good. Quick, quick mi or quick answers, top thing, uh, off the top of your mind. Got it? Got it.

No wrong answers.

Nate: Unless they’re a wrong answer.

Alright, Scott. What is a hidden gem in Indiana?

Scott: Parlor Public House. Favorite coffee shop?

Nate: Ooh, that’s a good one! What is, that’s one’s coffeetail cocktails, right?

Scott: Yeah, they do both. Yeah, that’s a good business card.

Matt: Did that make your list, though?

Nate: Um, I can neither confirm or deny, but it did make the comments.

Someone in the comments, uh, I think his name was Will. Will told me that I needed to put Father Republic on there. Shout out to Will.

Austin: Shout out Will. And I got Turkey Run State Park. Closest thing to Great Smoky Mountains, in my view, and it’s in Indiana. Took my boys there to hike this last Thursday. Epic.

Oh, I like that. Go when it’s raining. Right now would be a good time. Go when it’s raining? Go when it’s raining.

Nate: Why would you go to Turkey Run when it’s raining?

Austin: Walk through the creeks. Get wet. Wear shoes that can get wet. And take the epic hikes. Great place. The epic hikes.

Nate: I’m here for that. It’s pretty incredible.

Alright, let’s get in the car. Let’s ride. Um, okay. Austin. Austin. Austin. [00:39:00] Who is someone we need to keep on our radar? Someone who is doing big things.

Austin: I’ll go Justin Clements. Uh, on our team. I love how he has started this thing and he wants to use that so he’s gonna take uh, the resources he gets from here and go down to Martinsville and really invest in that community.

So I’m excited about the way he’s gonna invest. Oh. For the future. Already super plugged into a non profit down there. Martinsville. So I’ll go Justin Clements.

Nate: Is there a reason why you chose Martinsville? Just curious.

Austin: Uh, he’s, he’s from down there and he believes Martinsville. Yeah, he can tell some stories.

Nate: There’s a hidden gem in Martinsville. I think there’s like a hundred year old Goldfish farm or something like that. Okay. Look into this thing. It’s like the Midwest oldest goldfish farm. So I was, someone was in my DMs telling me about this goldfish farm. It’s funny. Maybe it was Justin. Maybe it was Justin, who knows?

Um, Scott, who’s someone we need to keep on our radar? Someone who is doing big things.

Scott: Yeah. Kid I just met that’s 21. I want to say Justin Groff. Yeah. So Justin Groff is got, he started a [00:40:00] lawn mowing business in high school. As a junior, he had 70 clients. Wow. And now he’s got a crew, he’s one year out of high school, said, screw college, I’m going to go make a billion and literally wants to be a billionaire.

And he now has five crews and he’s leveled up and he’s doing hardscaping and he’s doing landscaping lights. And this dude literally wants to build like a private equity to own a bunch of these. Love it. I mean, he’s a machine. It’s like a mini Dan Hanrahan. I thought of who

Austin: I’d say now that he mentions that.

Can I? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you can say just two, but Will Schuller is the guy that I just met. Uh, that’s very similar to Justin. So 22 years old, excavating company starts doing it in high school and for his, his class where you’re supposed to go like, you know, work study program kind of thing. And the teacher’s like, Hey, you know what, you know, how are you going to prove that you’re doing a work study?

He goes, can I do my own business? Like, yeah, it’s probably fine. How are you going to prove it? And then he, uh, he brings an invoice the first week, like, you know, 20, 000 invoice. He goes, yeah, you’re, you’re good. You can just, yeah, crazy, crazy. Will [00:41:00] Shuler and Justin Groff. How do you spell that?

Scott: G R O F F. And these guys, 21 and 22, are doing things that,

Austin: We weren’t even thinking about till 10 years after that.

Heck yeah. Unreal. That’s great.

Nate: Justin Groff, uh, we’re, we’re gonna get him on, on Instagram. We’re gonna blow up his, he’s got lawn care? Yeah. Okay. At Justin Groff. Yeah. Oh, we’re gonna tag him. He’s gonna be great. Great dude.

Matt: Final two questions. Scott, I’ll start with you. If you could have a superpower and solve any business challenge, what would your superpower be and why?

Scott: Any business challenge. That’s a good one. Um, Yeah. I’ll probably tie it to what I’m working on. Uh, so, so I’m, I’m now chairman of the board and I’m, I’m no longer working. So I got a lot of free time and I’m doing philanthropic work and what we’re building here in town is called side hustle school and we’re helping kids that aren’t wired to go to college and maybe not wired to go to trades, like go straight into entrepreneurship.

Cool. And we got a group of, uh, 12 kids. And so I’m learning [00:42:00] every day from guys like Justin Groff. That’s why, how I know him. Yeah. Uh, to figure out how to, how to build these kids into entrepreneurs, like straight out of the gate. And, uh, so if I could learn anything, I’d want to do better on that.

Matt: Yeah. Superpower. How to build a great entrepreneur. Yep. Cool. How about you? If you had one superpower.

Austin: Yeah, I would love to figure out how to help people that grew up without dads or the fatherless. How to engage them, you know, or how to help them. I just think it’s so hard. I mean, we both came out of with strong fathers and had such a big impact, as did Justin and Will, who we just described.

And so if there’s something we could do, it’s my superpower would be to somehow create fathers for this fatherless community. Gender, generation and help them raise up. That’s crazy.

Nate: You said it. My best friend and I have calls every morning at 5am to make sure we’re out of bed. And on our call like two days ago.

We said we should make dad camp because he’s a dad and he’s like, what if there was a summer camp where you just like people that maybe didn’t have dads, went to dad camp and learned how to do.

Austin: That’s my passion. Dad camp. That’s so cool. I will invest in that and do that the rest of my life. [00:43:00] There you go.

Dad camp. Dad camp. Dad camp.

Nate: Coming soon to a, to a town, a small town near you.

Matt: Speaking into existence. I like it. I love it. Uh, final question. Which entrepreneur do you secretly admire and why?

Scott: I would say I’m going way back, uh, John Rockefeller, the book Titan. So I’m a huge fan of the podcast called Founders and what Founders is, he reads biographies and then he gives like an hour synopsis and he’s got a ton on there about Rockefeller.

I mean, what I’ve learned about him is you combine like Musk. And jobs, and Bezos, and it’s not nearly the impact that that guy had on the U. S. back in that day, based on inflation. Changed the trajectory of the country. Yeah, and it’s not that he did everything right, but a lot of lessons you can learn in there.

Matt: Great answer. Well, and, um, yeah, what was, I guess, what was your biggest takeaway? Why? Like, what did John Rockefeller do? What’s one thing in particular you admired about him?

Scott: Uh, just his, his focus. And, of course, you can’t get away with monopolies now, but, uh, just the [00:44:00] playbook he had of how to go around the country and just buy up other companies, and just the all out focus.

It was insane. Absolutely. I love that. That’s great. They’re

Austin: rebranding monopolies now, just calling them white boats. Yeah, exactly. I’m reading Zero to One right now. You know, it’s, That’s right. That’s the rebrand. I like it. I like it. Monopoly is a wide moat. Uh, yeah. My, my, my first that I admire are actually, and I’ll, I’ll give two, uh, Scott, you know, Scott, Justin, my dad are, and because it’s people that have built companies.

But still have healthy families and I have just now as I’ve enjoyed the founders podcast I’ve gone man like so many of these Founders the family side is just trainwreck almost all the largest most successful ones And so, you know, that’s something that I really care deeply about is how do we build?

Great companies while also building great families and communities.

Matt: As you’ve studied that, are there a couple traits or qualities that you see from those entrepreneurs that they do really well in balancing, uh, having a great family while also building a great business?

Austin: Yeah. I mean, [00:45:00] Scott’s been a unique one because like it’s, it’s hard to get to a certain level of most of the time you have to make trade offs.

So I think my dad made trade offs. I think that certain, a lot of people make trade offs, but Scott’s been a unique one where I’m like a lot of success and yet. It’s got good, good sons, you know, good marriage. I mean, so it’s, you know, it’s, it’s a very hard thing. So I, I do think that there is times a trade off where you have to go, I mean, I’ll give one example.

I was at this founders event and I met a company and they said, I’m getting home tonight and I have a 6 30 PM Thursday night meeting and that’s our weekly company meeting, 6 30 PM on Thursdays. Uh, and I don’t know how long it goes till eight, you know, and I’m like, Every Thursday he goes, yeah, we’re in Silicon Valley, we get stuff done.

And I’m like, man, I’m just not accepting that trade off. Yeah. You know, and so I’ve just seen people that prioritize family, Uh, prioritize fitness and they’re saying, hey, I’m gonna work hard during these times, but I’ve also got to, you know, unplug and unwind. So We, our, uh, value we call is prioritized. Uh, we’re strong collaborators, hard workers, willing to live a balanced [00:46:00] life.

So we just codified that. I love that. We’re going to build a great company, enduring company, but not at the cost of the people that are most important in our life.

Matt: Were there any big lessons you learned, Scott, while building a great family and great businesses?

Scott: I think just the quote, uh, that, that I used to have on my wall, um, no amount of success at work can make up for failure at home.

And just understanding that, like. End of the day, like I care way more about building, being a good dad and being a good husband than I care about building a great company. Uh, you know, at my funeral, I hope that’s like, if anything’s going to be said, I hope it’s that not so much being an entrepreneur. So just having those priorities I think is huge.

Matt: Perspective is powerful and you only get that with priorities. That’s great. Scott. Awesome. This has been an amazing interview. Thank you both so much. Yeah.

Nate: Yeah. It’s been exciting. This is so fun. I will say Tyler. Uh, Scott’s son is like how kind of that initial introduction got, and he does rave about you as well.

Not strictly being an entrepreneur, right? Being a good dad. So that is a little bit of fuel on that fire of you’re doing the right thing there. And he does, I [00:47:00] will, I will retweet great sons. I only know one, but Tyler’s awesome. Yeah, his kids, his kids are. Gentlemen, this was so great. Thank you so much for bearing with us and, and we will edit out the fire alarm, but there was a fire alarm during a crazy episode.

First one of one, uh, I mean, this is a hot episode. It’s hot.

Matt: It’s that hot, guys. Set off the fire alarm.

Nate: Keep up the great work. Uh, we’re going to, there’s so many fun clips, so many great things that are going to come from this, um, and keep up the good work, gentlemen.

Matt: Appreciate it, guys. Guys, guys. Thank you.

This has been get in a powderkeg production in partnership with Elevate Ventures. And we want to hear from you. If you have suggestions for our guest or segment, reach out to Matt or Nate on LinkedIn or on email to discover top tier tech companies outside of Silicon Valley in hubs like Indiana, check out our newsletter at powderkeg. com slash newsletter and to apply for membership to the powder cake executive community, check out powderkeg. com slash premium. We’ll catch you next time. And next week, as we continue to help [00:48:00] the world get in, since you just listened to this podcast, you might be thinking about starting one for your company.

Lucky for you, our partners over at Casted have you covered. Casted is the first and only podcast and video marketing platform made specifically for B2B brands. I love this about them. The platform makes it possible to publish, syndicate, amplify and measure the value of your podcast and video content. In fact, we use it for our podcast here at Powderkeg.

And if you’re a startup, you should listen up because Casted for startups is definitely for you. They are offering exclusive deep discounts of up to 82 percent off retail price for qualifying startups. Connect with Casted at casted. us slash powderkeg.