Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / The Importance of Listening to Clients and Creating Repeatable Processes, with Ryan Hawley | Healthcare Series
Transcript
- 0:04Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
- 0:07share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
- 0:10how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
- 0:13they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
- 0:18the Inspired Stories podcast, where leaders share their
- 0:21experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
- 0:24by how they've overcome adversity.
- 0:26My name is Anthony Cotispoti, and today's guest is Ryan
- 0:29Hawley, CEO of Odin Industries, a boutique consultant, a
- 0:35boutique consultancy specializing in international
- 0:38workers compensation and case management.
- 0:41He's a member of the Small Business Association Leadership
- 0:44Council for Economic Development, which is the
- 0:46nation's first small business advocacy organization that
- 0:51interacts directly with different government agencies on
- 0:54behalf of small businesses. He's also a member of the Board
- 0:57of Directors of Defense of Democracy, an organization that
- 1:01educates the public about the value of inclusivity and the
- 1:05importance of emotional and physical safety for all
- 1:08individuals in public schools and libraries.
- 1:11We're also going to talk about why he's been to over 120
- 1:15countries. But before we get into the good
- 1:17stuff, today's episode is brought to you by my company,
- 1:20Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and
- 1:24unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and
- 1:27fiscally optimized for your bottom line.
- 1:29One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per
- 1:33year to their bottom line by implementing one of our
- 1:36proprietary programs. Results vary for each company,
- 1:39and some organizations may not be eligible.
- 1:41To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at
- 1:44Add Back Benefits Agency. Now back to our guest today, the
- 1:49CEO of Odin Industries. Ryan, thanks so much for making
- 1:52the time to Share your story today.
- 1:53No problem at all. Thanks for having me.
- 1:56Yeah, so we were starting to get into this a little bit in the
- 1:58the pre interview offline and and I had to I had to interrupt
- 2:02and pause because we were really going far down a rabbit hole and
- 2:06I wanted to make sure we left time to get into all all of this
- 2:09stuff here with the audience. So take just a few moments and
- 2:13explain in your own words. What does Odin Industries do?
- 2:18Because you're you're in a unique.
- 2:19Space we're, we're in a very unique space.
- 2:21So Odin Industries considers itself to be one of the experts
- 2:26within the the Foreign Voluntary and Defense Base Act insurance
- 2:31markets, acting on behalf of insurance and assistance firms
- 2:35providing their medical case management all over the the
- 2:38globe and and helping to settle and manage claims that are
- 2:43related to either civilian contractors working ancillary to
- 2:47the military or for multinational corporations in
- 2:51the US that utilize foreign voluntary insurance.
- 2:54So we manage medical care. We provide payment services
- 2:59globally for our clients. A lot of our clients are
- 3:03insurance companies that are paying settlements into say
- 3:07Uganda or Rwanda or things of that nature.
- 3:10We'll do sanctions check to make sure that the claimant receiving
- 3:14the money isn't on any lists, provide proper documentation to
- 3:18make sure that the the wires will be accepted by the banks,
- 3:24and do test wires to make sure that the bank account is going
- 3:29to the correct person before they send a settlement over.
- 3:32So say the settlement's for $50,000 or something, we'll test
- 3:36that bank account and confirm that with the claimant doing a
- 3:40small say $1.00 test wire before they they send their money.
- 3:45So we work with a number of insurance companies and
- 3:48structured benefits companies to provide that service.
- 3:51We have a proprietary network globally of physicians in
- 3:56various specialties for medical legal opinions.
- 4:00On any given day, we could be providing medical care in India
- 4:04and getting reports done in South Africa and gathering
- 4:10medical records and I don't know the the Ukraine.
- 4:14So, so let me see if I understand this.
- 4:15So as AUS company, I have to send my employees overseas
- 4:21somewhere to work for extended periods of time, right?
- 4:24And while my employees are over there, they're going to need
- 4:27medical care, right? But rather than sort of go
- 4:31through the traditional medical care system in whatever country
- 4:35that they've been placed in, they're contracting with you to
- 4:41help find medical care for them that is also somehow connected
- 4:46to their health insurance back home.
- 4:49So at the point of injury we can facilitate getting them care
- 4:53globally that that's the first step is you know, when injury
- 4:57occurs to get their emergency care done.
- 5:00We also do employer side workers compensation defense base Act
- 5:07claims where you have a contractor that's been working
- 5:12overseas, say they were working in Afghanistan as a food service
- 5:17worker. They've now returned home to
- 5:19their home country, are involved in litigation with their
- 5:22employer over claims of post traumatic stress and I don't
- 5:28know, an ortho injury related to, you know, being near
- 5:31ordinance. We will get doctors to perform
- 5:35independent medical examinations, judging if those
- 5:39injuries are valid, seeing if those injuries were in fact
- 5:43caused by their their work, whether there's any evidence of
- 5:47malingering or things of that nature.
- 5:50What a reasonable treatment plan looks like, what sort of time
- 5:54frame that would be and making a determination if the person is
- 5:58ever going to get back to full function, if they're going to
- 6:01suffer from a permanent partial disability or whether they're
- 6:05going to be permanently disabled where they can't return to work.
- 6:09So we only do that employer side.
- 6:11So we're we're working with the employer's insurance company or
- 6:14the. So your your client is the
- 6:16employer, or the employer's insurance company could be the
- 6:20employer. Could be either we're just never
- 6:22claim. We're never claiming side that
- 6:23all all of our resources are employer side.
- 6:27We don't work with any claimant law firms or directly with with
- 6:32any claimants that our investigation are always
- 6:35employer side. So it the self insured company
- 6:42that is working overseas or it could be somebody that's working
- 6:45with a major insurer like Archer, Crawford and company or
- 6:49or some of the specific risk providers that that deal in the
- 6:53defense base act or for in voluntary space.
- 6:56So for somebody who's outside of the world that you're living in,
- 7:01this is a little confusing to me because you know, my insurance
- 7:05I've got, I've got a network of providers that I'm allowed to go
- 7:10see. And if I go outside of that
- 7:11network, I'm going to pay a lot more.
- 7:14Clearly, if somebody is going overseas, they're going outside
- 7:17of the sort of the traditional network of providers.
- 7:20So, you know, if if I'm placed in Uganda and I need to go in
- 7:26for, you know, a checkup or I've got an eye infection or I've
- 7:29got, you know, a sore throat or something.
- 7:32Are you getting involved in sort of that, you know, routine sort
- 7:35of healthcare maintenance? Or are you only getting involved
- 7:38in sort of like the bigger cases where there's like an injury or
- 7:41something like? That well, we, we do both that,
- 7:44you know, we deal with high net worth individuals that will
- 7:48contact us before going on say as a safari that will sort of
- 7:53map out where they're going and map out the medical facilities
- 7:56that they should use if they become ill or injured during
- 7:59their trip. If it's an injury that
- 8:05accompanies managing employees somewhere, we can provide
- 8:08guarantee of payment on their behalf that, you know, we're
- 8:10sending this employee to the urgent care to the emergency
- 8:14that we have contracted relationships with the hospitals
- 8:18that we will guarantee payment so they can send the employee to
- 8:22get that medical care. The vast majority of, of what
- 8:25we're doing is managing medical care within litigated
- 8:28situations. So the the employee has filed
- 8:32something that would be similar here within the US to workers
- 8:35compensation that they've had a workplace injury.
- 8:38They've contacted an attorney and said, you know, this is all
- 8:41my employer's fault. And the vast majority of what we
- 8:45do is manage care either long term to manage that disability
- 8:50of the the claimant, which is a lot of what we do, managing
- 8:54their doctor's appointments, finding appropriate specialists
- 8:56to help them heal and get back to work the other.
- 9:00It's like a concierge service in a way.
- 9:02The concierge for one side and then the other side is we're
- 9:05providing medical experts to give medical legal opinions for
- 9:12the employer to make informed decisions on whether they should
- 9:17settle the claim, whether they should fight it, whether they're
- 9:20responsible for this injury or whether there's some questions.
- 9:24We also do a lot of things such as fraud investigation or or
- 9:27things of that nature. And so how would a fraud
- 9:31investigation work? We partner with one of the
- 9:34largest security firms in the world.
- 9:37So if we're looking at a claim where the information's not
- 9:41making sense or the diagnosis isn't making sense the, the
- 9:45treatment claim, we can then, you know, go with the insurers
- 9:49say we've got some concerns that there is some medical fraud
- 9:51going here. We, we can do stationary
- 9:56observation camera and a lamppost kind of thing.
- 10:00We can have an agent pro warm surveillance and follow them
- 10:03around for a few days. We can do some pretty high tech
- 10:08document research that we have tools that we can pull the
- 10:11layers of APDF to see if it's been edited or or changed in
- 10:16anything that's AI believe it's called third eye, the tool they
- 10:21use for that. So we can validate IDs.
- 10:23We can validate medical records that we have a lot of tools at
- 10:27our disposal that if we don't think a claims on the up and up
- 10:32that we can investigate that pretty thoroughly after.
- 10:37Camera and a lamppost. I mean you, you guys are doing
- 10:39some James Bond type stuff, huh? The my, my partners on the
- 10:43security space, there's not much.
- 10:45They don't do that. They're a massive, massive
- 10:48corporation. I think 20 some odd billion a
- 10:53year in revenue that they probably have tools that James
- 10:57Bond doesn't have. That's fun.
- 11:00Now in the pre interview you started to mention something
- 11:02about and I don't know if this is still what you do or or if
- 11:05this is kind of how you started in the space.
- 11:08But going into some of these hostile areas, some of these
- 11:13unsettled areas and having to retrieve medical records, is
- 11:18this part of ongoing what you do?
- 11:20Sure. Basically we have to manage care
- 11:24wherever the claimant is. So the the commonality with
- 11:29defense based Act claims at least our multinational
- 11:34companies generally pull from areas that have lower wages.
- 11:39So you saw a huge uptick in Peru probably 10 years ago.
- 11:45You saw a huge uptick within Uganda.
- 11:48The Balkans has been another area that they've pulled a lot
- 11:52from your massive. When you say pull a lot from,
- 11:55what do you mean by that? Bring employees to work on these
- 11:58contracts as food service workers or construction workers
- 12:01or concrete layers that there anywhere there's a military
- 12:05presence, there's also a huge presence of contractors that are
- 12:09coming in to help service these areas.
- 12:13So they'll get employees from nations that are relatively low
- 12:17wage compared to American workers to fill these positions.
- 12:22If they get hurt or if they have some sort of psychiatric issue
- 12:28related to being in the war zone, the company has to manage
- 12:32them under the the legislation wherever they return to.
- 12:36So they, they left Afghanistan, Kosovo.
- 12:41The company until that claim is settled, needs to manage their
- 12:44care. So provide medical care for them
- 12:47and do any medical legal opinions.
- 12:50Literally anywhere in the globe that you have Nepal, you have
- 12:55the Philippines, you have all these areas that there's a high
- 13:00concentration of workers that have gone over to work.
- 13:04What we find in the space is, especially with the Defense Base
- 13:09Act, is once there's an area of concentration where employees
- 13:13are being pulled from, an American lawyer will go over and
- 13:16hang up a shingle and say if you've ever been hurt at work,
- 13:21you know, pop by here and we'll sue your employer for you.
- 13:25So you'll see sort of an area of hiring and then within a couple
- 13:29of years you'll start to see sort of a center of litigation
- 13:33coming out of that area because an American firm's gone over and
- 13:36started to recruit. So we're you, sort of?
- 13:42So is the, sorry to interrupt, Brian, is the legislation that
- 13:46sort of dictates what the process looks like, is this USA
- 13:49legislation or is this an international?
- 13:51It's USA. It's US legislation, got it.
- 13:55That for all intents and purposes gives a foreign
- 13:59national working for AUS company similar workers compensation
- 14:04rights to that of an American worker here.
- 14:07So they're. Interesting.
- 14:09There's some nuances to it, but it's in layman's terms, somebody
- 14:14that's not living in my world, it's close to the workers
- 14:16compensation system. Here you're just doing it on an
- 14:22international scale. So you're, you're having to help
- 14:25that Peruvian get help, you know, while they're hurt in
- 14:29Uganda, as well as continuing to get them help until the case is
- 14:33closed when they move back to Peru.
- 14:35We're, we're the pointy end of the sphere for the insurance and
- 14:38assistance companies and the law firms managing these cases.
- 14:42The insurance companies essentially are sales machines.
- 14:45They want, they want to sell more insurance.
- 14:47That's what they're designed to do.
- 14:49The assistance company manage the care on behalf of the
- 14:53insurance companies. We act as their, you know,
- 14:57vendor or resource that's boots on the ground where these claims
- 15:02are. And the law firms, they rely on
- 15:05us to get the expert opinions, etcetera, for their ability to
- 15:12litigate these cases that, you know, they're focused on the
- 15:15legal aspects. They're using us as the provider
- 15:19of information to help them navigate these legal cases.
- 15:23So the the pointy end of the spear, the the boots on the
- 15:25ground, this this means that's us.
- 15:29But but what paint a little bit more of a picture?
- 15:32What is? What is the what?
- 15:35What more physically are you doing there?
- 15:38So. We're pointing into the spear
- 15:40makes me think like there's some aggression, but.
- 15:43I'm not sure if that's still the right thing.
- 15:45No aggression at all. I just spent a lot of time
- 15:48flying all over the world developing field agents that for
- 15:53various tasks we'll look at either medical providers,
- 15:56nurses, physicians or security resources that can go get us
- 16:02medical records or meet a claimant at physician's office
- 16:08to to help pay for their claim. That we've got probably 1000
- 16:13field agents globally that we can call on a case by case basis
- 16:17to help us. OK, got it.
- 16:20You are the boots on the ground that that helps to cement the
- 16:23picture in my head a little bit more.
- 16:25And so can can you. Are there a couple of like fun
- 16:29stories you can share with us? I mean, you're going to these
- 16:31crazy places. You know, you're talking about
- 16:33cameras and and lamp posts like some of the clandestine stuff.
- 16:37I think it'd be fun to hear. As far as, you know, interesting
- 16:40stories with regards to to fraud.
- 16:42We were managing one claim in Africa that things just weren't
- 16:48making sense, that reading the medical notes, that the
- 16:52treatment didn't seem appropriate.
- 16:54The injuries seemed kind of off. So we looked into it.
- 16:59You know, the 1st place we would look would be to go to the
- 17:02provider, get some additional medical records to review to see
- 17:06if we could make what we have makes sense, if there's
- 17:09something that we're missing or you know, something that we
- 17:11don't have in our file. So I sent somebody to the
- 17:15facility and there was no facility.
- 17:17It was a field that there was no hospital.
- 17:21Looking at the documents, all of the medical reports have been
- 17:23faked. All of the X-ray reports have
- 17:25been faked. None of it was real that it had
- 17:28been. How can you tell that an X-ray
- 17:30has been faked? That we didn't have physical
- 17:32X-rays. We had the documents.
- 17:34That it was fake because the hospital didn't exist, the
- 17:37doctor didn't exist. It was an it was an empty field.
- 17:40The address had no. You didn't have to look any
- 17:45further once you got there. There's no facility.
- 17:48The whole thing, you know, started to go through the
- 17:50documents and, you know, all of the documents were typed on the
- 17:53same computer that, you know, despite being named for
- 17:58different physicians and things, they were all typed on the same
- 18:02computer. And we were able to show, you
- 18:04know, this was one person that came up with a, a story and put
- 18:08a remarkable amount of work into trying to make that story valid
- 18:16as far as, you know, globe trotting and all over these
- 18:19countries. Prior to starting this company,
- 18:22I spent most of my 20s in the in the back of an airplane doing
- 18:26air ambulance transports all over the globe.
- 18:28That's, you know, I would be on call for a couple weeks at a
- 18:32time. During those 14 days, I might be
- 18:34in five or six different countries.
- 18:37That's it's. And what is air ambulance
- 18:40transport work? So if somebody's got travel
- 18:43insurance or their employer, if they're overseas on a vacation
- 18:48or on a business trip and become ill or become injured and aren't
- 18:53able to be transported on a commercial aircraft home, then
- 18:57you need to hire a private jet to basically be AICU in the sky
- 19:03to, to get this person home that you can rack up 10s of
- 19:07thousands, if not hundreds of thousands in charges if you're
- 19:11in a foreign country receiving medical care.
- 19:14So it's usually financially beneficial to bring this person
- 19:19back to their home country where they're being treated under that
- 19:22country's insurance or if it's here in America being treated by
- 19:26their Cigna or United Health or, or what have you.
- 19:29So at the time the aircraft of choice for air ambulance was a
- 19:34Lira 35 S flies for about four and a half, 4 3/4 hours at a
- 19:40time. So to, to get overseas, I would
- 19:44usually leave from Toronto, go from there to just outside of
- 19:49Newfoundland, go from there to Iceland and then.
- 19:53Sounds like an incredibly inefficient process.
- 19:55It, it was, but it's, it allowed me to see a lot of the world in
- 20:01that space. And it was a pretty interesting
- 20:04way to spend your 20s, you know, my age now with kids and
- 20:09responsibilities like that. I don't know that I'd want to do
- 20:12it now, but prior to having children, it was it was a pretty
- 20:16cool way to to spend your youth so.
- 20:19And so you're classically trained as a registered nurse.
- 20:22And so this is what led to this ambulance transport work.
- 20:26And is this ambulance, ambulance transport work, then what led to
- 20:32you eventually sort of falling into or discovering this whole
- 20:36new world of international workers comp case management?
- 20:39Prior to Odin Industries, I started a company called Going
- 20:41Home Medical and that was strictly focused on, you know,
- 20:45medical transport. At the time that I became a
- 20:48manager, I think 2012, I started managing the ICU in Niagara
- 20:53Falls. Very quickly realized the
- 20:56hospital middle management just wasn't the hamster wheel that I
- 20:59wanted to be on five days a week.
- 21:02The sort of structured hours. My entire day was, you know,
- 21:06this meeting to this meeting, this meeting so we could have
- 21:09another meeting about having a meeting next month.
- 21:11It could drive me crazy. And there was another manager
- 21:16that was at Niagara that used to work for one of the transport
- 21:19companies that I did. We were out, you know, having
- 21:22beers and talking about the glory days of getting to see the
- 21:26world on somebody else's dime and how fun it was.
- 21:29And he said, well, you know, we should start a company like that
- 21:32someday. How about tomorrow, you know,
- 21:37registered a business. We, you know, made-up a logo,
- 21:39came up with a business plan and launched.
- 21:42And you know, I think you and I had the story before we got on
- 21:46air that initially we had focused on the snowbird market,
- 21:50focused on sort of Canadians that were down in Florida or in
- 21:54Arizona and it just it wasn't a revenue model that was
- 21:57sustainable. So.
- 22:00A lot of competition, a lot of. Competition.
- 22:01Chase yourself to the bottom. Revenue model.
- 22:04It was like a competition to see who could charge less.
- 22:07It just didn't make any sense. So we started service in
- 22:10dangerous areas. We started servicing Western
- 22:12Africa, predominantly Afghanistan and then Iraq at
- 22:16that time. And how do you promote yourself?
- 22:19How does somebody get to know that you're even an option for
- 22:21this? We had a lot of existing
- 22:24relationships with assistance firms from being on the planes
- 22:28that you're, you're dealing with the case managers at that time.
- 22:31So we kind of had a foot in the door to maybe not get to the
- 22:35decision maker, but get to somebody that can get us to the
- 22:38decision maker. And then the, you know,
- 22:43servicing Afghanistan and doing a really good job of it.
- 22:48Our clients became our best referral source that when other
- 22:52assistance companies would meet them at conferences or something
- 22:55of that nature and say, you know, we're having a lot of
- 22:57problem getting these contractors out of Afghanistan
- 22:59and they'd go, you know, call Ryan, he'll be able to sort you
- 23:03out. So we were actually getting a
- 23:04lot of referrals from clients talking to other similar
- 23:10companies saying, you know, these guys do a really good job,
- 23:12you should talk to them. And so you guys have the pilot,
- 23:16you have the, the nurse or the, the, the medical staff that you
- 23:21know is on the plane, you're leasing the plane is that.
- 23:24We would do commercial transport on, you know, regular aircraft
- 23:28your your Delta, American Airlines that we would provide
- 23:31nurses and physicians. And then rather than get into
- 23:34owning and operating jets and taking on all of that the
- 23:39responsibility, we got an insurance policy that it would
- 23:43allow us to act as a broker and developed proprietary network
- 23:47globally of accredited providers either through NAMTA or URAMI or
- 23:53camps, the three sort of big accreditation agencies within
- 23:56air ambulance. And we built a network that we
- 23:59could call on them, get pricing at a preferred rate, but not
- 24:05have to manage the the aircraft or take on those costs that our
- 24:10insurance would allow us to act as a broker and.
- 24:13So what does that mean? Because you also mentioned that
- 24:15you were, you know, booking people on like Delta flights.
- 24:18So Delta flights would be our own.
- 24:20Am I sitting? Am I sitting in a, you know, a
- 24:22coach seat with my, you know, broken leg propped up?
- 24:25Or generally medical transports were always done in business
- 24:28class. So you would have either a nurse
- 24:30or a physician in in business class you try and do routes that
- 24:37have as few stops as possible. If you can get a direct flight,
- 24:42you know, do the direct flight. If not, try and only get one
- 24:46stop over. Some of the airlines like
- 24:50Lufthansa actually have stretchers built into their
- 24:54planes and sort of hidden away areas.
- 24:56Other times you would be in like a regular business class seat.
- 25:00The nurses or physicians would provide whatever medications
- 25:03that they needed help get them in and out of the wheelchair.
- 25:07We would, if they needed to be brought by ambulance airside.
- 25:11We would facilitate getting those staff being allowed to go
- 25:15airside, getting allowed into the various countries with work
- 25:19permits, that there was a lot of logistical support that needed
- 25:23to be done over and above just the the medical staff.
- 25:27Got it. OK, so I, I had envisioned and I
- 25:30think now incorrectly that I was on some sort of a, a cargo plane
- 25:34on a, on a, on a Gurney in the back.
- 25:37And it's just, you know, big wide open space.
- 25:39But what you're describing is I'm well enough that I can sit
- 25:43in a business class seat for the transport.
- 25:45I've got a nurse there who's with me that that's able to
- 25:47assist me. And then when you talk about
- 25:49being a broker, you're talking about being a broker for airline
- 25:53tickets. Is that right?
- 25:54No, no, for the brokering, for the brokering part would be for
- 25:57air ambulances. So those would be private jets
- 26:00that had medical staff. OK, so we've got two different
- 26:03scenarios. There's one where I'm well
- 26:05enough to sit in a Delta business class seat and there's
- 26:08another one where it's a dedicated type of plane and air
- 26:11and OK. Exactly.
- 26:13So that we would act as sort of the go between for both that if,
- 26:19if they were on a commercial aircraft, we had our own staff
- 26:23that we would book the the airline tickets to go get them,
- 26:26sit beside them and get them there.
- 26:28If they needed an air ambulance. We had providers all over the
- 26:31world that we could get competitive quotes from, say,
- 26:34three or four different providers to do that transport
- 26:37on our behalf. Got it.
- 26:40And you mentioned that a lot of your clients came from word of
- 26:43mouth, which says a lot about the quality of your service,
- 26:46right? What, what is it that you guys
- 26:49are doing differently than the providers that other people are
- 26:52really struggling and moving from to you guys?
- 26:56I think we look for the difficult stuff that where we
- 27:02where we sort of differentiate ourselves from the competition
- 27:08is we actively look to solve hard problems that you know,
- 27:12getting somebody out of South Florida is not that complicated
- 27:16a thing. Getting reliable resources in
- 27:20Uganda and developing, you know, relationships with, with medical
- 27:26facilities in generally under service areas is not the easiest
- 27:30thing to do. And also the other thing that we
- 27:35did that seems very simple, but a lot of our competition I guess
- 27:40doesn't do is we listen to our clients that that's where the
- 27:44the payment services came in. That you you had these major
- 27:48issues of insurance companies in good faith trying to pay claims
- 27:54in two areas. And you know, we're having
- 27:59people getting robbed for their settlement funds.
- 28:03You know, somebody had found out that they were getting settled
- 28:05with the insurance company and the bank account that the the
- 28:10claimant settlement was going to, was going to somebody that
- 28:15was robbing them, that it was a problem that they wanted to
- 28:21solve. And it was like, OK, well, a
- 28:24test wire should be able to solve that.
- 28:27So you incur the cost for a wire and you send a dollar or two
- 28:32dollars in a transaction and then follow up with the
- 28:35claimant. Did you get that money?
- 28:38Yes, we got that money. OK.
- 28:40So before you send the $15,000 check we've done past run, we've
- 28:45also made sure that there's not any sanctions issues, there's
- 28:48not any trouble, which helps mitigate risk for the insurance
- 28:52companies that has become, I don't know, we're probably doing
- 28:5610 to 15 a day, call it, I don't know, 20,000 a month in gross
- 29:04revenue to solve a problem that was quite easy like we're we
- 29:10had. Send it to and we've all done
- 29:12this when connecting to a new bank account or new service.
- 29:15They send a small test transaction and they ask you to
- 29:18verify the amount so that they can.
- 29:21Exactly. We, we took something that's
- 29:22done at a, a grand scale with opening a PayPal account or
- 29:27something of that nature, made it specific for payment of
- 29:31insurance claims and solved what was a, a fairly major problem
- 29:35for people that are operating in, you know, the Balkans are
- 29:40operating in Nepal. Of just verifying that before we
- 29:44send $150,000 medical settlement, that it's going to
- 29:48the right person and that we're not breaking any international
- 29:51banking laws by sending that help.
- 29:54The sanctions piece would be if somebody is on a list of
- 29:58criminals or we're not allowed to send money to North Koreans
- 30:03or Iranians or something like. That exactly.
- 30:05So we, we use a software that goes, I think 200 databases.
- 30:10So it covers American, Canadian, Australian, British law that we
- 30:15can identify if there's issues that could get our insurance
- 30:21companies into trouble that some of the clients we're working for
- 30:24are not American based companies are British based companies.
- 30:27So, you know, we want to check against whatever database to
- 30:33make sure they're not getting in trouble with who their
- 30:35government says you can't do business with that we're acting
- 30:39as a risk mitigator for the insurance company so they can
- 30:43operate knowing that, you know, they're not breaking any rules.
- 30:47And international banking, it can be fairly complicated.
- 30:52You know, the, the people that are on sanctions that we all
- 30:55know their name. That's pretty simple.
- 30:57You know, don't wire Vladimir Putin, but say the say the
- 31:03Balkans, for example. You know, you had a pretty nasty
- 31:06war in the Balkans that there was a lot of war crimes trials
- 31:11against. Those are names you might not
- 31:13recognize that you're going to want to check and make sure that
- 31:17you're not going to get a slap on the wrist if you know the
- 31:21federal government teachers sending them money.
- 31:24Did you have to get some sort of special security clearance to
- 31:26get access to these databases? We have security clearances, but
- 31:31not for that specifically. It's a proprietary software that
- 31:36checks existing databases for that.
- 31:40Then we came up with a step by step sort of reproducible
- 31:45McDonald's model of what documentation a claimant would
- 31:49need to take to their bank to make sure a wire is going to go
- 31:52through that. Wires are funny things with
- 31:55banks that they're very highly regulated.
- 31:59Banks will hold money if it's unclear what that wire's for.
- 32:03So we came up with, you know, descriptor vernacular that is
- 32:08acceptable to the banks. We do a letter for each of the
- 32:12claims that we send out saying what the money's for, who's it
- 32:15coming from. This is its purpose.
- 32:17It can be presented at the banks and then when we've maintained a
- 32:22database of SWIFT codes all across the world that if we
- 32:26don't have full banking information that we can, you
- 32:31know, probably figure it out on the law firms behalf of, OK,
- 32:34they do business with this bank. This is their standard.
- 32:38You know, this is the number that we're going to get solves a
- 32:41lot of problems for the law firms and the insurance
- 32:43companies. And it is something that I can
- 32:46take to my staff with, you know, the McDonald's manual of every
- 32:51time do it like this, documents it like this, and we're not
- 32:56going to ever run into problems. It's a lot of attention to
- 33:00detail in building these repeatable and reliable
- 33:05processes. Absolutely.
- 33:06You guys run into a new problem, you step back and you say OK,
- 33:12this is a hard problem. What can we do to solve it?
- 33:15What is the value add that we can provide for the customer
- 33:18here to make their life easier? And and then you create the
- 33:23process and then you like you call it the McDonald's manual.
- 33:27It's just the standard operating procedure that gets repeated
- 33:29time and time again. That's it.
- 33:32So Ryan, who is your ideal client?
- 33:37Who who listening to this might want to hire you?
- 33:40Our ideal clients are law firms that are dealing in
- 33:44international employment spaces that law firms for independent
- 33:50medical examinations or directing care, I would say are
- 33:54about half of our revenue. Case management firms or
- 33:59assistance firms that deal in these type of cases are another
- 34:04great client for us. And then any smaller insurance
- 34:09that are dealing in sort of unique risk that we are fairly
- 34:16rapidly expanding our domestic workers compensation nurse case
- 34:20management for managing workers compensation here that you know,
- 34:25that that's in probably our biggest focused area within this
- 34:30space. And then the other client that
- 34:33we spend a lot of time trying to establish relationships is the
- 34:38government that there's a lot of occupational health, workers
- 34:41compensation stuff related to federal contracts.
- 34:46That's another area of growth that we spent a significant
- 34:49amount of time sort of tailoring Odin services around that.
- 34:55Now I'm curious why the decision to focus on domestic workers
- 34:59comp case management? You guys are the ones that do
- 35:02the hard stuff is, do you find that there's sort of a race to
- 35:07the bottom in pricing in the domestic case management?
- 35:10No. Domestic case management in a
- 35:12number of markets is regulated at what it's compensated at.
- 35:17And it's sort of an inverse of say a Medicaid that if you look
- 35:22at the the California market that all of the injuries that
- 35:27occur within California need an impairment rating.
- 35:31That impairment rating is adjusted every say five or six
- 35:34years of what the cost of that is.
- 35:37And it's always adjusted up that basically the physicians that
- 35:40are doing that will come to an agreement of what a reasonable
- 35:45raises. It's reproducible in the sense
- 35:52that they're enshrined in the California Constitution that
- 35:55this needs to occur. It's not an area that there's
- 36:00massive, massive competition. There's competition for sure,
- 36:03but it, it there's 10s of companies, not hundreds of
- 36:07companies that are are doing this.
- 36:11It's. It's accessible to you.
- 36:13It's also an area that there's a barrier of entry.
- 36:15You need to understand how these systems work.
- 36:19Joe Blow off the street can't start a company doing what we're
- 36:23doing with our expertise that that sort of barrier to entry is
- 36:29attractive to us as reason for the focus for it.
- 36:34We're we're looking to scale the business probably to the point
- 36:39that, you know, the 10 years we would be looking to be OK.
- 36:46What private equity needs to, you know, do an acquisition,
- 36:50you're going to want an 8 to 10 million evaluation minimum for
- 36:55it to be worth their time. The the small niche that we I'm
- 37:00very, very good at, it's going to be very, very difficult for
- 37:03us to get to that multiple without including, you know
- 37:07other streams of revenue such as the domestic.
- 37:11That makes sense. And how many folks do you
- 37:13currently employ? So there's six of us currently
- 37:16that are within sort of, you know, W2 status and then it
- 37:22would be 900 to 1000 field agents that act as contractors
- 37:26on a case by case basis. So our, our networks very broad,
- 37:32our actual, you know, tangible employees.
- 37:35It's a very small group of us. All are within the medical
- 37:39space. All of us have some letters at
- 37:42the end of our name. All of us have experience
- 37:45within, you know, workers compensation domestically or
- 37:49internationally. And we meet at least once a
- 37:53week, sometimes twice a week, looking at how we can do things
- 37:58better, that we keep regular communication with our clients.
- 38:01You know, are we meeting your expectations?
- 38:04If not, you know, where do we need to improve?
- 38:07And if it's a new market or a new area, we spend a lot of time
- 38:11making sure that the resources we're using, there are good
- 38:15resources that I've never found e-mail vetting or things of that
- 38:20nature to be particularly effective in this space.
- 38:23A lot of the time, if you're entering a new market, it means
- 38:25getting on an airplane and seeing who your vendors on the
- 38:29ground are going to be, seeing their offices and knowing that
- 38:34they're going to be able to do what you're telling their
- 38:37clients they're going to do for. You.
- 38:40Yeah, I can. I get the sense of a real
- 38:42dedication to the process of continuous improvement.
- 38:46Absolutely. Ryan, let's shift gears for a
- 38:48second because I I'm kind of curious to hear more about your
- 38:51involvement with the Small Business Association Leadership
- 38:55Council for Economic Development.
- 38:58Sure. First explain what that is, and
- 39:01then explain why you got involved.
- 39:03With it so the NSBA is the oldest advocacy group in the
- 39:08nation for small businesses that they have a a number of
- 39:13different sort of levels that they interact with government,
- 39:20be it at a local all the way up to a a federal level.
- 39:25The the leadership councils, there's one dedicated to health
- 39:30policy, there's one dedicated to economic development.
- 39:35They will pick issues that benefit small businesses and act
- 39:44in both a lobbying capacity to help make it more of an even
- 39:49playing field for small businesses compared to larger
- 39:52counterparts. They have a lobbyist on staff.
- 39:55They will also look at the existing policies and help
- 39:59challenge them that the Corporate Transparency Act.
- 40:05It is the the latest thing that they actually have sued the
- 40:09federal government and had it declared as unconstitutional.
- 40:14The government's in the process of appealing that right now, but
- 40:18members of the NSBNSNSBA right now are excluded from having to
- 40:28participate in that that through the appeals process, just
- 40:32members of our group are able to use.
- 40:37What is the Corporate Transparency Act?
- 40:39What is it trying? To any business, whether you
- 40:42know you've got a restaurant where you're pouring coffee or
- 40:47anything that there's, I believe it's 108 page document that
- 40:52you're going to need to read of what information you're going to
- 40:55need to provide to the federal government.
- 40:57But I believe July 1st of this year to ensure that you're
- 41:01compliant, it's cumbersome, it's very Big Brother and it's sort
- 41:08of right up. And it doesn't do anything to
- 41:12prevent money laundering at a small business level.
- 41:16It just provides a barrier to entry from small businesses to
- 41:21be able to conduct business without sort of federal
- 41:25government's involvement. That it's, it's a, a legislation
- 41:31that was not well crafted and certainly wasn't crafted with
- 41:34the interests of most Americans that the, the organization
- 41:40itself. You know that you can go to the
- 41:42NSVA dot biz and go to their issues tab and it will show you
- 41:48know what the various issues that we're fighting for and
- 41:51advocating for are on any given year that that the leadership
- 41:57council level, those issues are voted on and addressed of what
- 42:01we're going to focus our efforts on from an advocacy standpoint.
- 42:06September 18th and 19th, we will be doing a congressional
- 42:11breakfast and then each of the people that are attending will
- 42:15be meeting with their congressman and their respective
- 42:18senators over whichever issues they they want to bring forward.
- 42:24So I'll be meeting with Marco Rubio and Rick Scott at the
- 42:28Senate level and then I have a meeting with Jared Markowitz.
- 42:32And then I believe on the 19th we'll be touring the White House
- 42:36and going to the Small Business Council that will be held in the
- 42:42halls of Congress. So we'll be, we'll be delegates
- 42:45at that, at that meeting. What compelled you to want to
- 42:49get involved with this? I think as a small business
- 42:55owner, America's not set up for us to succeed compared to our
- 43:03monolithic huge corporation counterparts that, you know, the
- 43:07vast majority of the middle class comes from small business.
- 43:12That I want an organization's going to help even that playing
- 43:16field and help provide opportunities for small
- 43:19businesses to become bigger companies.
- 43:22That the, the easiest way to impact change is to help direct
- 43:27that change and to have an organization that's already
- 43:31within the halls of Congress, that already has existing
- 43:34relationships to, to help lobby on small businesses behalf.
- 43:38I, I couldn't think of a, you know, better organization to put
- 43:42my money towards and my time towards to, you know, help do
- 43:46something that's very dear to my heart.
- 43:49What are some of the other things that you haven't already
- 43:52mentioned that are maybe in the works that you're particularly
- 43:55excited about? Within the NSBA, working with a
- 43:59number of people within the leadership Council right now to
- 44:03put forward a package for making it easier for small businesses
- 44:07to do business with the federal government.
- 44:10That, you know, streamlining that process for small
- 44:15businesses to be able to interact and be competitive on
- 44:19federal contracts compared to, you know, huge organizations
- 44:24that a lot of the time it almost feels like the proposals are
- 44:27written for. So we're, we're coming together
- 44:30with proposals to help the existing carve out process for
- 44:36small businesses be better. And we're, we're getting decent
- 44:40feedback from the government. We've got an engaged group
- 44:43within an SBA that all have a history of dealing with the
- 44:48government that talk collectively about what problems
- 44:53that we faced, what we think would be a better solution and
- 44:57coming up with what I think is going to be a pretty good
- 44:59document to be able to present that.
- 45:02That particularly is what I'm going to be meeting with with my
- 45:06Florida based lawmakers. Is that specifically of what,
- 45:11you know, lawmakers that are meant to be working on our
- 45:13behalf? This is something from a small
- 45:16business's owner perspective that you know we would like you
- 45:19to be the champion of. Tell me about your involvement
- 45:24with the defense of democracy. So Defense of Democracy IS5O1C3
- 45:30based in New York that sort of address the growing hostilities
- 45:36within public schools and libraries that there's a lot of
- 45:40identity politics, book bans, things of that nature.
- 45:44That just didn't sit well with me.
- 45:46I'm a father of three small kids.
- 45:48That's, you know, I've got a nine year old and two six year
- 45:50old boys. And if I'm not happy with
- 45:56something that's going on in their school, I want to be the
- 45:59first to, I guess, protest against that and the the the 1st
- 46:05to sort of stand in the front line and go, what's going on?
- 46:08It's not right and my child's education shouldn't be your
- 46:13political platform that's looked into sort of organizations that
- 46:20were combating that and found defense of democracy that
- 46:25there's a lot of organizations that do a lot of things
- 46:28politically. All they focus on is making
- 46:31public schools and libraries inclusive for everyone and
- 46:36looking at the education system and, you know, going that school
- 46:41board meeting shouldn't be battlegrounds that this
- 46:43shouldn't be where we're we're fighting our culture wars and
- 46:49went from being a member and going to the Tuesday night
- 46:51meeting and learning about what the organization did.
- 46:55And, you know, they found out about my business background and
- 46:59when, you know, would you consider being on our board?
- 47:01And it went from, you know, Tuesday night meeting to looking
- 47:06at financial reports and understanding how they could
- 47:09better fundraise, you know, how to allocate their money and help
- 47:13direct what they're going to do from organizational policy
- 47:18perspective to to focus their efforts and make sure that it's
- 47:21effective. So it's, I believe the first of
- 47:29the first of three three-year terms that I could maximum serve
- 47:34within the, the bylaws of the board.
- 47:39But we've got a very interesting group.
- 47:44There's, there's lawyers, there's business people, there's
- 47:47school teachers. It's we, we've got a, a wide
- 47:51variety of opinions within the board.
- 47:54And I think we've got a, a pretty good structure to have
- 47:57robust discussions about what the organization can do, how we
- 48:03should do it. And, you know, some, some
- 48:05differing opinions on what our best courses of action for which
- 48:10is good. You know, if it was a monolithic
- 48:12and everybody agreed all of the time, I don't think that's a
- 48:16very effective board that, you know, that's just a rubber stamp
- 48:19for, for something when we we have a board that we can have
- 48:22robust discussions and understand different
- 48:25perspectives within the organization.
- 48:27And I think it's great. So what would be the ideal
- 48:31desired outcome? Is it some new legislation that
- 48:34gets passed? Is it some legislation that gets
- 48:37rolled back? Is it something else entirely?
- 48:40Right now, the fight's mostly at a local level, so, you know, at
- 48:45a federal level. And, you know, I would love to
- 48:49see the Title 9 protections standardized.
- 48:53I don't know that that's realistic in our current
- 48:56political climate, that it's the, the things you're seeing of
- 49:03the the fights and the nastiness within school board meetings is
- 49:07truly astounding to me that, you know, school board meetings
- 49:10should not be newsworthy events. And across the country you're
- 49:20seeing some nasty things. You're frankly seeing some nasty
- 49:25things from all political spectrums that, you know, I, I
- 49:28would like to see, you know, at a federal level that every
- 49:35American of whatever color, race, creed, sexual orientation,
- 49:42that everyone is treated with the same human rights and that
- 49:46we stop villainizing any group within America and.
- 49:51So how do you think you can affect that sort of change even
- 49:54at a local level? You said that's sort of what the
- 49:56focus is now. So we're we're looking at the
- 49:59where we could be most effective.
- 50:01And I think, you know, one of the ways we can be most
- 50:04effective is to help, you know, provide people with information
- 50:10on, you know, what these policies are being crafted from,
- 50:15you know, what sort of the tactics are that there.
- 50:19They have information that if they want to consider running
- 50:22for a school board themselves, that, you know, they, they can
- 50:26understand from a messaging standpoint, from an
- 50:29informational standpoint, you know, what sort of the
- 50:33alternative to the, the current to the current situation is.
- 50:38We're also looking at getting a 5O14C3 developed that would, you
- 50:45know, we would actually be able to put money behind candidates
- 50:48or, or things of that nature. Then the five O 1C3 it's non
- 50:53partisan in its nature that the doors are open to anybody that
- 50:58wants to have the the conversation and it's, you know,
- 51:02under the guise of a non profit. By its nature, it has to be non
- 51:07partisan with the with the sort of lobbying group.
- 51:12We can be a little more directed in our political action to, to
- 51:17deal with specific things. You know, we, we do a lot of
- 51:22fundraising efforts that they do something called a readout,
- 51:26which is a banned book Reading Festival.
- 51:30We just finished a Film Festival.
- 51:34I guess it was about a month now that we showed a film called
- 51:391946. The mistranslation, the shape,
- 51:41the culture that sort of looked at the the Nexus between the
- 51:46word homosexual in the Bible when it first appeared out of
- 51:51any of the translations, and the sort of fallout after that.
- 51:54Prior to the movie I had no idea, but its first appearance
- 51:58in the Bible in any language was in 1946.
- 52:02It was trans. Interesting.
- 52:04It was a fascinating documentary.
- 52:06You know, I got to learn something.
- 52:08It's not a community that I'm part of, but it, it, it's a
- 52:12community that's had a lot of, we'll say nastiness thrown at it
- 52:18in the current, current climate, especially within school boards.
- 52:23And it's, it was a, it was a movie that made you made you
- 52:29think. I don't know that it provided
- 52:30any particular answers, but it would provide hours and hours
- 52:34of, you know, questions and discussions for people to
- 52:37explore their own beliefs and, you know, misconceptions of, you
- 52:43know, how religion relates to us from educational capacity or
- 52:48from, you know, it was, it was a very cool, you know, fundraiser
- 52:56for us that Odin was one of the, the corporate sponsors for that.
- 53:03That's, you know, we did some press releases for it and like
- 53:08anything I'm involved with, you know, defense of democracy, I
- 53:10kind of jumped in with both feet on doing everything I can to
- 53:14help the organization. Little sidebar, where does the
- 53:18name Odin Industries come from? My son's middle.
- 53:20He's Odin. OK.
- 53:24And why did you name him Odin? Why is his middle name Odin?
- 53:26Just the name that you liked. Yeah, the sort of, you know, tie
- 53:30in with Norse, Norse mythology, you know, Thor's dad, that
- 53:35Thor's dad. My daughter's name is Brooklyn.
- 53:38NY was kind of my happy place that when I needed to get away
- 53:43from life in Toronto, I would go hang out with friends in
- 53:46Brooklyn. So I'm my first child was named
- 53:50Brooklyn sort of after that. And my son's first name is
- 53:54Marcus, but his middle name is Odin.
- 53:58My wife chose Marcus and I got to pick the middle name on that
- 54:02child and it was Odin and the the business.
- 54:06It's corn, so. That's cool.
- 54:08And so Odin Industries has got some good momentum going now.
- 54:11You guys have some good sort of mid to long term plans in terms
- 54:15of growth. I'm gonna guess though, if
- 54:17you're like every other business owner I've ever met that things
- 54:20weren't always smooth along the way.
- 54:22How about maybe exploring a particular challenge that you
- 54:26had to overcome along this path? Maybe it was professional or
- 54:30personal. Sure.
- 54:32So it was sort of born out of a challenge.
- 54:34I think I had said that, you know, I had left the the
- 54:38previous company that I had founded in the middle of the
- 54:40pandemic where, you know, a huge portion of the country was
- 54:44locked in their house or unemployed or in cars, in food
- 54:49bank lines, waiting to get food. And that's why I decided to quit
- 54:52my job. And, you know, initially we had,
- 54:58you know, gone into a space to help some of these businesses
- 55:01that were struggling within the pandemic and helping them change
- 55:05their sales. A lot of my expertise was around
- 55:12what Odin does now. And at the time for non compete
- 55:17reasons, I couldn't do that. So it was sort of initially a
- 55:22struggle to understand what it is that Odin actually was going
- 55:25to do. And, you know, navigating that
- 55:31took some time, finding, finding Odin's space in the world took
- 55:37some time to to build that. And it's, you know, it initially
- 55:46had a focus of after the pandemic sort of opened up,
- 55:50wasn't sustainable. And, you know, as I said, kind
- 55:55of got pulled into this mafia world of, you know, that they
- 55:59wouldn't let me out of the international workers comp that
- 56:02my phone's ringing and my phone's ringing going, you know,
- 56:05can you help us in this area? Or, you know, that doctor that
- 56:09you had in Nepal, can you get us in contact with them or, you
- 56:15know, things of that nature and sort of getting pulled back into
- 56:19that world and having to look at lessons that were learned with
- 56:24the previous company, where to focus our efforts, where the the
- 56:28easiest path to scaling revenue was, you know, what geographic
- 56:35locations to, to focus the, the efforts on and to, to build a
- 56:41system that that was meeting the needs of of our clients from
- 56:46four or five years prior. That might not be their needs.
- 56:48Now that you know, though, the world has changed in sort of
- 56:53grand terms in the world has changed within this business
- 56:57that we've left Afghanistan. So, you know, there's new areas
- 57:01that you're seeing some claims in, but a lot of these claims
- 57:03are legacy claims that there was a lot of questions about the
- 57:09validity of claims. Hence establishing the
- 57:11relationship with the security company that, you know, medical
- 57:15management wasn't the primary need in some of these cases.
- 57:19Some of these cases, it was an investigation of, you know,
- 57:22whether these claims were legitimate.
- 57:24It's a skill set that I possessed.
- 57:26So I need to go out and find a partner that could help us in
- 57:30those regards and a partner that we could help them service their
- 57:36clients and and we could help them in areas that they're not
- 57:42experts in. That security is a very sort of
- 57:45pinpoint group of knowledge and medical sort of a very pinpoint
- 57:50group of knowledge that there's a lot of crossover in those
- 57:53areas, but there's not much crossover of staff.
- 57:58Security companies for the most part are not security medical
- 58:02companies and vice versa. We, we were fortunate that I had
- 58:07relationships with this, you know, large firm that over the
- 58:11past four years have we're, we're now tied to several
- 58:16different business offerings together.
- 58:19That there's this sort of mutual symbiosis that we can do very
- 58:24specific things for them that they can now go out to their
- 58:27client with their large sales staff and say we can do AB and C
- 58:32that we couldn't do before. And we can go from our side and
- 58:36offer security services that we wouldn't have had any access to
- 58:40prior. So you left a, a, a difficult
- 58:46job in the midst of the pandemic.
- 58:48You're going to go start your own company.
- 58:50You had sort of one idea on what this new company was going to
- 58:54do, the services it was going to provide.
- 58:57And you were finding this isn't really feels like we're swimming
- 59:00upstream. This is not going as well as we
- 59:03we thought it would. Initially we had some, some very
- 59:07good uptake that if there's anything I can do, well, let's
- 59:10sell. And, you know, we came out with
- 59:13a pitch to, to help these businesses that were struggling
- 59:17through the pandemic. You know, then things started to
- 59:20open up and they started to go back to their conventional ways
- 59:23of doing business or they were struggling so much they didn't
- 59:28have the money to pay for someone that, you know, it was
- 59:31an idea that had a market. A lot of that market didn't have
- 59:35the funds to pay for it. That there was very few business
- 59:39owners that we would talk to that weren't interested there.
- 59:42There were lots that were very, very interested in it, but they
- 59:45were struggling to, you know, pay the rent on their offices or
- 59:49pay the mortgages on their house.
- 59:52That finding the money to pay for a consultant to, to help
- 59:55this situation would have made their financial situations
- 59:59worse. But it, it was a difficult, it
- 1:00:02was a difficult time. So I don't know that there there
- 1:00:04wasn't a market. There certainly was, but we
- 1:00:08were. The timing was off.
- 1:00:11The timing was off. Giving, giving everything that
- 1:00:13was happening. Yeah, we were small business and
- 1:00:17small business got hurt the worst.
- 1:00:20And so how long was this sort of murky, unknown period for you
- 1:00:26until you finally, sort of, as I'm hearing it anyways, you
- 1:00:30listen to what the universe was telling you.
- 1:00:32And it's like, hey, you know what your specialty is already
- 1:00:35because everybody keeps calling you from your previous life.
- 1:00:40And you made the Godfather reference.
- 1:00:42Every time I try to get out, they pull me back in.
- 1:00:45What? What was that sort of
- 1:00:46transition? Period, like I would say 12 to
- 1:00:5018 months, you know, we, we tried to fit the square peg into
- 1:00:55the round hole for about 12 months, had some, some contracts
- 1:01:00that were keeping the lights on, but didn't really see a path to
- 1:01:03scalability that, you know, we were doing well enough to earn a
- 1:01:08living from it. But you know, there, there
- 1:01:10wasn't really a way for us to look at it and, and to, to scale
- 1:01:16it 12 to 18 months. It went, you know, if I go back
- 1:01:20to my old life of solving this one very specific problem,
- 1:01:26there's a clear path to scalability that, you know, we
- 1:01:31can look at that we had a business plan that we could
- 1:01:35operate personnel and say five or six different countries on a
- 1:01:40single day. We, we charge a market rate
- 1:01:45that's we're, we're well compensated for what we do.
- 1:01:49And selling time for money is a, a hard exchange unless you're
- 1:01:53selling somebody else's time for money.
- 1:01:56So if we have our, our field agents, you know, four or five
- 1:01:59people working on the same day that are earning these hourly
- 1:02:03rates, that's something that, you know, exponentially we can
- 1:02:06continue to grow. We're also a business that
- 1:02:09doesn't have a lot of overhead expenses that a lot of what we
- 1:02:14do is based on knowledge and emails and reviewing of medical
- 1:02:21records and using our, our medical knowledge.
- 1:02:26There's no real heavy equipment. There's no crazy apps or
- 1:02:29anything that that we need. We just have to utilize the
- 1:02:32specific knowledge that we have so we can keep our, our overhead
- 1:02:36costs quite low. It also, you know, allows us to
- 1:02:42look at what I think is probably the biggest financial
- 1:02:45opportunity for people right now is the amount of boomers that
- 1:02:49are retiring with perfectly functioning businesses that for
- 1:02:54whatever reason, you know, they don't have kids to pass it off
- 1:02:58to. But for whatever reason, you can
- 1:03:01look at the various business listing sites and find extremely
- 1:03:05profitable businesses within your niche that for whatever
- 1:03:09reason haven't sold. And Small Business
- 1:03:12Administration loans, you only need 10% down that if you're
- 1:03:18looking to expand the business and you find whatever niche
- 1:03:21you're very good at, search it. You can find a business doing 23
- 1:03:25million in revenue a year and you know, say it's at a million
- 1:03:31for a purchase price, you can come up with $100,000.
- 1:03:35You can bolt on, you know, another 3 million in revenue to
- 1:03:38your business. And there's more businesses for
- 1:03:42sale now than there are buyers. And the, the smaller, you know,
- 1:03:483 to 500,000 a year generating, you know, a bit of businesses,
- 1:03:54they're too small for private equity, you know, $500,000 to,
- 1:03:59to bolt on to a business owner. That's, that's a lot of free
- 1:04:03cash, but it's not big enough for private equity to be
- 1:04:05interested in. So you, you have these
- 1:04:08businesses that are throwing three to 600,000 a year in
- 1:04:12profit off that. There's not really a market that
- 1:04:16there, there's not really people that are out buying them unless
- 1:04:19it's, you know, somebody like myself to go out, go through the
- 1:04:25due diligence of looking at their financials and go, I, I
- 1:04:27see how you fit. And we spend probably three to
- 1:04:32four hours a week looking at businesses that we can do as
- 1:04:35Bulldogs. Very interesting smart path to
- 1:04:40choose. Ryan.
- 1:04:42Before we wrap up today, I want to make sure that everybody
- 1:04:44knows the best way to get in touch with you.
- 1:04:47So our business website is odinindustriesllc.com.
- 1:04:53That's anybody personally can you know, reach out to me at
- 1:04:56ryan@odinindustriesllc.com that that will get directly, directly
- 1:05:03to me. And you can find us on the usual
- 1:05:06socials, the, you know, Instagram, Facebook things as
- 1:05:09Odin Industries look forward to to talking to anybody that's
- 1:05:15seeing the show today and would be interested in our services.
- 1:05:19That's terrific, Ryan. I want to be the first one to
- 1:05:21thank you for spending the time to Share your story with
- 1:05:24everyone today. Thank you so much for having me,
- 1:05:25I appreciate it. Folks, that's a wrap on another
- 1:05:29episode of the Inspired Stories podcast.
- 1:05:32Thanks for learning with us today.