Revolutionizing Healthcare Engagement With Jeff Spanbauer of Relevate Health

Jeff Spanbauer is the Co-founder and Chairman of the Board at Relevate Health, formerly known as Healthcare Regional Marketing. Since its inception in 2007, Jeff has led Relevate Health through four acquisitions and integrations, now supporting 185 brands, 15 hospitals and health systems, and generating over $70 million in revenue.

With a background that includes 10 years at Pfizer and Procter & Gamble, Jeff has demonstrated expertise in leading teams to develop and grow businesses in the pharmaceutical, medical device, and hospital sectors. As a transformational organizational growth leader, his specialties encompass creating a world-class culture, producing measurable results, setting organizational strategy, building strategic roadmaps, driving marketing innovation, and paving the path to profitability.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

Jeff Spanbauer talks about his role at Relevate Health
The mission and vision behind Relevate Health
Jeff shares the lessons learned and mistakes made throughout his career
Why building a strong company culture is critical
How Jeff grew through various roles at Relevate Health
The importance of making a real difference in patients’ lives

In this episode…

Navigating the healthcare engagement landscape can be challenging, but for those who master it, the impact on people’s lives is invaluable. Take a deep dive with Jeff Spanbauer, who has dedicated his career to revolutionizing healthcare engagement and building a successful business focused on improving patient outcomes through innovative strategies.

So, what can you do to create meaningful healthcare engagement and improve patient outcomes? Jeff believes the key lies in developing locally relevant messages that resonate with patients, breaking through the clutter, and delivering content that motivates positive behavior change.

Join Dr. Jeremy Weisz, host of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, in an insightful conversation with Jeff Spanbauer, the Co-founder and Chairman of the Board at Relevate Health. Jeff shares his insights into the world of healthcare engagement, discussing the importance of locally relevant messaging, the value of learning from failures, and the role that innovative strategies play in achieving success and improving patient outcomes.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Jeremy Weisz 0:13

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders today is no different. I have just found power of relevant health. And Jeff, before I formally introduce you, I want to point out some other episodes people should check out. This is part of the Top Agency series. And Jeff has an incredible journey. And so there’s some other ones you can check out, I had one with Kevin Hourigan, who’s been agency owner since 1995. What the landscape was like then and still doing it today and growing. It’s been the attack. And Scott Scully founder of Abstrakt Marketing Group, they specializes in a lot of like, auto, they do b2b lead generation. And they grew, he’s done it for the past 28 years, and they’re growing to over 70 million in revenue. And Todd Taskey, he has a Second Bite Podcast, and he helps match agencies with private equity. So sometimes they have more on the second bite than they do on the first. And Jeff knows a little bit about private equity. And we’re going to talk about that as well. But in more episodes at inspiredinsider.com, and this episode is brought to you by Rise25. That Rise25 we help businesses give to and connect to their dream 100 relationships and partnerships. And how do we do that we actually help you run your podcasts. We’re an easy button for you to launch and run your podcasts we do strategy, accountability and full execution around a podcast. And you know, Jeff, for me, the number one thing in my life is relationships. And I’m always looking at ways to give to my best relationships. And I found no better way to do that than the profile that people and companies I most admire on this planet and share with the world what they’re working on. And guess what I get to learn from them too, and so does my audience. So if you thought about podcasting, you should if you have questions, you can go to rise25.com. We’ve been doing it for over a decade. And I always say it’s the best thing since sliced bread. So check it out. And today we have Jeff Spanbauer co founded Healthcare Regional Marketing. Now it’s Relevate Health in 2007. He’s led for acquisitions and integrations to really transform from a niche player into the healthcare platform engagement leader in the life sciences industry, with 200 colleagues supporting 185 brands and 15 Hospitals and Health Systems. He’s partnered I mentioned before, Jeff, he partner with P investor Mountaingate Capital to grow revenue to 70 million plus he scaled his company starting with two people, I think in a basement somewhere and growing to 200 people and his experience. You know, Jeff, what’s fascinating is, your experience comes from a combined 10 years with Pfizer and Procter and Gamble, Jeff helped. And you know, he’s a humble guy, but I’ll say this, he helped drive over a billion dollars in sales with these companies while working with some of the top brands in the market. So Jeff, thanks for joining me.

Jeff Spanbauer 3:08

Hey, it’s a thrill to be here. Thanks, Jeremy.

Jeremy Weisz 3:11

So talk about Relevate Health and what you do.

Jeff Spanbauer 3:14

Yeah, so Relevate Health, real simply, we’re experts in engaging healthcare professionals, so doctors, by using data and marketing to create relevant ways to be able to create value for them. And so, you know, we’re working with about 1.4 million doctors across the US day in day out, supporting the 185 brands you mentioned. And it’s really around omni channel marketing, you know, how do we surround sound the doctors with content that they’re, that’s helpful for them in their practice, and serving up to them at the right time, so that they can use that to get the best outcomes for their patients.

Jeremy Weisz 3:49

Everything, it seems like, you know, you have a northstar in your company, and I’d love to hear how you came to that. But life changing healthcare engagement, really, it seems like it helps drive decisions, maybe people and services. How did you come to that succinct piece?

Jeff Spanbauer 4:09

Yeah, it’s, you know, even though we’re marketers, it took a while to really figure that out. And so, you know, one of the things that helped me was, I read a book by Patrick Lencioni called The Advantage and, you know, coming from P&G, and Pfizer where we had these really great, you know, visions and purposes, but they’re really long. The whole idea of the advantage was if you can create a succinct way to kind of explain your vision, your purpose and your values, it creates clarity in your organization and clarity drives a better culture, and then a better culture drives this huge advantage for you as an organization. So, you know, kind of given you the, you know, back in when we started HRM you know, our purpose was, you know, grow the business like we didn’t have a lot of, you know, fancy you know, kind of thinking around that was really this idea of, you know, we we can help brands, you know, market better through data and analytics to get their message to the, you know, to the market in a relevant way. And, you know, we did that we had a lot of success, we started off, the company grew at about 15 million in the first four years. And we’re like, Hey, this is great, we should have started this a long time ago. And then 2020 12 hit, and we went, we took it from 15, down to six. And doing that was really painful. And hot, and I was hard. And it was really hard our culture, and I didn’t realize how important important culture was until, after I went through that experience, read the advantage, and it was like, Hey, we really, you know, we need to do something different here to really have a very clear vision and purpose and values. And then set ever since 2012, we’ve been working really hard at at doing that. And with with the different acquisitions, we’ve we’ve kind of tweaked it. But you know, our vision, you know, in a vision, something you are aspiring to never reach is to, you know, every communications relevant, which really ties back to relevant health. And this purpose of life changing healthcare engagement, that gets me excited to come to work every day, if I’m helping people, you know, leverage, you know, use my skills in a way to really serve people and help them be able to do something that’s impacting lives in a positive way. And then we have core values four core values right now. It’s called our pact. PACT, it stands for pioneering, accountable, caring, and transparent. And so those values kind of really give us this, this clarity in their organization on when we hire people, if we have to fire somebody, when we do reviews, every month in our town halls, you know, we recognize people based on their core values, this peer recognition, recognition, actually, where peers recognize each other for these values. And so that’s kind of how that came together. And, you know, we’re continuing to tweak it, you know, all the time. But for the most part, you know, I would always start our town halls, when I was CEO is, hey, let’s talk about our vision and purpose. And even though I got tired of talking about it every month, we have people joining every month, I had to keep reading or reinforcing that to make sure that new people heard it. And quite frankly, you know, some people may not remember it. And so that part of you know, being being the leader is also being the chief communication officer or the chief reminding officer and reminding people kind of why we’re here and what we do, but it’s great having a purpose that is so you know, kind of externally focused, and really, you know, trying to help people live longer, healthier lives. And that’s one of the benefits of being in the healthcare space.

Jeremy Weisz 7:20

Well, we’ll talk about some examples. And, Jeff, there’s so much to unpack on what you just said. But can you just repeat the core values for a second, and I love for you to talk about how do you have peers recognize each other in the company?

Jeff Spanbauer 7:34

Yeah, so the core values we call our pact, so kind of our promise to each other. And that’s pioneering, accountable, caring and transparent. And so that, you know, and we define each of those with a few words that kind of explain what they are, and there’s different ways to be able to kind of live those values. But one of the things we do internally is we’re transparent, I’m a big believer, and I’ve learned this through that my journey, you know, if you and I have similar data, we’re probably gonna make a very similar decision. And if I’m making a decision, and you don’t understand why I’m making it, that means there’s a big gap in data. And so we’ve been really clear about trying to be transparent. So we have a, you know, every every four to six weeks, we’ll have a town hall. And the town hall invites everybody to the company to come and we record it for people who have client meetings. And prior to the townhall, our leader in HR reaches out to everybody and says, hey, we’d like to get peer nominations for people who are live in the pact. And so people can submit into HR, different, you know, ways that you know, Jeremy or other colleagues have lived, you know, a value by, you know, somebody who, you know, went the extra mile and caring for a client or somebody who, you know, made a mistake, but then owned it and fixed it, and they are accountable, or someone who tried something new for a client or internal, and we’re pioneering. And so that those are all examples that happened the last 2025 minutes of Our Town Hall. And quite frankly, it’s probably the best part of our town hall. I know our people like it the most, because you’re recognizing each other. And it means a lot when it comes from here versus from a manager or leader in the organization. And so, you know, I did that as well. And I would do that more one on one. But for a lot of people, you know, being able to recognize each other just creates this caring culture, where we’re paying attention and saying thank you. And you know, you never see people’s smiles bigger than when they’re being recognized by a peer for something that they went above and beyond on.

Jeremy Weisz 9:29

I’d love to hear, you know, mistakes, or we’ll call it learnings. Right? And you mentioned, I know in your journey, and you just mentioned going from 15 million to 6 million. Yes. And one of those learnings is a customer concentration thing but talk about some of the learnings that you know, we could start with that one.

Jeff Spanbauer 9:55

Yeah, that one was a really hard one because we had a client who Uh, you know, they didn’t hire us the first two years when my, you know, co founder, and I started the company, because we both had left, you know, the company was Pfizer. And, you know, but once once we, you know, got established and added some value, and they had kind of a team, you know, they, there was a internal restructure, and they went to a very regional structure. And they reached out to us and said, Hey, we need your help. And it was like, Okay, great. And it was so great, what we grew from, you know, basically very little in revenue with them to about 10 million a year of that 15. And, you know, in a lot of ways, you know, we rationalized it internally, like, Hey, this is great, when you have a big client, you can really focus on them, you can really go deep, you know, their processes, we came from there, we know a lot of people it was, it was really a great partnership on working together to be able to really help them grow their business, and be able to do in a way that we’re basically an extension of them. And so all that was good, you know, it was a good margin business for us. And we, you know, felt like, Hey, this is great, because it’s, you know, you don’t think about when it’s going to end, you just think about as you’re growing hair on fire, how do you get stuff done, you know, how do you hire people. But in 2012, they had a big restructure, because one of their big drugs, Lipitor was going generic. And that’s one of the challenges in the life science space, is you only get 17 years with a drug before it goes generic, and usually the first 10 years that you’re doing clinical trials.

Jeremy Weisz 11:23

So it was like a seven year span there.

Jeff Spanbauer 11:27

Yeah. So they’re very, you know, they gotta aggressively market to try to make all the money, the billion dollars, they invested in a dryer comeback in that short period of time. So you know, fast forward, you know, kind of rewind back to 2012. For us, what happened is, you know, they restructured and we, you know, went from them, probably from 10, down to two with them. And so that was extremely painful. And, you know, if I look in the mirror was, you know, my fault that I didn’t do a better job diversifying back then, to prepare for the day that they were no longer going to be such a large client. And, you know, the hard part was, you know, or the sad part for me was having to tell, you know, 10 different colleagues, hey, sorry, we’re gonna have to let you go. And we did all the right things, we, you know, had a, you know, a training package with right management where they can go and get, you know, some career counseling, we gave a severance, you know, we did all the things that kind of fit our carrying culture. But there’s nothing worse than, you know, knowing that I could have prevented this by, you know, maybe spending less time on focused on that business and more time focused on how do I get new business. And so after we went through that painful experience, and I remember, like, meeting people in the conference room with HR, each one, one on one, and then going out and getting somebody else and bringing them in, and at some point, everybody was hiding from me, because they didn’t want me to come pull them in to the conference room to have that conversation. So it was really a painful moment, that was really when I kind of, you know, came to the conclusion, like we can’t, you know, this is not a great way to run a business. I mean, that was it, you know, my MBA school teaching taught me like, Hey, you shouldn’t be concentrated. But when you’re living it, you can rationalize a lot of things. And so that was, that was a really, you know, pivotal moment for us to say, hey, let’s rebuild this business, but diversify it. And as we grew up, back, we grew up back to about 18 million in 2020. And we I think we had last nope, nobody was more than 10% of our business at that point, because we just learned a lesson, it’s better to say no, then put yourself in a position where you’re going to have to deal with all this all these challenges later. And that was, you know, a lesson that, you know, was pretty painful from a culture and from a people perspective.

Jeremy Weisz 13:33

So one is really diversification, customer revenue, are there any other big ones that stick out? For me?

Jeff Spanbauer 13:41

I think that the whole culture thing, right? Because going through that, you know, probably the, you know, the biggest thing was culture, because, you know, it probably took a year, two years, maybe three years for people to trust me again, internally. Because, you know, that’s where I started becoming much more transparent, like, Hey, if you had the same data I had on what’s going on, you would also probably make a similar decision as hard as it is to be. And, you know, part of my job as a leader is, you know, you have to trust me to make the hard decisions. Because if I don’t make the hard decisions, and put us out of business, that doesn’t help anybody in the organization. And so, that was a big learning as Dale, that’s where I kind of got connected with the advantage by Patrick Lencioni. And really start to think about how do we build a culture that’s a competitive advantage for us versus something that’s, you know, people just show up, do their job and go home and don’t have a lot of, you know, care for the business care for our clients. They just, they’re just kind of punched in the card. And that was that was probably the biggest learning that I’ve spent the last 10 years really working on to build a culture that we have now, which I’m very proud of. And, you know, we tend to we’re attracted really, really, really strong people because of our culture.

Jeremy Weisz 14:51

Yeah. So I want to talk about building culture. But yeah, it’s funny you said, Jeff, you know, I need to check out that book, Patrick Lencioni, his book Advantage I remember the Death by Meeting. Yeah, can I get so remember the cover what I love about his books is they’re short. Yeah, apparently was really informative. Yeah. And also I think this Five Temptations of a CEO ones off the checkout advantage. That’s a great one. Building a culture. What are some things that people listening that you’ve done, that people can learn from?

Jeff Spanbauer 15:21

Yeah, you know, like one of the things that was not natural for me, when I started, I always had this division between professional and personal relationships. And, you know, we ended up there’s a process called Scaling up that we —

Jeremy Weisz 15:37

Hi, Roberta, she was on the pod.

Jeff Spanbauer 15:39

Yeah. So we hired one of their coaches. And one of the things they did you know, is one of the one of the rhythms that we did is we had a weekly management meeting with my ELT, my executive leadership team. And we had to share our personal high and personal lows, in addition to our business, home business, lows, and I will, you know, I was a the way I’m wired, I don’t really think about lows, I just kind of think about what’s what’s ahead, and how do I, you know, kind of focus on that. But, you know, coming up with personal highs, but also personal lows was really, really kind of new to me. And, you know, we had talked before this conversation about EO Entrepreneurs Organization, I’m in a forum here in Cincinnati. And it’s been great for me, because one of the things we’ve worked on his personal growth, and we use a program, we use a kind of a system called Enneagram. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Enneagram. But it’s kind of like a Myers Briggs or a disc. And it helps you to kind of define who you are and how you’re wired. And so luckily, I’d been doing that work prior to hiring this coach who came in and talked about personal highs and personal lows, and, and the importance of being vulnerable to your team. And so that was kind of a new thing. But you know, through that, you know, I would share personal highest personal lows, business highs, business lows, but then the rest of my leadership 10 team did the same. And the stuff you would just kind of know about, you learn about the person on their personal lows, and even personal highs, just creates a much deeper relationship, a higher level of trust. That was not again, that wasn’t natural me because working at p&g, and Pfizer, you didn’t really talk about personal stuff that much, he just kind of did your job and kind of separated and so learning to be kind of a full kind of a full manager, not just, you know, because of the transparency part of culture too. Absolutely. Because now you know, like, hey, someone’s got a health issue or someone’s in their family is sick, or, you know, those, you know, that all affects how we perform at work. But you don’t know why people are, you know, behave in some of those times. And so that just gave me a lot more perspective of, hey, people are people and it’s okay to be have a strong relationship with them. And you know, it’s quite frankly, part of being a you know, caring in our culture isn’t about being unkind as much as telling people the truth, you know, like, you know, my kids are the first to tell me if, you know, if my outfit doesn’t match or something, but that’s, you know, that’s caring, right? Like, that’s, they don’t let me go out and embarrass them. Right. Kids are brutally honest. Yeah, exactly. And so part of the culture is, you know, there’s a book called Crucial Conversations that we introduced a few years back to help people to have be able to have the harder conversations, coming from a place of love in your heart and caring for people. Because that’s what we all need in our life for people around us who can tell us the truth and be honest. And, you know, like, my experience as CEO, is, sometimes I’m the last guy to hear the truth. And so trying to drive that in my culture takes more than just telling people to have to do it, but really getting to know them. And so that was the personal highs and personal lows was a new thing for me that I thought was really, really valuable. Because now I could ask people about their family, and I could, you know, cheer them on, you know, if they’re trying to do some kind of fitness goal. Or if they have a health issue, we can all surround them and you know, help them through that, you know, those issues. So that’d be one. Another thing I do, I did regularly was any new hires, I would meet with them. Most the time now it’s on Zoom. Previously, when it was more geographically easy, I would do them in person, but I always felt like it was important to have a relationship with everybody at the company. And you know, as we get bigger, it’s harder and harder, but that, you know, I have some walk them to relevant meetings where there’ll be nine or 10 new hires that month there. But still, I know, my My policy is, hey, I got to open door open teams, you know, we use Microsoft Teams. So there’s any ideas that you have open teams? Yeah, anything you guys any ideas you have or questions, always feel free to reach out. And then the other thing that we’ve done from a culture perspective as we use Office vibe, and office vibe is a system that we’ll reach out to you, you know, about every 90 days to get feedback on how the company is doing for you. How do you have, you know, what’s working and where are some issues and ultimately, it helps us give it an employee Net Promoter Score, so we know how likely the employee is going to be to recommend relevant to a friend or colleague. And that’s really insightful and you know, I’m a big believer that, you know, feedbacks a gift. And as much as I may not want to hear the feedback because it’s critical or it’s different. I’ve learned through this, you know, kind of development on myself. Like, there’s some truth to it. And if I can understand what you know, get some transparency into why they’re thinking that what they’re seeing, that’s just going to help me be able to be a better leader, but also, more importantly, have the company be a better organization that meets meets the needs. So those are those are some of the things we do on a regular basis. That’s really helped us build a, you know, a place of transparency, caring accountability and pioneering in the organization. Love it.

Jeremy Weisz 20:37

Yeah, Jeff, thanks for sharing that super valuable. Also, a second, the crucial conversation actually had Joseph Grenny on the podcast can check out that episode. With him. It’s really incredible. The Jeff, you know, I’m really curious, how if you can take us through the evolution of the positions that you held at the company, and how you had to grow? Because I know you started as two people you had to sell. And then you when you look at it, I don’t know if it’s I’ve made it moment, but when you look at it as someone’s chairman of the board, it’s like, that’s to me, when I look at it, you know, there’s no way there’s no, I’ve made it moment, necessarily, but I see that is pretty amazing. Thank you. That means you’re like you are, you know, not running the business, you are working on the business at all times. And you have all the pieces in place, maybe not always all, but it’s always evolving, but you get my drift. So take us through maybe a quick evolution of salesperson, here’s what I needed to grow to the next level and then each position.

Jeff Spanbauer 21:46

Yeah, definitely. So yeah, so you’re exactly right, as a as a co founder, the both of us are out selling like, that’s job number one. And you gotta you gotta create revenue and create confidence and be able to get people that want to, you know, write you write you a check, right. And so, that was a big part of what we did. And, you know, the kind of amazing thing and looking back is within the first month, we got hired by three major pharma companies, we got hired by Santa Fe, Venice, Santa Fe, now AstraZeneca, and Johnson and Johnson and they all like, you know, my, my co founder, Scott Weintraub, we both worked at P&G together. We both worked at Pfizer together. And then we laughed together to start this company, they liked our background of kind of having that marketing experience, both in consumer and pharma.

Jeremy Weisz 22:29

That’s a tough sell. I mean, you know, even I know, you’ve talked about this publicly, but even some people, your previous companies like, yeah, we know you too. Well, we know you’re working out of a basement with two people. So we’re not gonna hire you right now. But the Johnson Johnson these other companies, you know, they did, right.

Jeff Spanbauer 22:46

And, you know, funny, funny thing we did with our, with our, you know, business address and our cars, you know, I had my home address by and sweet 100. And my partner, I think, at his street to go on. And so I’ll let you know, at least it gave some level of, there’s something going on, and I kind of joke, that’s the way we you know, routed mail in our house to my office in the basement. But that, you know, gave some level of there’s, you know, these guys, you know, have some type of —

Jeremy Weisz 23:10

Suite 100, in parentheses basement.

Jeff Spanbauer 23:13

I love that part out of it, just let it but yeah, these companies, when they heard have our back kind of what we’re trying to do in the industry, which was using data to create more local relevance, it was it bet. And part of the advantage we had is we came from the client side. And so we understood all the problems that we dealt with on the client side. And that was part of our inspiration to build a company that was very client focused and helping them solve problems, major problems that we’re dealing with. But yeah, we got hired, you know, and so that was the kind of celebrate and then oh, crap moment of how are we gonna do all this work? And so, you know, we Scott Scott lived in Jersey, I live in Cincinnati, I still live here. And we debated Hey, where do we hire people? Like, should we hire them in New Jersey, or should we hire them in Cincinnati and we came to the conclusion like Cincinnati would be a great place to, you know, put the put the company from an HQ perspective and a physical location perspective, primarily, because a lot of great marketing talent with p&g here in town, we got a number of marketing companies here. And then also the cost of living back then was less than the East Coast. And so we felt like this would be, you know, give us a little bit of an advantage on pricing and be able to do great work for our clients. And so, you know, we decided to be here, which then created a kind of a whole new layer of work for me, in addition to selling now I got to help, you know, kind of operate and manage people find an office, you know, run the office, you know, do all this stuff every entrepreneur gets to do and Scott spent most of his time selling and I spent most of my you know, I’d say probably two thirds of my time kind of overseeing running. And so I moved into kind of the, you know, head of client service at that point, was kind of the next role and, you know, really focused on building out the team. And then, you know, one of the things you know, as we grew, you know, Scott and I were so here On Fire, being able to get the work done and grow the business, you know, we grew from again, zero to 15. In the first four years, like one of the things we were really struggling with was like, how do we like find all the right people get all the work. And so I met another guy here in Cincinnati, who had great background in kind of, you know, building companies. And so we brought him on as a partner. And he took the role as CEO for the, at that point, because he had great experience and, you know, kind of looked at him as a mentor, and he helped helped me develop. And, you know, luckily, I gave him some of the credit for me still having hair, because he helped me put some of the fires out with how I was wired. And as part of the wiring, you know, AEO was really helpful because of the whole Enneagram. I’m a three on the Enneagram. There’s nine types, and the threes and achiever. And one of the strengths of achievers, I get a lot of stuff done. One of the downsides is I turn everything into a task just naturally turns into a task, I know how to do it. And so part of that journey we talked about earlier about the personal side of relationships, I really had to, I really had to slow down and give some be much more vulnerable for people because I learned, if everything’s perfect about me, no one can relate to me. And so I have to be able to show some of the, you know, parts of Jeff Vampira that aren’t so shiny, and create trust. And so that was part of the journey I went through, of slowing down, you know, learning that there’s more than just getting stuff done to be successful. But I moved, I kind of led the client service, as we grew, you know, from, you know, to people to, you know, I think about 80. And 2012 is about where we were at, and then moved into the president role. I’m sorry, the Chief Operating role was next. And so the Chief Operating role was kind of that was when I was here on fire, just getting stuff done. And that was kind of when I went through that journey of really slowing down to learn how to create relationships and create higher trust. And that was, you know, that was really important. Because, you know, as you get into their company, and you’re able to attract better talent, they don’t really want to be told what to do all the time, they want to be, you know, they, and they definitely want to be told how to do it, right. Like, there’s a lot of ways to do things, I say, there’s 100 ways to do every single thing. And, you know, probably 20 are really bad ideas. You know, 60 are good enough ideas and 20 are really great ideas, kind of a bell curve. And so, like that’s, you know, one of things I’ve had to learn is like, turn off the how I how I want to do it, and kind of empower people to do that. So that was part of that journey as CFO, and then moving into president a few years later, as we as we started to scale, that that gave me the opportunity to, you know, really kind of learn my strategy skills and think about, really, what are we doing as an organization that makes us different? How do we differentiate ourselves? What do we need to focus on internally? Where are the resources need to go. And then in 2018, my partner at that time Bill, he retired from CEO and I moved into that role, and and, you know, 20 2018, to 2020, we’re really good years, we ended up tripling the business during that time, which was, you know, very exciting. And then in 2020, with COVID, we really saw this opportunity, you know, part of our, our DNA is this idea that healthcare is local. And the way healthcare, you know, operates in Cincinnati is a lot different than Chicago. And so that’s why our whole relevance and data driven model works so well. And so part of COVID, is you saw this whole idea that healthcare is local, be on steroids, like everybody realized healthcare is local. Everybody was going to John Hopkins website to sue in their zip code, how much you know Coronavirus, was happening at that time. And so we felt like this was a great time to really scale the business. And that’s when we reached out and look for a partner and found mountain gate. And since then, we’ve grown it from 20 million to 70 million in the last two and a half years through acquisitions and organic growth. And part of you know, moving from this niche player to really now the, you know, one of the key, you know, companies in the space of engaging HCPs healthcare professionals, has been a really great, you know, opportunity. And, you know, and part of that, you know, as, as, you know, as you can imagine the amount of skills and work and stress of growing the company and transforming the company and like that, you know, part of the, you know, part part of that is learning, you know how to also bring in additional, you know, I call them MLB players, like you know, I’m a baseball guy so I you know, we were back in, you know, single a ball probably the first few years. I mean, we did double a ball, you know, the last, you know, few years of in triple and now we’re hitting the major leagues. And so it’s been really awesome being able to bring in Major League players in our space and be able to attract them and bring them and we hired a new CEO and he’s, he’s been awesome. We’ve hired a few other really great players along the way like a CFO Chief Revenue Officer, Chief Strategy Officer. We just hired a Chief Business Officer and so it’s been It’s been really awesome being able to bring those people on board and continue to steward the business. But my role now has changed more from, you know, overseeing the strategy and operations to now more focused on our future. And through acquisitions. And really, as you mentioned, at the very beginning of working on the business, and coaching and empowering and also, you know, sharing, you know, sharing history and continuity with, with the new team. So, it’s definitely been a, you know, a dream come true as far as where we started, you know, where I’ve started where I, you know, have come to, but again, I’m, I’m a very forward looking guy. So I have spent a lot of time like, you know, pinching myself saying, I can’t believe this has all happened, but at the same time, I’m very grateful for the journey. And, you know, I’m very, you know, pleased and, you know, exceeded my expectations by, by, by a lot, just based on where we are at today.

Jeremy Weisz 30:50

So, Joe, I have one last question. First of all, thank you, thanks for sharing your knowledge, your experience, your journey, I would encourage people to check out relevatehealth.com To learn more, and we’ll link it up in the notes. Because there’s so much more to dig into the oh, maybe the second episode at some point, because like, you can’t just drop we tripled our business. And I can’t dig into that in just 20 minutes, about acquisitions, and hiring and leadership. But maybe that’s for another time. But I would love to hear because the purpose goes back to engagement and helping people. Right. And so I love for you to talk about a radio campaign.

Jeff Spanbauer 31:34

Yeah, sure. I mean, one of the favorite things that I love to talk about in our company is just the impact we’re having on actual patients and helping them live a longer, healthier lives. And being you know, being a step removed from that sometimes you don’t get to hear it. But one of my favorite stories that we got back from a doctor is we did a radio campaign for breast cancer, cancer awareness. And one of the one of the areas with breast cancer is if you had it, there are some drugs that you need to stay on for five years before you’re really cancer free. And so we partnered with doctors across the US, you know, kind of making locally relevant, you know, radio campaigns, and some of the doctors we’ve partnered with run in Dallas. And you know, they talked about they got on the radio and said, you know, only takes a few seconds to learn more about the importance of staying on your medicine a few seconds that can save your life. Some some guy heard that in Dallas, heard the doctor who was his wife’s doctor on the radio, and that broke through the clutter because it was very relevant to him. Heard what you know what he had to say? He goes home and talks to his wife about it. His wife’s like, No, I quit taking that medicine you know, after about two years he’s like well I heard on the radio is supposed to take five years before you should stop taking it. So they went back to the doctor had a conversation with the doctor got she got back on her medicine and she stayed cancer free. And so that was just a you know, kind of a huge not just you know, validation of what we were doing but it’s just makes you feel really good that you’re helping people out there that you don’t know about but hearing stories about you know, a woman Miss, you know, kind of forgetting or stocking the medicine going back in it. You know, getting back on because of a campaign we put together that just that’s the kind of stuff that you know, really makes you feel really good about coming to work every day.

Jeremy Weisz 33:18

I love it. First of all, and Jeff one of the the first one to thank you. Check out relevatehealth.com You can see it on the screen if you’re watching the video, and check out more episodes of the podcast and Jeff, everyone else. Thank you so much.

Jeff Spanbauer 33:33

Jeremy my pleasure. Thank you so much. Have a great one.

Intro 33:35

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