Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / Chris Hall on Turning a Kid's Weekend Clinic into 150 Events a Year Nationwide

Transcript

Chris Hall on Turning a Kid's Weekend Clinic into 150 Events a Year Nationwide · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast,
0:08
where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from
0:12
their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
0:14
adversity. As you listen today, let one
0:17
idea shape what you do next. My name is Anthony Codispoti,
0:21
and today's guest started volunteering for a nonprofit
0:24
healthcare organization, but he was just 12 years old.
0:28
He wasn't thinking about running it someday.
0:30
He was just a kid who showed up. That kid kept showing up for the
0:34
next 4 decades through every level of the organization,
0:37
through a full career in retail optics, and through a season of
0:41
building that transformed A scrappy, mission driven team
0:45
into a national operation running more than 150 free
0:49
clinics every year. His name is Chris Hall and he is
0:53
the newly appointed CEO of Remote Area Medical, also known
0:57
as RAM. Founded in 1985, RAM deploys pop
1:02
up clinics that deliver free dental, vision and medical care
1:05
to underserved communities across America.
1:08
Under his leadership as COO, staff grew from 13 to 65 and RAM
1:15
launched the first mobile digital denture lab, high
1:19
capacity optical labs that make glasses on site, and even the
1:23
first FAA approved drone delivery of medicine during a
1:27
live clinic. Some people spend their whole
1:30
career searching for work that matters.
1:33
Chris found his at age 12 and never let go.
1:36
Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
1:39
brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency.
1:43
Listen, if you run a business, you're likely stuck in the cycle
1:45
of rising insurance premiums. You're paying more, but your
1:48
team is getting less, and many people can't afford coverage at
1:52
all. So we do things differently.
1:54
We provide your nonprofit employees with unlimited access
1:58
to doctors, therapists and prescriptions.
2:00
That's always free for them to use.
2:02
But here's the part that surprises most people.
2:05
Unlike every other employee benefit out there, our program
2:08
puts more money into your company's bank account.
2:12
As an example, we recently helped the client increase net
2:15
profits by $900 per employee per year.
2:19
Results vary, but gains like that can change how a business
2:22
is valued. And the consultation is free, so
2:25
see if you qualify today at AD back benefits.com.
2:29
All right. Back to our guest today, the CEO
2:32
of RAM Remote Area Medical, Chris Hall.
2:35
Thanks for making the time to Share your story today.
2:37
Honored to be here today. Thank you.
2:39
So Chris, take me back to when you were 12 years old.
2:43
You're at that first RAM clinic. What were you actually doing
2:45
there that day? You know, it starts off by how I
2:49
got to Ram. So my dad encouraged me to do
2:52
some volunteer work and experienced lives different than
2:55
the live that I live. So he partnered me with one of
2:58
his peers, one of his friends who was an optician, and he had
3:01
heard about an event in a remote area of Tennessee called Lamb's
3:04
Mountain, Tennessee. And this guy's name was John.
3:07
John said, hey, Chris, why don't you come with me this weekend
3:09
and then and see what we can do. So we did.
3:12
And I remember it took an early morning.
3:14
We woke up at like 3:30 in the morning to get ready to go to
3:17
this event. We drove up this road that was
3:20
just truly impassable by a lot of standards, but we somehow
3:23
made it to the top of it. And when we got to the top of
3:26
this mountain, I saw 2-3 hundred people standing in line waiting
3:30
to get a cleaning, a filling extraction or an eye examine, a
3:33
pair of glasses. And that moment kind of sticks
3:37
with me throughout my whole career of just seeing the
3:40
desperate need that people had right here in my backyard.
3:42
Lambs Mountains, only about an hour and a half from where I
3:44
grew up. And so get to the event, we get
3:48
over to the optical area of it. At that time, Ram would do an
3:51
eye exam. And then we had glasses from the
3:53
Lions Club. So recycled glasses, the
3:56
opticians would pick out the prescription closest to the
3:58
patient's prescription and then they would hand them to me.
4:01
And my role at that event was to take a cleaning cloth, spray
4:04
some cleaner on it and clean the glasses.
4:07
And while that seems so little to me, it was inspiring because
4:11
it gave me the ability to touch other people's lives to to make
4:14
a difference for someone that one, I would never see again,
4:17
but two, to to give them something that they didn't have
4:21
prior to coming to that event. And being able to clean glasses
4:24
and watch people put them on and start smiling and seeing and
4:27
being able to read. Seeing a child put a pair of
4:30
glasses on and seeing leaves on trees.
4:32
When you see something like that, it, it, it changes you.
4:35
And you, you chase those dreams forever.
4:39
Love that. So this is almost sounds like a
4:44
rhetorical question, but we need to lay the foundation for why
4:48
Ram is so necessary and just talk for a second about the
4:52
state of medical care and health insurance in the country.
4:56
That highlights why there's this gap, this need for what you guys
4:59
do. Yes.
5:01
So we hear a lot talking about healthcare, about people that
5:03
are covered by insurance or not covered by insurance.
5:06
But the truth is, is, is people have insurance plans.
5:09
They're they're people that have some type of coverage to give
5:12
them care. But people can live less than a
5:14
mile from the largest hospital chain in the United States and
5:17
still not have access to the care that that hospital
5:19
provides, whether it be cost, timing, availability, weights,
5:24
there's reasons and barriers that prevent the patient from
5:27
getting the care. And, and we see that across the
5:29
country. We do the events that we do from
5:33
coast to coast. While we're founded here in
5:35
Tennessee, we have a lot of events or operations that
5:38
happened in the Southeastern United States.
5:40
The truth is, is we go into Chicago, Los Angeles, Southern
5:44
Texas and, and what we see if the patients coming to our door
5:47
are the same in all of those locations, 60% of the patients
5:51
that walk up to our clinic need to see a dentist.
5:54
Over half of those patients hadn't seen a dentist in five or
5:56
more years. 30 to 35% of the patients need vision services,
6:01
they need an eye exam, pair of glasses.
6:03
The majority of those patients haven't seen an eye doc in 10 or
6:06
more years. So it's people that prolong
6:09
basic care that they need due to other reasons, whether it's a
6:13
they can't afford it or they just can't get access to it
6:16
because it's not available in their community.
6:18
Those are the barriers that Rams overcoming day in and day out
6:21
with these events every weekend. So in my mind I'm picturing that
6:25
most of the folks that come to your clinics don't have
6:28
insurance. Am I right or wrong on that?
6:31
You're about 50 percent, 50% of the patients come in have some
6:35
type of coverage plan, 50% do not.
6:38
And the 50% who have some kind of coverage, they're there
6:41
because they haven't met their deductible, their co-pays,
6:45
whatever else, like whatever the out of pocket for them is, it's
6:48
still too expensive. Correct, even with the coverage,
6:51
their out of pocket is unreachable for them to obtain
6:53
the service they need. So you're this 12 year old at
6:57
this first clinic, you're touching people's lives, you're
6:59
cleaning these lenses, right? Handing them these these frames.
7:03
Kids can see leaves for the first time.
7:05
Was there any part of you that was uneasy in that environment
7:09
for the first time? You know, I think when I reflect
7:12
back on it at the event, it was truly inspiring because even
7:18
though people were standing out in the cold, if I remember
7:20
correctly, it was in the 30s that morning and people were
7:23
waiting outside. But there was some type of joy
7:26
about every single person that put on a pair of glasses is they
7:29
were desperate for something and and they were getting it while
7:32
they were at the event. I think the true reflection of
7:34
the event happened on the drive home, leaving that mountain and
7:39
leaving the the people that we had helped and understanding
7:42
that what would have happened to them if Ram wasn't at this
7:45
event. If Ram didn't set this up, these
7:47
people would have continued going without the care that they
7:49
needed. And the thing that kind of
7:52
stands out, looking back on it, is what made that possible are
7:55
the volunteers and the donors that funded the operation it?
7:59
It's the volunteers and donors that came together to make that
8:02
possible. While RAM is the nucleus, we
8:04
have the equipment, we have the consumables, we have the pieces.
8:07
It's the generosity of every person standing there to make a
8:10
difference that truly made a difference, to change the lives.
8:14
So you spent eight years as a general manager and licensed
8:18
optician at Luxottica before returning fully to RAM, you
8:24
know, full time. Was there a moment in that
8:28
retail path that you realized that that's not where you really
8:32
wanted to be? I don't know that there was a
8:35
moment that that made me leave retail.
8:39
While I was working with LensCrafters or Luxottica, I
8:43
still volunteered with RAM. At that time, RAM was doing 10
8:45
events a weekend or 10 events a year.
8:47
So about every month or every other month, I would get some of
8:50
the staff on my store or local stores to go volunteer at these
8:54
events. Working through retail, though,
8:57
showed me that there's options to support in different ways.
9:01
In 2013, Stan called Stan Brock, the founder of Remote Area
9:05
Medical, said. Hey, Chris, you know we've been
9:08
very blessed in 2860 minutes did a story on Ram and it truly
9:12
increased the donations that Ram brought in on a yearly basis.
9:17
And Stan's exact words were we really do not know how to spend
9:21
the money to expand our services.
9:23
Is there a way that you could come help us do that or would
9:25
you be willing to come help us do that?
9:28
And, and I remember driving home, he called me while I was
9:30
at work and that evening driving home, just thinking about the
9:34
possibilities of what that means.
9:35
What, what does that look like? There's a lot of trust that Stan
9:39
put in, in that comment to me that that said, you know, we can
9:43
make a difference in a lot of lives.
9:45
I love what R.E.M. clinics are doing.
9:46
We're doing 10A year, 12A year. What would it look like if we
9:49
did a hundred a year? And so when I, when I left
9:53
Luxottica, I, I left Luxottica on good terms, but also kind of
9:58
kind of in a spot where I was thinking of what difference can
10:03
we make? How can we make this possible?
10:06
And, and when jumping on ship at RAM, it, it was a unique ride.
10:10
RAM was a completely different organization than the large
10:12
company of Luxottica and Lux. I was, you know, you had every
10:16
kind of form, every kind of process already thought out and
10:19
given to you. And, and I showed up at RAM on
10:21
day one and I was like, what's a job description look like?
10:24
And then they're like job descriptions.
10:26
We don't have that as we, we just get out and do the work.
10:29
So it, it, it showed me that we needed to create a little bit of
10:33
structure. We needed to create a little
10:34
piece so that we could expand and so that we could take care
10:39
to patients more frequently than we were.
10:42
And I've been honored to have that journey.
10:44
It's been a wild ride over the years and we've encountered some
10:48
really great things, but also some really challenging
10:50
processes along the way. But it's, it's been something
10:53
that continues to drive us day in and day out to overcome those
10:56
hurdles. Yeah.
10:57
Care to patients? You know, it's interesting you
10:59
mentioned the 60 minutes piece because that's how I first
11:03
learned RAM and this was years ago. 20 or 30?
11:07
I mean, it's been a while, right?
11:08
2. 1008, yeah, 17 years ago, OK. Why do you think Stan called
11:14
you? I mean, obviously you had been,
11:17
you know, donating your time, you know, you what became an
11:20
optician, you're bringing staff in, you're helping out.
11:22
But what did he see in you where he specifically, because there's
11:26
a lot of people who volunteer, he wants you to come be a part
11:28
of the team. Why was that?
11:30
You know, I question that a lot also as as why me, You know,
11:34
with Stan as a volunteer. I remember the first event that
11:37
I went to, I saw Stan at the event, but I was young, I didn't
11:41
know who Stan was. I, I'd never seen the show
11:43
Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. So I, I, I wasn't following Stan
11:47
for his publicity and his fame. I came to, to help out and do
11:50
something. And over the years, I got to
11:52
meet Stan, talk to Stan much more.
11:55
And, and Stan had a unique tack when he talked to people.
11:58
It was not, how are we going to get this done?
12:01
It's, it was, what are you going to do to get this done?
12:04
And through the years with Lux, we had ran into a few disaster
12:08
operations that Stan had deployed to and he had no one to
12:11
produce glasses. At that time.
12:14
We only had one mobile optical lab.
12:15
So if we were in two or three areas, you couldn't make glasses
12:19
at all three sites. And I had helped link in some of
12:22
the Lenscrafter stores around the country to do exactly that.
12:26
So I think Stan saw the opportunity with some
12:29
connections to make opportunities for patients to
12:32
get more care, to do more events, to treat more patients.
12:36
Also, I think when when Stan saw me, he knew someone that was
12:39
growing up at that point in the organization.
12:41
He knew I knew the organization before the RAM had any money.
12:45
I remember being at events getting ready to deploy and all
12:50
the volunteers pulling together and putting money in a pot to
12:52
buy gas for the trucks to get to the locations.
12:55
And Stan got to see that from a kids for me as a kid, but then
13:00
also maturing into an adult, into a professional career.
13:03
And I think Stan thought there was an opportunity to do
13:06
something great. And I'm I'm fortunate that he
13:08
chose me to do what he did. You know, unfortunately I'm
13:12
ignorant of Stan and his background.
13:14
You mentioned Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom.
13:16
Tell me the connection, Who is Stan?
13:18
Yeah. So Stan founded the
13:20
organization. Stan grew up.
13:22
He was a British citizen and at age 17 he boarded a ship and
13:26
went to British Guiana, Guyana as known now, and he became a
13:31
cowboy, a rancher on the largest cattle ranch in the world.
13:35
And as Stan was working at that ranch, he was working his way up
13:38
the ranks to lead it. He could drew a horse, a horse
13:41
named Kane, and in the local Wapashani terms, Kang means the
13:45
devil. Kane had killed 3 Cowboys prior
13:48
to Stan. And so Stan decided he would
13:51
tackle the devil and try to try to make this happen.
13:54
And the the horse went bucking across the Savannah and it
13:58
crashed into a side of a corral and it crushed Stan, crushed
14:01
Stan's hit. And the Wapashani Indians pulled
14:04
the horse off of him and said, said, stand, hang in there.
14:07
We know you're in pain. But you're 26 days on foot away
14:10
from the nearest medical facility.
14:12
And in those times, you know, they didn't take the 26 days on
14:15
foot. They suffered through repair,
14:17
healing along the way. And many years later ATV show
14:22
called Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom came to that data, now a
14:25
ranch to film a bird that's only in a five mile radius of that
14:29
ranch. And when they showed up, they
14:31
saw Stan, this British speaking gentleman, British accent,
14:34
barefoot riding a horse. And they're like, that's a guy
14:37
we need to put on TV. People are going to connect with
14:39
this. And so they offered Santa
14:42
position on the show as a man in the field.
14:45
And doing that, before Stan boarded a plane to head to
14:48
Chicago to go through acting classes to get on the show, he
14:51
made a promise back to the Wabashani Indian said if he made
14:54
a famous, he would bring doctors back closer than 26 days on
14:57
foot. And so years go by.
15:00
Stan's filmed on a television show that's watched by 33
15:03
million Americans. Each Friday, he becomes a star
15:07
of six different movies. After that, he would call them
15:12
poor, terrible movies, but they definitely give you a true
15:15
fashion of Stan. And in that he took everything
15:19
that he earned, everything that he made, and he invested in this
15:22
organization and we were founded ultimately to bring doctors into
15:26
the remote regions of the world. We started off with a small
15:30
aircraft flying doctors and letting them parachute into
15:33
remote villages of the Amazon jungle.
15:35
We would parachute the men, parachute supplies in, They
15:38
would treat the local villages, and then they would hike for
15:40
several days to get to a runway that we could pick them back up
15:43
and fly them out. And, and that's how we started.
15:45
That's what we were doing up until about 199292, a little
15:50
hospital in Tennessee closed and said, hey, Stan, you're taking
15:53
doctors all over the world. Do you care to bring them right
15:56
here to your backyard in Tennessee?
15:58
And so Stan gathered the same doctors, We didn't push them out
16:01
of a plane. We drove them by cars to that
16:03
event and they showed up. And since then this year about
16:08
100% of our operations is stateside.
16:10
It's it's inside the United States.
16:12
It's grown to the point of last year we had over 150 events
16:16
across the country. It the need surpasses anything
16:20
that we do. We still have requests daily
16:23
that come into our operation that we're unable to fulfill in
16:26
a year. So, so the needs surpassing even
16:28
the amount of work that we're providing and we're only growing
16:31
and providing more and more every year.
16:33
What is your capacity? You said you did 150 events last
16:37
year. How many can you do?
16:39
Or is that the cap? 150 stretch the team that we
16:43
have here. So it to be honest that we have
16:46
65 employees here at the organization now and and those
16:49
65 employees, the majority of them are operations based.
16:52
So they're doing all the logistical pieces, the site
16:54
visits, preparing, recruiting the volunteers A150160 events is
16:59
kind of the cap out point of what we can do efficiently and
17:02
successfully. But the but the need surpasses.
17:05
We could do 400 events a year and still not touch the need of
17:08
everyone that's requesting clinics for us to provide.
17:10
What's the geography that you guys can cover?
17:13
So we can cover literally coast to coast we go last year, I
17:18
think we were in 27 separate states of the 150 events.
17:22
But one thing unique of RAM is, is we only go where we're
17:25
invited. So a community reaches out to
17:27
RAM and says, hey, we want to put on one of your events in our
17:29
community. RAM starts working with that
17:31
community and and plans anywhere from 12 to 24 months before we
17:34
actually deploy assets. So the schedule for us, you, if
17:38
you go to our website, you can see the 2026 schedule.
17:41
But the truth is, is we already have clinics, they're 27 and
17:44
some scheduling in 2028, just as people are working through that
17:47
process to bring that care to their community.
17:50
Was there a big operational unlock that took place that
17:54
allowed you to get to this point of 150 clinics a year?
17:59
I think there were several unlocks that happened over the
18:01
time. You know, as Stan said in his
18:04
introductory call of we have this money, we don't know how to
18:07
spend it. Our first step was acquiring
18:10
more equipment and working with partners.
18:13
And so we acquired enough equipment to run 4 separate
18:16
operations. At this point in our time, we
18:19
can set up to 150 dental operatories up in one location.
18:23
We can set up to 40 lanes of vision with four mobile optical
18:27
apps. So this is because donors have
18:29
invested in US, entrusted in us to grow what we were doing.
18:33
So we invested in the equipment and then after we invested in
18:36
the equipment, we started investing in some of the
18:38
personnel to help run it while volunteers make the events
18:42
happen. When you go to a clinic, you
18:44
will see 350 to 500 volunteers jumping in to make a difference.
18:48
We have between 3:00 and 4:00 staff members on site there that
18:52
are just making sure things are working well and then it's the
18:54
volunteers that make the true difference.
18:56
So organizational unlocks was one gaining the assets.
19:01
The second piece was training. So we have a program called our
19:05
Core Volunteer Program. These are kind of our subject
19:08
matter experts of the different areas that we host.
19:10
So using vision for an example, we'll have a core and vision
19:14
exams, a core who does this dispensing and a core who does
19:18
the vision. The vision labs, we'll put these
19:21
core volunteers on site and they can train volunteers with no
19:25
experience how to do different pieces of that process.
19:28
So you can show up to a clinic with no experience at all.
19:30
The medical we train you in a role that day and you're making
19:33
a difference in someone's life. So me as somebody with no
19:37
medical training, no optical training, no dental training, I
19:41
could show up and they could put me into some kind of a useful
19:45
role as a volunteer. Absolutely.
19:47
So when I say numbers and I say averages of that 350 to 500
19:51
volunteers for an event, half of those volunteers are
19:54
professionals. They're dentists, optometrists,
19:56
nurses, medical doctors. The other half are general
19:59
support people who have no specific medical training.
20:02
And we will train them on anything from patient
20:05
registration, patient liaison, walking a patient through our
20:08
process of the clinics or all the way down to making
20:11
eyeglasses, how to manufacture eyewear in a day.
20:14
And you get to you get to play that role for the whole day and
20:17
get to touch 100 lives in the roles that you do.
20:20
So you're talking about what was it again?
20:22
Like 300 and 5400 volunteers at an event?
20:26
How many folks are you actually helping in an event?
20:30
They range depending on the community you're in.
20:32
So pre COVID those numbers were astronomical because there were
20:37
a lot less limitations on how many people are inside
20:39
buildings. In a post COVID world, a regular
20:42
clinic can go anywhere from 300 patients in a weekend up to 1500
20:46
patients in a weekend. We just did a large event in
20:49
Knoxville, our hometown, in February and we treated over
20:52
1500 patients in three days. Then you say post COVID, but you
20:57
know, here we are in 2026 haven't the number of people
21:00
that you can have and doors, you know, those rules have been
21:04
lifted. So can't you guys get back to
21:06
the, you know, pre? COVID levels.
21:09
It's a really good question. One thing we learned in COVID is
21:12
prior to it, when we would set up a dental floor, we would set
21:15
up dental chairs 6 feet apart, lined up very much an assembly
21:19
line of dental operatories to be able to operate in a post COVID
21:23
world. We had to create 10 by 10
21:26
suites. We had to create negative air
21:28
pressure systems to give you kind of a surgical suite for
21:31
those dental. So COVID, while it Hanford us
21:34
for many years and and challenged our process, it also
21:38
gave us an experience of creating a better experience for
21:40
a patient because the patients truly enjoy having a 10 by 10
21:44
personal space that they're in to see a professional and talk
21:46
to them. And so with those learnings,
21:49
we've continued those learnings even to this day.
21:52
OK. So it's a very upgraded
21:54
experience. Now somebody's got sort of the a
21:56
private suite in in, you know, so they can talk about their
21:59
issues, not be out in the open. There's just more privacy to it.
22:03
Absolutely. It.
22:04
It truly created a better experience for the patients.
22:07
And you know, that's what Ram Ram doesn't want it to be a
22:10
jungle medicine organization that we're just there pulling
22:13
teeth on stumps of trees while sometimes in the third world
22:17
countries are developing countries.
22:18
That's what you see. We try to make it as as
22:21
respectful to the patients as possible.
22:23
We want them to understand that they're getting the highest
22:25
quality care possible in a mobile setting.
22:27
And that's happening from the volunteers that are giving it to
22:29
you. So we want to talk about some of
22:32
the innovations that you and your team have introduced there.
22:36
Let's start with this mobile digital denture lab.
22:40
What is this? How this come about?
22:42
Whose idea was it? So it it, it takes a team to
22:46
make all these things possible. So digital dentistry is
22:50
something that is changing the dental world currently and it
22:52
has been for the last 3-4 years. One of the things we encounter
22:56
when we go to clinics is, is patients that have had their
22:59
teeth extracted that are completely toothless or
23:02
dentless. The challenge of dentures is in
23:05
a conventional process, someone shows up, it takes three to four
23:09
months to get a complete set of dentures to them.
23:12
So digital dentistry gave us the ability to speed that process up
23:15
quite a bit. So we took 3D printers and
23:18
milling machines. We place them on a mobile unit.
23:22
We do an inter oral scan or digital scan.
23:25
So a patient comes up to our clinic first thing in the
23:27
morning, we do a scan of their mouth.
23:29
That scan goes into a CAD file and then someone who's an expert
23:33
designs a set of dentures from that CAD file, sends it to a
23:36
printer, prints them, bonds them, finishes them, and that
23:39
patient can leave the same day or next morning with a brand new
23:41
smile. If you were to go to a dental
23:44
practice anywhere in the country, you would pay between
23:47
3500 to $7000 for that set of dentures.
23:51
And a person's coming to a R.E.M. clinic and leaving the
23:53
same day with a brand new smile. That's truly life changing for
23:57
them. Wow, I'm blown away that by
24:01
that. I, I don't even know what
24:02
question to ask next. Are there are there for profit
24:05
setups that are using that are tapping into the same
24:11
efficiencies that you guys are with the the the dentures?
24:15
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
24:16
But they're typically in a, in a different model than what we are
24:19
because of course as as a dental practice, the patient comes in,
24:23
they're in your chair, you do the scan, they leave, they come
24:25
back a week later, you send the images off, a lab produces that.
24:29
We've just taken that process and put it into a 12 hour period
24:33
and then so that a patient doesn't have to leave and come
24:35
back because one of the barriers to care is the drive, the
24:39
availability. The Knoxville clinic that I was
24:41
just talking about, we had patients that drove from 11
24:44
states to Knoxville just to get the care because it was
24:48
unavailable to them anywhere else.
24:50
And so by reducing those trips for a patient, reducing that
24:53
timeline, they can truly have their lives changed in a weekend
24:56
and restore smile. The smiles, the way everyone
24:59
looks at a person, it's the first thing they notice about a
25:01
person. So when you can give someone
25:03
their smile back, you don't only change that person's life, you
25:07
change the lives of the people that are around them and their
25:09
families. And it's humbling and it's a
25:11
it's an honor to be a part of that.
25:13
As far as we know that Dentralab is the only mobile digital
25:16
dentralab in the world and the need for it again at Knoxville,
25:21
I think we did 30 sets of dentures in a weekend, which is
25:24
a crazy amount by a standard lab term, but we could have probably
25:28
done 150 dentures at that event for patients.
25:31
So the need to expand that service is is astronomical and
25:35
it it's a truly life changing service.
25:37
Are the events typically one day or it's a weekend like a
25:41
Saturday, Sunday. Typically they're a Saturday,
25:43
Sunday, so we usually arrive on Friday morning with volunteers,
25:47
set up the operation, and then we open the doors usually at
25:50
6:00 AM on Saturday morning and we operate until everyone gets
25:53
tired Saturday evening and then repeat the same thing on Sunday.
25:56
The only difference is Sunday, after the event's over, we have
25:59
to pack all that equipment back onto a truck, get it back on the
26:02
road to go to its next location. And that that same exact setups
26:07
going in a truck and it's ready for its next location the
26:10
following weekend. Yes, Sir.
26:12
And in some cases, hey, maybe you're just driving an hour or
26:15
two away, but you're saying you're going coast to coast.
26:18
So there might be multiple days drive time in between.
26:21
Absolutely. Anytime you're going West, you
26:24
pick up days of travel. A couple of events we've done in
26:27
the past and we have coming back later this year is we're
26:29
actually doing an event in Anchorage, AK, in Fairbanks, AK.
26:33
So when you're looking at trips like that, that the trucks are
26:36
on the road for seven to 10 days.
26:38
So it's, it's drivetime all the way to Seattle.
26:41
And then they go on barges and barge up the river all the way
26:45
into Anchorage. And then once they're in
26:47
Anchorage and they're driven from Anchorage up to Fairbanks.
26:49
So, so there's quite a few logistical pieces along the way
26:52
to the to make possible to make these events happen.
26:55
OK. I want to stay on this theme of
26:58
talking about some of the technological innovations
27:01
because this is fun stuff. The on site optical lab tell me
27:05
about this. So the on site optical labs, we
27:08
have a total of four, each one of the labs can produce up to
27:12
400 pair of eyeglasses in a single day.
27:15
So these labs are stocked with single vision lenses and some
27:19
multifocal lenses, line bifocal lenses.
27:22
A patient will come and get an eye exam that goes out to the
27:25
lab. We pull the prescription lenses.
27:27
We can do about 80% of the prescriptions that are
27:30
prescribed at the clinic. So 80% of the patients can come
27:33
out and get glasses, go out to the lab.
27:35
We train and manufacture those glasses on site, most of the
27:38
time in about an hour to an hour and a half.
27:40
So from the time a person gets an eye exam, picks out a pair of
27:42
glasses, an hour and a half later they're getting a pair of
27:45
glasses, custom pair of glasses put in front of their face so
27:48
that they can see again and return to normal life.
27:51
And this is a fantastic advancement as well.
27:55
It strikes me that maybe this isn't as unusual because I
27:59
remember commercials from back in the day with glasses in about
28:02
an hour, right. So like the the technology has
28:04
existed, but you guys putting it into a mobile format, that's
28:09
kind of the the big advance. Absolutely.
28:11
Yeah. So that was one of the
28:12
LensCrafters or Luxottica's big terms is glasses.
28:15
In about an hour. What we do is, is we take
28:19
prescription lenses that already have prescriptions generated
28:21
into them. They're what we call blanks,
28:23
large blanks. We Orient that blank and then
28:27
spot it, block it, and then we put it into a chamber that
28:30
grinds that lens. It uses diamond impregnated
28:32
wheels to shape that lens to the size of the brain.
28:35
Once it comes out, then an optician will pop those lenses
28:38
in. They'll go through a final
28:39
inspection and to ensure that everything turned out properly,
28:42
and then they're directly onto a patient's face so that they're
28:44
seeing sharply again. So not using the recycled
28:49
eyeglasses from Lions before. No, we're not.
28:53
It's funny enough, walls in the United States changed over the
28:56
years, and recycled glasses are not legally allowed to be used
29:00
in the majority of cases now. So.
29:03
So when you're donating your glasses to an organization,
29:05
they're cleaning them, they're reading the prescriptions,
29:07
charting them, but most of those glasses have to go overseas to
29:10
be able to be used at a Ram clinic.
29:13
You're getting a brand new custom pair of glasses just like
29:16
you walked into a LensCrafters or a Target Optical and picked
29:19
it out. The frames that we give are
29:21
brand new frames. We've partnered with frame
29:23
manufacturers from around the country and around the world.
29:25
So every single frame is brand new.
29:28
You're getting a A, some of them are still on shelves being sold
29:30
for four or $500 a frame. They are getting something that
29:34
is 1 fashionable, but two, that they're going to see the
29:37
sharpest possible because again, people notice people by their
29:40
glasses. People see that and and then we
29:43
want to give them the the most respected and the most humanity
29:46
possible and ensure that that what they get works for them and
29:49
makes them happy also. OK.
29:52
Staying on this technological innovation track that we're on,
29:57
talk to me about the FAA approved drone delivery of
30:00
medicine that happened during one of your clinics.
30:02
How did this come about? It's.
30:04
A long story of it, but Stan was very passionate on getting
30:08
medicines to remote regions of the world and with his
30:11
experience in British Guiana, you could be 3 miles away from a
30:15
location and by traveling by foot or by car take you 18 to 20
30:19
hours, especially in rainy seasons So Stan was like we need
30:24
to use the drones. Drones were growing in aviation.
30:27
He goes, if you have a drone, you can take that same trip and
30:30
do it in 20 minutes. So he started trying to pilot,
30:33
getting drones to deliver medications in developing
30:36
countries. And then the opportunity arose
30:39
to apply for an option in the United States that they had a
30:43
couple training corridors where you could fly drones.
30:46
So luckily one of those corridors happened over Wise
30:49
Virginia. And Wise Virginia was a very big
30:51
clinic. So we partnered with a few
30:54
companies, Flirty, NASA, the FAA to be able to get all the
30:59
approvals. And we went to Wise Virginia for
31:01
a traditional clinic. And at that event, a drone
31:05
picked up medication at the local airport and flew it about
31:09
3/4 of a mile to our clinic directly to, at that time, the
31:12
governor. The governor received the
31:14
package and turned around and was able to give the package to
31:16
a patient. And it was just showing the
31:18
effectiveness of how drones can change that.
31:21
And while that is happening somewhat in the United States
31:24
now, it's not very big in the United States, but where you're
31:27
seeing huge successes of that in countries like the Philippines.
31:31
RAM has a sister company in the Philippines called RAM
31:34
Philippines that are using drone to deliver medication to
31:37
villages. Some of these villages, our
31:40
teams are traveling 18 to 20 hours to get to them by boat, by
31:43
land, hiking in, and then they can get medications in less than
31:47
an hour flown from a major city or a major hub to these remote
31:50
areas. So it's a it's something that's
31:53
truly life changing for people all around the world and we were
31:56
honored to be a part of that in the very early years and be the
31:59
first FAA approved drone delivery in the United States.
32:02
Do you see RAM doing more of that in the USA in the near term
32:06
or is this still, I don't know, maybe the openness to it isn't
32:11
there yet or the the laws haven't caught up yet.
32:14
What? What's kind of slowing us down
32:15
here in this country? Our country is is very developed
32:19
from a lot of processes. There are laws that prevent some
32:23
of it, but you're seeing package deliveries now through drones
32:26
from several large companies. Where these things will help out
32:30
is when you get into remote mountainous villages.
32:33
And I go back to Southwest Virginia, Grundy, Virginia, in
32:36
areas you could be 10 miles from a location, but as a helicopter
32:41
or as a drone would fly, it's only half a mile across the
32:43
mountain. So when we get to that point
32:46
where we can start delivering those medications via drone to,
32:49
it truly brings access or access to medicines much faster for
32:53
some of those patients. And, and also where you will see
32:56
that true impact or influxes in disaster situations.
33:00
When a hurricane comes in or a tornado comes in and wipes out
33:02
an area, you'll be able to access those areas via drone
33:06
after the fact and and speed up care and delivery process for
33:09
them. So in 92, RAM started focusing
33:14
exclusively on the USA. You just mentioned you've got a
33:18
sister organization in the Philippines, RAM Philippines,
33:22
and they're doing same similar kinds of things there.
33:25
Do you have other sister organizations in different parts
33:28
of the world? No, currently just the
33:30
Philippines. The Philippines truly started it
33:32
from a volunteer from our traditional clinic operations
33:34
here in the States. And the leader of that had moved
33:38
back to the Philippines and wanted to bring that care to
33:41
their communities. They were experiencing similar
33:43
things. While here in the States, the
33:46
predominant care is dental, vision and medical.
33:48
Dental being the most, vision 2nd and medical third in the
33:52
Philippines, what you see is medical being the most requested
33:55
service. So it's, it's a little bit
33:57
different, but we support them any way that we can.
33:59
And, and same thing they support us.
34:01
They're they're the ones that carry the drone technology
34:03
forward and have it in operation day in and day out.
34:07
How do you explain that sort of ranking there?
34:10
Why do you think dental is the top one in the US?
34:13
Vision and then medical, What's sort of our landscape that that
34:17
blends to that? Yeah, I think part of that is
34:19
dental is because it's pain. If you have a toothache, it's
34:23
it's it, it takes you down, you sometimes you can't work, you
34:26
can't sleep, you can't function. So there's, there's much more
34:29
pain in that vision being second.
34:32
I think that's more of vision changes typically don't happen
34:35
overnight. It's a long, slow process of
34:37
vision changing and becoming not as clear for someone.
34:41
And then medical, there seems to be a little more access to
34:43
medical care around the country. You break an arm, you can get to
34:47
a medical facility and treat them even if you don't have
34:49
access to pay. They bill you afterwards and
34:50
through the process. But access to vision and dental
34:53
still seem limited and people can't readily go to that.
34:56
They have a toothache, they can't go to the ER and have that
34:59
tooth extracted. So that's the reason those
35:02
services are the the highest need or highest delivered from
35:05
us. Gotcha.
35:07
So we've covered some of the really cool technologies that
35:10
you guys have implemented, but I want to talk more about the
35:13
people behind it. And I, I think it's great we
35:16
highlighted that, you know, just an average Joe like myself with
35:20
no medical training can show up and be put to work and be useful
35:23
for the weekend. But how do you get the trained
35:26
professionals? I mean, you need those dentists,
35:30
right? And they're busy and they get
35:32
paid a lot of money to do what they do.
35:34
You need those doctors, right? You need like how, how do you
35:38
recruit these folks in each of the locations that you're going
35:41
to? The the easiest way to recruit
35:44
is word of mouth and for someone to come and have an experience,
35:47
much like me at the age of 12. Once I had that first
35:50
experience, I wanted to do that more and more.
35:52
Same thing for providers when they come to a RAM event and
35:55
they realize they don't have to bring anything.
35:57
They just show up and do their what they're specially trained
35:59
to do. They have an experience and they
36:01
get to see a lot of lives touched and they go back and
36:03
tell their friends and their friends come to the other events
36:06
along the way. But of our 65 employees that we
36:09
have, we have a department, our volunteer department.
36:12
There's seven in that department.
36:14
Their goal is day-to-day recruiting and training of
36:17
volunteers. So they're doing everything from
36:20
going to medical, dental, vision, trade shows, setting up
36:23
booths, explaining what R.E.M. does, showing what R.E.M.
36:25
Does through videos and photos to partnering with all the
36:28
professional schools. At the Knoxville event, we had
36:32
66 different professional schools show up to volunteer,
36:36
everything from nursing, dental, optometry, medical students, pre
36:41
Med, all the different things that could play into us.
36:44
We give them an opportunity to come and see it first hand and
36:46
play a part of that. And once someone has that
36:48
experience, they're, they're twice as likely to come back
36:51
over and over again. And we can say that from the
36:54
years, you know, we, we've had quite a few volunteers.
36:57
I think last year we topped around 17,000 volunteers
37:00
activated last year, two different operations and those
37:04
17,000 had an experience that they go back and tell their
37:06
friends so that we have this 17,000 more in the coming years
37:10
to volunteer. So I want to talk about how you
37:15
prioritize the patients who show up the people.
37:18
Is it a first come, first serve? Is it a triage?
37:22
Do you disqualify some folks? Hey, you're too wealthy, you've
37:27
got insurance like this isn't for you.
37:30
Talk to me about this whole process.
37:31
Yeah, great question. So all of our patients are on a
37:34
first come, first serve basis. Most of the times when we show
37:38
up on Friday to start setting up our event, there are already
37:41
patients in the parking lot sleeping in their cars waiting
37:44
to get in on the next morning. We do no qualifying questions.
37:48
So we ask basic demographics so we can understand what patients
37:51
were reaching, reaching. But the truth is, is if you come
37:54
and wait in the parking lot, you're able to get the service
37:57
free of cost to you. And, and we get the question a
38:00
lot of do you think people abuse that system?
38:02
Do you think people that can afford a pair of glasses come
38:04
and abuse it? But when you break it down into
38:07
the if, if someone's willing to come and sleep in their car and
38:10
wait 12 plus hours just to get in to see that eye doctor, you
38:14
know, they're battling their own struggles.
38:16
Who are we to judge that? You know, if they're willing to
38:18
do that, we've got the providers there.
38:20
We're going to take care of them and we're going to treat them.
38:22
And every person's a human, you know, every life, there's a
38:25
theory out called the Saunder theory that everyone lives a
38:28
life equally as vivid as yours. And, and we respect that.
38:32
When we bring patients in the door, it, it's not just a
38:35
patient walking in, it's a friend, it's a relative.
38:37
It's the clerk at the gas station, the waitress, that's
38:39
your favorite local restaurant, the teacher at your child's
38:42
school. These are the people coming
38:44
through our doors. So we want to treat them with
38:46
the respect and dignity and get them what they need while
38:48
they're there. How often do you get somebody
38:52
there that you can't help? Their situation is so acute.
38:57
Or it's just something you're not set up to assist with and
39:00
what do you do? Yeah, because our clinics are
39:02
focused on the acute care, what can we treat in the two days
39:04
that were there and there's many things that stretch much longer
39:07
than two days. So part of our planning process
39:11
for the clinics, why it takes that 12 to 24 months of planning
39:14
before we do them is, is we're finding follow up care options
39:17
in the community or in the region for them.
39:19
So if a patient comes in and has hypertension, wasn't aware of
39:23
it, while we can give them medication to, to help with that
39:26
now, that doesn't help them thirty, 6090 days later.
39:30
So we link them into care. So once they come through, we
39:34
will actually refer them out and link them into any care that's
39:36
available in their communities where possible.
39:38
And if there's not care in that community, that's one of the
39:41
things that we use our telehealth division for also,
39:44
especially across Tennessee, then we can set up telehealth
39:47
appointments. So they continue seeing a doctor
39:49
for years to come. Wait, so tell me about the
39:52
telehealth that you guys offer. How does this work?
39:54
Yeah. So telehealth, our model, we
39:57
call it a little bit different than most because our telehealth
39:59
model, we roll up mobile units that have exam rooms in them and
40:03
we put nurses in each room so a patient can come see a doctor.
40:08
Challenges of telehealth is one, people have never done it.
40:11
They don't know how to work the phone to connect to a doctor
40:14
remotely or two, they may not have the technology to do that.
40:17
I know in today's world it's hard to imagine people without
40:19
smartphones. But flip flops still exist.
40:22
And so our program, when a patient shows up, we take care
40:25
of all the technology. We register them, we get them
40:28
LinkedIn and connected with a doctor.
40:30
A nurse stays in the room during that doctor's appointment.
40:33
So the nurse can be the hands and feet of the doctor.
40:36
Hey, move their shoulder this way, check this out, move these
40:38
things or administer vaccines and that patient gets to see a
40:42
doctor. All the technology things taken
40:44
care of, all the cost is taken care of.
40:46
There's no charge for that patient and then that patient
40:48
leaves if it if it's a medication that they need or
40:50
refill of a medication, they can leave that day with exactly what
40:54
they came for. And is this your own telehealth
40:58
network? Are you piggybacking on an
41:00
existing? Platform.
41:02
This is our own telehealth network, again provided all by
41:05
volunteers. Our telehealth division have
41:07
four staff members in it and those four staff members are
41:11
typically deployed three to four days a week in different
41:14
locations setting up their units.
41:16
And, and again, we didn't mention it in the technology,
41:19
but those are things and barriers that we're trying to
41:21
break down. Also, if we used to have a
41:24
program for disaster relief, so a hurricane makes landfall
41:28
within 24 hours. Rams gearing up its assets,
41:31
deploying them to a community. What we've learned over the
41:35
years is that, you know, the immediate response is typically
41:38
covered by local first responders in pieces.
41:40
It's more of that two weeks out, three weeks out, four weeks out
41:44
when things are shifting into more of a long term recovery.
41:47
So our telehealth model, we have the mobile units that are self
41:50
powered, self fueled. They can do everything on site,
41:52
roll up. But we also last year, I believe
41:56
it was we had a donor to come alongside of us to help us fund
42:00
a cyber truck. And while people may say a Tesla
42:03
cyber truck, what is that for us?
42:05
It's a huge battery on wheels. So we can drive a cyber truck
42:08
into a community, we can throw tents out beside them at the
42:11
sleep in for days as we're treating it.
42:13
But that cyber truck provides power, Internet, all the things
42:17
we need for computers. So we can go into a disaster
42:20
area and provide services and not be a burden on that local
42:23
community using up hotel space that other responders are
42:26
needing. So we we take the tack of how
42:29
can we do it? How can we do it differently and
42:32
how can we do it without being a burden on the local community?
42:35
And Ram's been very successful at finding ways to do that,
42:38
unique ways to do that, and I'm honored to have been a part of
42:41
this. So from 13 employees to 65, you
42:45
know, doing 150 clinics a year, you know, we kind of alluded to
42:50
this before, but I'm a, I'm a operations nuts.
42:53
So I'd love to hear about one or two of the processes that like
42:57
just completely broke along the way because in that kind of
43:00
growth, it's going to happen. Absolutely.
43:02
Like what? What was the brick wall that you
43:04
ran into and how did you deal with it?
43:07
I joke around, but it's red tape.
43:09
So when we were a small organization, honestly, we flew
43:13
under the radar in a lot of places that we went into.
43:16
We were able to do things quickly, fast, and over time as
43:20
as processes develop, you start seeing states that require
43:24
different amounts of registration and fees to be able
43:27
to host these events. Everything as simple as X-ray,
43:31
our mobile X-ray units have to be certified in every single
43:34
state that they go into. They pass national certification
43:38
on their initial input and their yearly input.
43:40
But if you take that X-ray unit into Kentucky, into Virginia,
43:44
into California, you have to have those inspected in each of
43:48
those states. So that red tape created a lot
43:52
more hurdles to be able to do the events that we we host and
43:56
it takes a lot more logistical planning.
43:58
So if we certify, if we have 5 units, we may certify one of
44:03
them in Alabama, then we need to ensure that every time we go to
44:07
Alabama that year that that one is certified in Alabama makes it
44:10
there. So it created some opportunities
44:12
for our team to add additional people to our team that work
44:16
through the legal hurdles to make these events possible.
44:19
There's still some states that are are very challenging, but at
44:23
this point we've been able to overcome those challenges to get
44:26
into the states that we that have requested us to come in.
44:29
But each day, more and more red tape jumps out there to prevent
44:32
events like this from happening. Do you think that's intentional,
44:36
like you're being targeted? If you dwell in the now, the
44:41
absolutely you can say it's, it's intentional, but the truth
44:44
is, is I think all that's there for a reason.
44:46
They want to prevent not so good care being provided to people in
44:50
their communities and, and these are steps and hurdles to jump
44:53
through. The nice thing is RAM prepared
44:56
for that and its growth structure.
44:57
So RAM prepared processes. If if you look at one of our
45:01
dental operatories, we can tell you every place that an
45:04
operatory has touched in the last five years, we can tell you
45:08
every time it was set up, how many patients have been treated
45:10
at that, how many times it was shot, cultured.
45:13
So we created the process to be able to give them exactly what
45:16
they need. And then again, knock on wood,
45:19
things change daily. But so far every single state
45:22
that we went into, we've been able to pass with flying
45:24
callers, all the registration, all the pieces that are needed.
45:27
So kudos to the team and the people behind the scenes because
45:31
again, we talked with the volunteers, but also there's
45:34
some employees that are unsung heroes.
45:35
They're the ones in the trenches that no one knows about that
45:38
make these events possible. Hypothetically speaking, if you
45:44
were being targeted, if certain communities or states don't want
45:49
RAM there, why would that be? You know, in the early years, we
45:55
would hear a lot of practitioners, providers saying
45:59
I'm a dental office in remote wherever.
46:03
When you come and set up your event, you're treating patients
46:05
that would be coming to my office.
46:07
You're taking money out of our pockets.
46:10
But again, as we've expanded and we put pieces in place, we're
46:13
able to track who the patients are that we're treating.
46:15
We're able to understand that the majority of them haven't
46:18
seen a dentist in five or more years.
46:20
So we're able to give them the the hard stats of these patients
46:24
weren't coming to your office anyway.
46:26
Everyone has opinions and views. It's it's great to be able to
46:30
provide some statistical data to back the reason why we have to
46:33
do what we do. It's not that these are patients
46:36
that just are skipping their cleaning at your office to come
46:38
get it for free here. These are patients that would
46:40
bypass that cleaning and then be problems much later on with
46:43
extractions and feelings. What kind of healthcare health
46:48
insurance do your employees have?
46:51
The brand wise, we have a very basic kind of higher deductible
46:55
plan for our employees, but we also allot an HRA.
47:00
The HRA covers the out of pocket expenses.
47:03
So our HRA covers employee only 100% and families it covers.
47:10
The majority of I think families do have around $3000 out of
47:13
pocket expense, but the HRA covers the front side of that.
47:16
So it's not the first money yet. Employees have the last money,
47:19
yet we do that because we want to ensure our employees get the
47:23
best healthcare possible and they don't have to stand in the
47:25
lines at our clinics to get the services that we're providing.
47:29
It's important for us for multiple reasons.
47:32
The reason we exist are people do not have access to healthcare
47:36
and we don't want to create more to that problem.
47:38
We want to ensure what we're doing takes care of that.
47:41
And we're very fortunate that that donors have given us that
47:44
ability to do exactly that, take care of our employees so they
47:47
can continue to take care of patients.
47:49
So you've stepped into this CEO role relatively recently after
47:55
nearly 13 years as COO. Clearly the mission hasn't
47:59
changed, but what about your role and your involvement there
48:02
has? Yeah.
48:04
And I think the new role that started in January for me, it it
48:09
put a little different perspective on some of the
48:10
things. When I was in operations, I was
48:13
very focused on overcoming ways that created barriers to
48:18
patients so involved in mobile dental lab or denture lab build
48:24
outs and and delivery. Stepping into the CEO role
48:27
definitely put into perspective a little more of the funding
48:30
pieces that are needed to make these things possible.
48:32
So it shines a higher light where two years ago I would
48:37
think of the cost, but I wouldn't pushed toward the cost.
48:40
I would this is what it's going to take to make it happen.
48:43
Stepping into the CEO role now, I have to think this is what
48:46
it's going to take to make happen.
48:47
How can we make that possible and how can we do that without
48:50
affecting the other clinics that are happening?
48:52
Patients are counting on us. We have to keep our clinics
48:54
running. So it it definitely gives you a
48:56
little bit higher view than what I was at before.
48:59
But I've also been very fortunate that that that the
49:01
board is still letting me kind of run the COO spot for this,
49:05
this current year. So I'm kind of doing both CEO
49:07
and COO. It's a lot of responsibility,
49:10
but it's it's something that I enjoy.
49:13
I get bored if I'm sitting still.
49:14
So there's there's no sitting still.
49:17
What do you guys need more of? I think the big things are
49:22
volunteers and funding. Volunteers and funding lead to
49:26
all that. The team here has done a really
49:28
amazing job of connecting with our partners so that our
49:31
consumable costs are very minimal.
49:34
Our partners, we, we get deals where we're buying boxes of
49:37
gloves and we get every box we buy, we get 4 boxes for free.
49:41
We have organizations that donate all of our optical
49:44
lenses. So what we were used to paying a
49:47
dollar per set of lenses that is at no cost to us now.
49:51
So we've been very fortunate of working out the logistical and
49:55
the restraints of pricing on a lot of our consumable.
50:01
But the thing that we truly see the additional need for is again
50:04
more volunteers and an additional funding to see more
50:06
sites. The equipment that we have, like
50:09
I said, we could do 4 simultaneous events.
50:12
If you think of 52 weekends in a year, 4 events per weekend,
50:17
you're up at the, you know, 200 plus events minus some holidays,
50:21
you're probably closer to 18190. We have opportunity with what we
50:26
have to do more than just having the funding of volunteers to
50:29
make that possible. Chris, what's 1 of the hardest
50:33
things you personally have ever had to overcome and what did it
50:38
teach you? I would say the hard there's
50:45
many things that have been challenges along the way.
50:49
The walk of life that that I've had has not been just handed to
50:52
me or given to me growing up. While my father wanted me to
50:57
experience a life different than my own, that life wasn't a a
51:01
life of luxury that I was experiencing.
51:03
My parents struggled to sacrifice day in and day out to
51:06
even put food on the table for our family.
51:09
I got to come through that whenever I started working with
51:13
Luxottica, I was the youngest general manager in the United
51:16
States. So a company that had 1000 plus
51:19
stores. I was a 21 year old kid,
51:22
probably didn't deserve the right to be called a general
51:25
manager of a store, but I had to work through those challenges of
51:29
1 commanding and leading with authority, but also overcoming
51:34
that I was only 21. That was young.
51:36
Overcoming that obstacle. It took many years to kind of
51:40
find the way of myself to be comfortable in who I am.
51:44
I, I do what I do. I, I think differently probably
51:47
than most people and it, it's something I've been blessed
51:49
with, but I believe that happened because of the life
51:52
that I experienced. There were challenges that you
51:54
had to overcome and you had to realize that no matter what
51:58
stood in front of you, you have to keep going.
52:01
You can't give up. There's many times where you
52:04
could have thrown in the talent and done and walked away from
52:06
it. But when a challenge comes,
52:09
there's a reason there's a challenge in front of you is, is
52:11
there something you're going to learn from that challenge or
52:13
that experience or that feeling? And you know, when you get to
52:17
the times that are rough, that are hard, that are mental
52:20
struggles for you, being able to overcome it helps you understand
52:25
how to prepare for it so you don't run into that same
52:27
struggle again. And while everything seems great
52:30
and fun, like it's hard, it's it what we do is challenging.
52:37
While we talk about the good, we talk about the patients that we
52:39
see and, and we get to treat On the opposite side of that that
52:44
we don't talk about is when we finish a clinic and we've cut
52:47
off the door, we say, hey, no more patients come in and
52:50
there's 15 patients standing in line to be able to look them in
52:53
the eye and be like, I'm sorry, we've met our capacity.
52:56
We're not able to get to you today.
53:01
It's hard when people trust you to deliver their hope, they,
53:04
they have a hope to get something and, and you can't do
53:08
it. Those are hard.
53:10
Those are, those are those drive home moments where you really
53:13
reflect on what you did or what could you have done better.
53:17
I, I pray that my team continues to challenge that of thinking
53:21
how much more efficient can we be so that we're not turning
53:24
those 15 patients away at the end of the event.
53:27
And when that happens and we we continue to get better and more
53:32
efficient, more volunteers, more opportunity, then we'll start
53:35
meeting that need even more and not having to turn people away.
53:39
Chris, you made the point that you believe you think
53:43
differently from folks because of some of the challenges that
53:47
you faced and overcome growing up.
53:50
Can you say more about that? Is there an example maybe that
53:54
you could highlight for us? You know, I would say even in my
54:02
early years, I was married very young, had a daughter very young
54:07
and, and went through a divorce. And that divorce was detrimental
54:11
to me. It, it destroyed me for many
54:12
years, but I walked away from that with me and my daughter.
54:17
And when Stan asked me to join in 2013, at that time it was is
54:23
me and a 7 year old daughter that I was caring for.
54:27
And so coming on board, while it was exciting, while it was fun,
54:32
there was also a fear because this role is not a role where
54:36
you get to go home and sleep in your bed every night.
54:39
There was one year that at 150 plus nights that I slept in bed
54:43
other than my own traveling to make these things happen.
54:47
And I was able to do that because I had a strong support
54:50
network, a family that helped make sure that my daughter was
54:54
getting what she needed, getting to school, getting to
54:56
extracurricular activities. But it was hard to explain to
55:00
people. The question would come up a lot
55:02
is, is what does your daughter think?
55:04
And, you know, now she's older now she's 18, she's graduated
55:07
from high school, she's starting college.
55:09
And and the thing that I hope the most, and I would say then
55:13
too, is I think when she gets older, she'll be able to look at
55:17
it and understand that Dad wasn't sacrificing time with her
55:21
because he was wanting to go do something fun or do something.
55:23
Dad was sacrificing time with her because he knew he was be
55:27
able to make a difference. And if he didn't do it, he
55:29
didn't know who else would do that.
55:31
And I hope, hope that she sees that.
55:34
I feel like she does. Funny enough, she, she started
55:38
volunteering with the organization at age 8 and by age
55:42
16 was able to run different departments of the organization
55:45
because she's volunteered and still to this day volunteers
55:48
regularly with us. She's volunteered more than I
55:51
ever did as a kid. And so if nothing else, I, I
55:55
hope that I instilled that in her.
55:56
And then also I've remarried and I have two other children.
56:00
I have two boys, one that's 7:00 and 1:00 that's three.
56:02
And they see the importance of ramp.
56:05
They see the importance of, of dad's role in what we do.
56:09
They've been to a clinical, neither of them has volunteered
56:11
because of their age. They've been able to come to a
56:14
clinic with me and, and see people getting their lives
56:17
changed. And, and I hope that in the end,
56:21
when they look back at, at my life, they knew that the
56:23
sacrifices that I've made were truly to try to make people's
56:26
lives better. That's what our hope is.
56:29
I love that then with your daughter, it sounds like the
56:32
apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
56:34
You know she. Started even younger than you,
56:36
yeah. Yeah, she's, she's pretty
56:38
spectacular. I'm, I'm honored to consider her
56:40
my daughter. She she truly cares about
56:43
people. And so I definitely feel like I
56:46
may have had a little piece of that.
56:48
But truly I think that develops in each person and and their
56:51
love to be able to help someone else.
56:54
As CEO of RAM Chris, what do you most want to be remembered for?
57:03
I think you can make it about yourself and say being
57:07
effective, being a great leader, but the truth is, is as I hope
57:11
that people will always see me as a servant leader that that
57:15
we're all in this together. I will never do or ask my team
57:19
to do something that I wouldn't already have done or would do it
57:21
myself. I hope that people Remember Me
57:24
for loving other people. That's what we're we're here to
57:29
do. We're here to love on other
57:30
people. And if, if I have access to
57:33
something that can make their life just a little bit better,
57:36
then I do everything I can to get that for them.
57:38
Because, you know, there's a lot of hate in the world.
57:42
The world can be an evil place for many aspects.
57:46
But the truth is, is there's a lot of people that care about
57:49
others and love others. And I hope that when people see
57:51
me, they see person that loves other people and will do what he
57:55
can to make their lives better. I love that.
57:59
Chris, I've just got one more question for you today.
58:01
But before I ask that, I want to do 3 quick things for the
58:04
audience. First of all, go to ramusa.org
58:08
right now. You can look into volunteer
58:10
opportunities. You can donate money right
58:12
through the site. I mean, what a great 'cause you
58:16
get to help so many folks that are indeed ramusa.org.
58:21
It'll be in the show notes, but go right now.
58:22
Don't, don't wait a minute, ramusa.org.
58:27
Sorry. It's a, it's an organization
58:28
that I've been contributing to for a while.
58:30
So I big believer in their mission.
58:33
And if you're enjoying the show today, please take a moment to
58:35
subscribe wherever you're listening.
58:37
It sends a signal that also helps others discover our
58:40
podcast. So thanks for taking a quick
58:42
moment to do that right now. And as a reminder, you can get
58:45
your employees access to therapists, doctors and
58:48
prescription meds that counter intuitively, actually increases
58:51
your company's net profits, real gains that can change how
58:54
business is valued. So contact us today at AD back
58:57
benefits.com. So last question for you, Chris.
59:00
A year from now, what is 1 very specific thing that you hope to
59:03
be celebrating? I hope next year, by this time
59:07
next year, that Rams had the ability to expand that denture
59:11
service that we offer right now, like I said, in a, in a
59:15
traditional weekend, we're anywhere from 10 to 15 patients
59:18
that are getting service. It would be amazing to see 50
59:20
people getting that service because dentures truly change
59:24
someone's life. It restores their smile,
59:26
restores their hope and humanity and restores how people see
59:29
them. I, I truly hope that we continue
59:32
being able to provide the care and, and that we expand that
59:34
service. In addition, I, you know, I hope
59:38
that the US healthcare system becomes fixed with the need for
59:41
RAM doesn't exist. When that time comes, we'll
59:46
return to the developing countries that we were founded
59:48
to be in. But until then, we're committed
59:51
to doing our part and and closing those gaps as much as we
59:54
possibly can. I apologize, I did not mean to
59:57
laugh when you said that. It's something that we all wish
1:00:01
would happen. If we had magic wand, we'd wave
1:00:04
it and that, you know, would be the the top of the list.
1:00:07
You also said, you know by expanding the dentures service.
1:00:10
What do you need for that to happen?
1:00:12
Do you need more equipment? Is that the bottleneck?
1:00:15
Absolutely equipment and and then vehicle units for making it
1:00:19
mobile, you know, 3D printers are not crazy expensive.
1:00:23
They're, they're more affordable than most of the other medical
1:00:26
equipment that's out there. But getting a mobile unit that
1:00:29
has enough power to suffice those units and also the
1:00:32
technology for designing that software is, is fairly
1:00:36
expensive. So investments to be able to
1:00:40
expand that service make a huge impact and, and, and truly can
1:00:43
touch lives for years to come. Ballpark how much is needed for
1:00:48
an additional unit an. Additional unit.
1:00:50
In the first unit, we spent around $500,000 to get a unit
1:00:54
and all the equipment. We're probably a little bit
1:00:57
better than that now. It would probably be closer to
1:00:59
about 450,000 would be able to provide an additional unit.
1:01:04
Folks who are listening ramusa.org help contribute to a
1:01:09
new Mobile Denture Lab unit for them.
1:01:13
Well, Chris Hall, I want to be the first to thank you for
1:01:16
sharing both your time and your story with us today.
1:01:19
I really appreciate you being here.
1:01:20
This has been a lot of fun. I'm honored.
1:01:23
Thank you for the opportunity and and thank you for allowing
1:01:25
me to speak. Folks, that's a wrap on another
1:01:28
episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
1:01:30
Thanks for learning with us. And if one thing stood out, put
1:01:33
that into action today.