Latest / The Inspired Stories Podcast / The Envoy America Method: How Treating Every Older Adult Like Your Own Parent Built a 30-State Business

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The Envoy America Method: How Treating Every Older Adult Like Your Own Parent Built a 30-State Business · 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
• 0:11
  their successes and be inspired by how they've overcome
• 0:14
  adversity. My name is Anthony Kodaspodi and
• 0:17
  today's guest is KC Kannan, the Co founder and CEO of Envoy
• 0:23
  America. They provide tech enabled
• 0:25
  transportation services that help older adults, patients and
• 0:29
  individuals with disabilities get to where they need to go
• 0:32
  safely and comfortably. Their work improves patient
• 0:36
  throughput, reduces hospital readmissions and lowers cost for
• 0:41
  HealthCare Partners. They have received awards for
• 0:44
  Best Aging Focused Startup and Operational Excellence
• 0:48
  IN20002122 and 23 and KC brings over 30 years of experience in
• 0:55
  operations, sales and marketing and is known for his people
• 0:58
  skills, creativity and strategic thinking.
• 1:01
  He holds an MBA in marketing and finance from the University of
• 1:04
  California, Davis and completed executive education in strategic
• 1:09
  leadership at Harvard Business School.
• 1:11
  Now before we get into all that good stuff, today's episode is
• 1:14
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• 1:50
  All right, back to our guest today, the CEO of Envoy America,
• 1:54
  KC Cannon. Thanks for making the time to
• 1:56
  Share your story. Today it is my pleasure.
• 1:59
  Thank you for inviting me to be on your podcast.
• 2:02
  All right, KC, So you have pretty interesting background, a
• 2:05
  lot of it in tech. You've worked at places like
• 2:09
  Intel, Seagate and Bose. And when I say worked at, I mean
• 2:13
  you held pretty key leadership roles.
• 2:16
  You were Chief of Staff at Intel, head of business
• 2:20
  development for Seagate and Head of sales for Bose in 32
• 2:24
  countries. So before we talk about Envoy
• 2:27
  America, I want to hear a little bit about how some of those
• 2:30
  earlier roles helped to shape the skill sets that would later
• 2:34
  become important when you started your own business.
• 2:37
  That, that's a great question. Working for big companies, you,
• 2:43
  you learn how to focus on on the key things that make a company
• 2:49
  run from not only how you take care of the employees who you
• 2:54
  hire, how you keep them happy. Because if the employees are
• 3:00
  happy, they're going to take care of the clients.
• 3:03
  They're going to make them happy.
• 3:04
  If the clients are happy, the clients are going to continue to
• 3:08
  come back again and again and tell their friends about about
• 3:12
  their experience interacting with your company.
• 3:15
  So it's it's, it's the hiring, the managing of of team members.
• 3:22
  The others example is something that I've learned that Intel,
• 3:28
  Intel calls it Imbos or management by by objective,
• 3:32
  where you set up your goals for, for the year.
• 3:36
  You break it down by quarters, by months, by by by weeks and
• 3:41
  and you execute to the goal. So you stay focused, you stay
• 3:45
  disciplined. We hold or we held each other's
• 3:50
  accountable. And those are some of just
• 3:53
  examples that that I've learned working for big companies that I
• 3:57
  brought over to, to, to running our company and, and make sure
• 4:03
  that that we, we do what some of these things that can help us
• 4:08
  grow. So that last program that you
• 4:11
  mentioned at Intel sounds a lot like EOS traction that I hear a
• 4:16
  lot of small businesses talk about.
• 4:18
  Are there a lot of similarities there?
• 4:20
  Absolutely. It's, it's, it is.
• 4:24
  It's very, very, very similar. I've read the book, the EOS and
• 4:28
  and we've practiced some of it happened to the the gentleman
• 4:33
  next door to us in Phoenix. His office was the EOS
• 4:38
  consultant that ran the the Phoenix office.
• 4:41
  So he gifted me the book and I've read it and we've worked
• 4:45
  with them to to bring some of those teachings into our
• 4:49
  company. You mentioned one of the other
• 4:52
  things that you learned working for some of these large
• 4:54
  corporations is the importance of hiring good people, keeping
• 4:58
  them happy when you've got them there.
• 5:00
  Can you maybe give some specific examples of things that you have
• 5:05
  tried and found success with when it comes to both the
• 5:08
  recruiting side of things as well as the retention retaining
• 5:12
  side of things? So besides learning this at at
• 5:18
  the big companies that I worked for, it's also some of the
• 5:23
  things that great companies like Southwest Airlines or or
• 5:27
  Starbucks have done, which is you take care of your employees,
• 5:31
  you make sure that they're happy and it starts with explaining
• 5:36
  the why behind what you do. So in our case, serving older
• 5:43
  adults and patients that need more than just a ride.
• 5:47
  When we recruit drivers or staff, we we work with them on
• 5:52
  the why you need to take your time when you're serving an
• 5:55
  older adult. The, the clients that we serve
• 5:59
  that sometimes they're hard of hearing sometimes, sometimes
• 6:02
  they've, that they're dealing with a medical condition that
• 6:07
  requires them to walk slow. They've lost their independence,
• 6:11
  they've lost the spouse and they need more than just somebody
• 6:16
  that's going to take him from here to there.
• 6:18
  They need somebody that's going to be like a family member, a
• 6:21
  son or daughter to help him every step of the way.
• 6:25
  So explaining the why again and again and reiterating it when we
• 6:30
  before we hire somebody during the orientation, during regular
• 6:36
  updates on here are the things that you, you, you do from and
• 6:41
  when you're helping somebody with their seat belt, an older
• 6:44
  adult, the last thing an older adult or anybody wants is
• 6:49
  somebody touching them when you're, when you're, when you're
• 6:52
  helping with a seat belt. So is there a better way to do
• 6:55
  it? And, and we teach our driver
• 6:58
  companions on how to do it or why it's critical to call the
• 7:02
  night before to confirm that you're still, you're the one who
• 7:07
  is picking them up because that puts them at ease.
• 7:10
  So it's, it's explaining the why in everything that we do to make
• 7:14
  sure that our team members understand it.
• 7:18
  And by doing this, you're, you're, you're putting the
• 7:23
  clients at ease, you're helping them.
• 7:25
  You're, you're, you're respecting their space, their,
• 7:28
  their, their dignity and, and that makes them happy and that
• 7:33
  allows us to deliver better service to them.
• 7:36
  So it sounds like you're not just, you know, hiring anybody
• 7:39
  that's got a driver's license, you're looking for a particular
• 7:42
  type of personality, somebody who's patient, somebody who's
• 7:45
  calm and caring. And you're also enabling those
• 7:49
  folks with the best set of tools possible by giving those very
• 7:52
  specific instructions. Hey, make sure you call the
• 7:54
  night before when you're putting the seat belt on.
• 7:57
  This isn't like putting the seat belt on, you know, your kid or
• 7:59
  your grandpa, they don't know you, so, you know, don't touch
• 8:02
  them. Like, here's the correct way to
• 8:04
  do it. Just like lots of attention to
• 8:06
  details and these little things that make a big difference.
• 8:09
  You're absolutely right, Anthony.
• 8:11
  It's, it's, it's a small things that make the big things happen.
• 8:18
  When we hire people or we interview, we, we, we lead with
• 8:23
  one question. What prompted you to apply?
• 8:26
  Yeah, there are a lot of good people in the world, but we're
• 8:30
  looking for a specific type of individual that wants to
• 8:34
  contribute and help. So by the way, they answer the
• 8:39
  question, what prompted you to apply?
• 8:42
  If they talk about I get what you do, I get my, my, my parents
• 8:47
  lost their ability to drive and they've struggled.
• 8:50
  And that's something that, you know, I, I understand, or my
• 8:55
  neighbor is an older gentleman and they need and he needed
• 8:59
  help. So the way they answer that
• 9:02
  question, if it's service oriented versus I saw that
• 9:06
  you're paying $2225 per hour and that's why I I applied is
• 9:14
  probably not, not probably it's not the right person for us.
• 9:18
  So it's it's, it's it's we take the time to understand why they
• 9:24
  want to work for us and if what they want to do and achieve is
• 9:29
  aligned with how we serve our clients.
• 9:33
  So on the surface, initially, it feels like a pretty strong pivot
• 9:38
  to go from, you know, your technology background into the
• 9:44
  transportation business. Now before we actually get into
• 9:47
  talking about how tech is actually a major lever in Envoy
• 9:51
  America, can you explain how the idea to start the company came
• 9:55
  about? Absolutely.
• 9:58
  So in my family there are four kids including me, so I have
• 10:05
  three siblings and and myself parents lived in Northern
• 10:10
  California. Out of the four of us, my sister
• 10:14
  lived close to them full time. She had a full time job and
• 10:18
  teenage daughters and it was at A at a time when our parents
• 10:23
  were dealing with medical conditions and stopped driving
• 10:26
  and they needed to get to medical appointments, the
• 10:29
  grocery store, hair salon, you name it, just a normal life.
• 10:34
  So we've tried and helped them try everything that you can
• 10:38
  think of from Taxi's, Uber when Uber was still new Lyft
• 10:44
  volunteers, but nothing worked nothing.
• 10:47
  They for an older person in their 80s trying to deal with
• 10:52
  technology, it's, it wasn't as easy.
• 10:55
  How do you upgrade the software and how do you do this and do
• 10:58
  location and you know, things like this.
• 11:02
  So we've seen over a number of years how much they've struggled
• 11:07
  to the point where they were giving up on.
• 11:10
  I don't want to go to the doctor.
• 11:11
  I, I just don't want to do anything.
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  And there they're individuals or in my case, our parents, they've
• 11:21
  been driving for 60 plus years, doing the things that they
• 11:25
  wanted to do on their own and now they can't do it and they
• 11:29
  have to rely on others. And unfortunately the services,
• 11:33
  the transportation services, they're not designed with older
• 11:37
  people in mind. They're designed to take you
• 11:39
  from here to there and done, not to help you every step of the
• 11:43
  way, not to walk up to your door or go inside the grocery store
• 11:48
  with you. So we've seen him struggle for a
• 11:52
  few years until we have this aha moment that this problem is
• 11:55
  bigger than than my family and I, we.
• 11:58
  Weren't the only ones in the world having this issue?
• 12:00
  No, there's millions and millions of people like my own
• 12:04
  parents, and we decided to take the plunge and do something
• 12:07
  about it, solve this problem. And here we are 10 years later
• 12:11
  and so. How did you first get started,
• 12:14
  considering that your background really wasn't in transportation?
• 12:18
  It it it wasn't the the how. How did we start?
• 12:24
  My Co founder and I met at Intel and we were friends and he was
• 12:28
  dealing with the same exact challenge.
• 12:31
  Andy lived in the Phoenix area, he has one sister that lived in
• 12:37
  New York, another sister that lived in Israel, and he and his
• 12:42
  parents lived in Baltimore and he was dealing with the same
• 12:45
  challenges. And, and we've always talked to
• 12:47
  each other after we left Intel. And so we both had this aha
• 12:52
  moment at the same time. Like we've tried everything.
• 12:56
  If we're people with our background and, and, and can't
• 13:01
  find a solution, there has to be a way to solve this problem.
• 13:05
  So that's how we got into it. We didn't know what to do.
• 13:09
  We didn't know the difference between a senior living
• 13:12
  community or a facility. I I remember the first time went
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  to meet with the lady. Her name is Karen Barno, the
• 13:19
  president of the Arizona Senior Living Association.
• 13:25
  And I said, how many, how many facilities do you have?
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  And she looked at me and smiled and said, we don't call them
• 13:30
  facilities. Facilities is like a jail or, or
• 13:34
  we call them communities because it's a community.
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  This is where older people, older adults live like.
• 13:41
  And then she added, you don't come from this industry.
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  It's like, no, I don't. She said.
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  You better learn more about it then.
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  So I started learning and talking to anybody who's willing
• 13:51
  to talk to me, read books, and just just just learn and
• 13:56
  continue to learn to figure out how we solve this problem.
• 14:01
  And so how did you get your very first client?
• 14:05
  How did I get our first client? We wrote a press release.
• 14:11
  There was no ChatGPT 10 years ago or things like this.
• 14:15
  Just wrote a press release and send it to every newspaper,
• 14:21
  small and large TV stations in the Phoenix area.
• 14:26
  Before that we went and knocked on call on doors as as you
• 14:31
  probably know and your listeners know, Phoenix, same with
• 14:35
  Florida. There's a lot of older adults
• 14:38
  that live here. So every morning I, I would have
• 14:43
  a list of 50 addresses in Sun City, AZ or Peoria and just go
• 14:49
  knock on doors and try to give Flyers that we created.
• 14:53
  Go to senior senior citizen centers to try to talk to older
• 14:59
  adults, go to to Denny's and put Flyers on windows because we
• 15:04
  thought, OK, older adults go to Denny's at 4:00.
• 15:10
  Nothing worked until a one of the newspapers we were lucky to
• 15:15
  destroy on us. They called it Uber for seniors.
• 15:20
  And to our surprise, we started getting calls from senior living
• 15:23
  communities and healthcare organizations saying, can you
• 15:26
  help us? Like help you do what?
• 15:28
  I mean, all of our focus has been on you.
• 15:31
  Were going you were trying to go and direct to the end user.
• 15:33
  Business to consumer. Because.
• 15:36
  That's the problem we were trying to solve for our own
• 15:39
  family. So and that's when we realized
• 15:44
  that instead of going to try to get consumers who are trained
• 15:50
  not to talk to strangers or open the door.
• 15:54
  And Anthony, I had dogs chasing me here, here in June, July in
• 16:00
  Phoenix and I'm dressed like this going and knocking on doors
• 16:04
  and people slamming doors in my face is like, I'm not, I'm going
• 16:08
  to keep doing it. And it didn't work.
• 16:10
  What worked is the newspaper Arizona Republic doing a story
• 16:14
  on us. And we started getting calls to
• 16:18
  our surprise from senior living communities, healthcare
• 16:21
  organizations, faith-based organizations saying can you
• 16:24
  help us? I'm like sure we can help you
• 16:27
  not knowing if we can or not, but we did.
• 16:30
  And so clearly, I mean, looking back now, it makes a lot of
• 16:33
  sense, right? Especially when you can sign up
• 16:36
  like a senior care facility that can provide you with a lot more
• 16:39
  business than you know, one person in, in a house, you know,
• 16:43
  on the street in Phoenix could do.
• 16:45
  But clearly they there there are other services that the hospital
• 16:49
  was working with to provide transportation.
• 16:53
  What was the problem that they were really trying to resolve
• 16:56
  when they called you? They saw this story in the
• 16:58
  paper. They're like, oh, maybe this guy
• 17:00
  can fix. What So the first call from a
• 17:05
  healthcare organization came from the American Cancer
• 17:08
  Society. They, they have a program, it's
• 17:11
  called Road to Recovery. Any cancer patient can call them
• 17:15
  and they would provide transportation to and from
• 17:18
  cancer treatment, medical appointments.
• 17:21
  They rely on volunteers to do this.
• 17:24
  And about 2530% of the patients that they can't find volunteers
• 17:30
  because maybe it's 6:00 in the morning or the travel, you know,
• 17:35
  you're, you're, you're talking 2030 miles.
• 17:37
  Volunteers are not going to do things like this.
• 17:40
  So they read about us and said, can you help us?
• 17:43
  And like, sure, we can help you. And that's how we started
• 17:48
  serving them. It was a pilot for one month.
• 17:51
  And after three days, they called and said, we're going to
• 17:55
  we're going to go from being a pilot into Nope, we want to do
• 17:58
  this. After three days.
• 17:59
  After three days, because their patients were so happy and, and
• 18:04
  they're part of the reason why they were happy.
• 18:07
  Things I described earlier, call the night before to put them at
• 18:10
  ease that we're going to pick them up.
• 18:13
  When we went to their house, we were on time and we walked to
• 18:18
  the door versus them standing at the curb waiting for us like
• 18:22
  what other companies do. When we got to the hospital, we
• 18:26
  would walk them inside the hospital and depending on the
• 18:30
  medical appointment, if this was radiation, 1520 minutes, we
• 18:34
  would stay with them. So the minute they're done, the
• 18:37
  minute we can take them home or if they need to go from this
• 18:41
  appointment to go to the lab or do another thing, pharmacy, we
• 18:47
  would take them. And if you compare this to how
• 18:50
  the industry works, no, they, they don't do any of this.
• 18:55
  They don't call the night before, they don't walk you
• 18:59
  inside the building. They don't help you when you're
• 19:01
  done, specially if you you're doing cancer treatment and
• 19:04
  you're tired and, and so you have to call them when you're
• 19:08
  done and wait. Sometimes it might be an hour,
• 19:11
  sometimes it could be two hours before they come back and you're
• 19:15
  sitting after radiation. So that's how it started going
• 19:21
  from being a pilot with the American Cancer Society into
• 19:25
  into into. Guys were just providing a much
• 19:28
  higher level of service than anybody that was out there.
• 19:31
  We we continue to do that. The two other things happened
• 19:35
  related to healthcare. One of the nurses at Mayo in
• 19:40
  Phoenix was talking to the patient and said that's so nice
• 19:44
  that your daughter can bring you every day and stay with you.
• 19:48
  And radiation normally is five days a week, six weeks.
• 19:52
  She said it's not my daughter, this is my envoy.
• 19:55
  It's like, who? What's Envoy?
• 19:57
  So they started doing research on us.
• 20:00
  We didn't have any website or anything.
• 20:02
  They called and said can you talk to us?
• 20:05
  So I showed up and said we think you can help us to help you with
• 20:09
  what readmission rate? What is readmission rate and
• 20:14
  just they didn't pretend I know what readmission rate is.
• 20:18
  They explained that when a patient.
• 20:22
  Is readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.
• 20:25
  That has a negative impact on not just the patient, but the
• 20:29
  hospital. And because of our model walking
• 20:32
  the patient and treating them, just just providing higher level
• 20:37
  of care, Mayo thought that would help Mayo deliver better care to
• 20:44
  the to to the patients. So they started using US, and
• 20:48
  this was nine years ago, and they continued to use us.
• 20:51
  And you're probably more consistency too, right?
• 20:53
  If they're having trouble getting transportation, maybe
• 20:56
  they miss an appointment here or there.
• 20:57
  And that's not good that that probably lends to that
• 21:00
  readmission when you guys are there every day on time helping
• 21:04
  them get to and from that, that probably plays a big part too.
• 21:07
  And. Some examples with patients that
• 21:12
  were going through treatment, you know, where if the driver is
• 21:15
  wearing perfume aftershave, that can have an impact on the
• 21:19
  patients because of their immunity.
• 21:22
  They're, they're they. So having the ability to call us
• 21:27
  and communicate these things to us and, and us answering the
• 21:30
  phone and accommodating the request, that went the long,
• 21:34
  long way to help deliver care to that patient.
• 21:37
  So we did a, we did a great job for the American Cancer Society.
• 21:41
  They said you've done a good job here in Phoenix.
• 21:43
  Can you go to Tucson? I was like, sure, we'll go to
• 21:47
  Tucson. We were just in Phoenix.
• 21:49
  So we went to Tucson. We did a great job for them or
• 21:52
  our team did a great job for them and said you've done a good
• 21:55
  job consistent in Phoenix, Tucson, can you go to Seattle,
• 21:59
  went to Seattle and then they said, can you go to Georgia?
• 22:04
  Can you go to to Houston? And and that's how we started
• 22:07
  expanding. It was just doing a good job
• 22:10
  serving the the clients. That probably cut down quite a
• 22:14
  bit on the sales and marketing that you had to do.
• 22:17
  So you'll be surprised to hear that we don't, do not have and
• 22:22
  haven't had any sales people working for the company.
• 22:25
  It's been primarily word of mouth.
• 22:28
  I, I mentioned we've done press releases, that's marketing.
• 22:32
  We, so we, we, we've done a lot of this.
• 22:36
  It worked for us in Phoenix and we thought if it worked in
• 22:40
  Phoenix, it's going to work somewhere else.
• 22:42
  So whenever we have a good story, we talk about it and do a
• 22:48
  press release that we would write and do a white paper and,
• 22:53
  and, and basically say, don't take my word for it that that we
• 22:57
  do a good job. Here's what the folks at the
• 23:00
  American Cancer Society said, or here's the folks at this senior
• 23:03
  living community. Let them share their experiences
• 23:07
  with us. So how many locations are you in
• 23:13
  Called geographic market? City states however you want to
• 23:15
  define it. We, we've been blessed to grow
• 23:18
  to 30 states, roughly 300 cities, large and small, rural
• 23:25
  and metro areas. And it's all been word of mouth
• 23:30
  the the partners that we work with and most of our business is
• 23:34
  through corporate relationships like the American Cancer Society
• 23:37
  or different senior living communities that say similar to
• 23:42
  American Cancer Society. You've done a good job here.
• 23:44
  Can you go there? And that's so we're roughly 300
• 23:48
  cities. So is there any of your business
• 23:53
  that looks like what you thought it would be originally where
• 23:56
  it's relationships directly with, you know, a senior citizen
• 24:00
  who needs that transportation? Or is it all the relationships
• 24:03
  with a hospital, skilled nursing facility, senior care community?
• 24:07
  So I would say more than 95% is business to business.
• 24:13
  However, when we work for a senior living community and
• 24:17
  we're serving the the community and the residents that live
• 24:21
  there, they get to know us and they would start calling us to
• 24:26
  maybe take him to visit their family for their grandkids
• 24:31
  graduation or wedding or Thanksgiving dinner.
• 24:35
  So there, there is the business to consumer relationship, but
• 24:39
  it's a small percentage and always comes through a
• 24:43
  relationship that we have with either hospital or senior living
• 24:47
  community or faith-based organization.
• 24:50
  This is really cool. I want to get to the even cooler
• 24:52
  part in my mind as a tech guy. Talk about how you guys really
• 24:57
  use technology as a lever for efficiency and improved service.
• 25:06
  The way I'll, I'll, I'll answer this by giving you an example
• 25:10
  that the way the industry works is especially for working with
• 25:15
  the hospital. They, their social workers,
• 25:18
  they, their staff would call and say, Misses Smith needs to come
• 25:23
  for her appointment. Here's where she lives, her home
• 25:27
  address. Here's the hospital's address.
• 25:29
  Appointment is at 10:00. And when she's done, she'll call
• 25:34
  you. So you can, you can, you can
• 25:36
  take her home. What we've done at the
• 25:41
  beginning, we were just trying to figure out, OK, what, what
• 25:45
  time do we need to pick her up? Do we keep the driver?
• 25:47
  We, we don't keep the driver with her till we like you can,
• 25:53
  you can use technology to solve this.
• 25:55
  You can, you can put the addresses here and with with
• 25:59
  Google Maps or any map pop software, you can, you can say
• 26:03
  if, if she needs to be there at 10:00 on Tuesday, what time do I
• 26:07
  need to pick her up from from her home.
• 26:09
  So we automated this process. We automated how long do we is
• 26:15
  the appointment. So we, we leverage AI to figure
• 26:19
  out based on the addresses, what type of appointment is this?
• 26:24
  It searches, Is this a radiation clinic or is this a kidney
• 26:31
  dialysis center where normally it's 4 1/2 to five hours.
• 26:36
  It it searches our database, we have millions of data points now
• 26:42
  to say, OK, did we serve this lady before?
• 26:46
  And if we did, how long did it take?
• 26:48
  It looks at the the history. Does she use a mobility device
• 26:55
  like a Walker or transfer wheelchair?
• 26:58
  And if, if it does, it adds more time to to, to when do we pick
• 27:04
  her up? It looks at where do we park?
• 27:08
  One example that I like to use is is in in Chicago, 6 Michigan
• 27:14
  Ave. We had a client.
• 27:16
  There's no parking on 6 Michigan Ave.
• 27:19
  So what do you do and how do you figure out where do you park and
• 27:22
  where do you park? And so your software is feeding
• 27:25
  this information. It's already sort of doing that
• 27:27
  research. And it's like, oh, there's a
• 27:29
  parking deck, you know, half a block down the street kind of a
• 27:32
  thing. That's where you should go.
• 27:33
  Right. And, and, and then when you get
• 27:36
  to the hospital, where do you park?
• 27:38
  So you give yourself enough time to get the patient, if this is a
• 27:43
  medical appointment to their destination on time.
• 27:47
  You said a few minutes ago, people miss appointment.
• 27:50
  People are late to their appointments.
• 27:52
  If they're late, it's not like the doctor is just going to wait
• 27:55
  and for them to till they show up.
• 27:58
  They, they, it's, they everything needs to be organized
• 28:03
  and it needs to be done on time. But when you take them home too,
• 28:09
  you, the last thing an older adult or a patient wants to do
• 28:13
  is call somebody and wait and wait and wait.
• 28:18
  These are older people that are dealing with some of them
• 28:21
  medical, serious medical conditions and, and you, you got
• 28:26
  to take care of them. And the so Anthony, it has a lot
• 28:30
  of impact, not just on the patients and the older adults,
• 28:34
  but the businesses. So picture this is a 5:00
• 28:39
  appoint or the, the appointment, it's supposed to end at 5:00.
• 28:44
  If you don't show up on time, what is that patient going to
• 28:48
  do? Wait outside when it's 100° in
• 28:51
  Phoenix or, or -20 in Chicago or, or, or somewhere in, in, in
• 28:58
  the Midwest in Minnesota? So it's, it's all these small
• 29:02
  things that we've solved through technology to, to be able to
• 29:06
  deliver great service to not just the patients, but the
• 29:12
  businesses that serve these patients.
• 29:14
  You know, a hospital, it's like any other business.
• 29:18
  They care about getting patients in and continuing to get
• 29:23
  patients. They get reimbursed some of the,
• 29:27
  the, the, the cost based on the patient satisfaction rating.
• 29:32
  We impact this, the cost to to them if they have to pay
• 29:37
  overtime to their staff to wait for the patient for somebody to
• 29:41
  come in and take care of them. So there there's, there's a lot
• 29:45
  of small things and, and what I've described, technology is
• 29:49
  just a small element in it. We integrate with our clients.
• 29:55
  So when they're ready to make reservations and they all use
• 30:00
  technology, the hospitals, we integrate with them so they,
• 30:04
  they, they, they don't need to call or e-mail and some people
• 30:07
  still fax. We don't have a fax machine, but
• 30:11
  I mean it's it's. It's, it's, we're talking about
• 30:13
  a couple different things here, which is really interesting.
• 30:15
  We're talking about, you know, I, I know that one of your core
• 30:18
  values is this idea of compassionate transportation,
• 30:21
  right? So, yeah, we don't want to leave
• 30:23
  the, the person waiting out, you know, in 100° heat in, in
• 30:26
  Phoenix. We don't want somebody sitting
• 30:29
  around and, you know -20 in Chicago.
• 30:31
  But there's also, you know, sort of the, the business, the cost
• 30:35
  savings aspect for your core client, you know, the, the
• 30:39
  hospital, the senior living communities, There's, there's a
• 30:42
  lot of things that you guys are doing, it sounds like to help
• 30:45
  them to reduce costs to I, I mean, is, is there an element
• 30:50
  here where like, you know, you're helping to move people
• 30:53
  along more quickly so that frees up more space in the hospital
• 30:57
  bed? Is is that a thing?
• 30:59
  Absolutely. And you, you bring up a, a great
• 31:01
  point it, it, and if I take a step back, not coming from the
• 31:08
  transportation industry was, was a benefit to me and, and our
• 31:13
  team because it's like, why are you doing things this way?
• 31:17
  Like there has to be a different way of doing things.
• 31:21
  So if if you look at any hospital, they normally
• 31:26
  discharge patients around ten, 10:00 or so when the doctor
• 31:31
  comes in and they do their rounds and they determine yet
• 31:34
  this patient is ready to be discharged.
• 31:37
  And if this patient needs to go to a rehab center because
• 31:42
  they've had knee replacement or hip replacement or they're
• 31:45
  recovering from, from a heart attack, they, they need a
• 31:50
  specialty vehicle to take them, a wheelchair accessible vehicle
• 31:54
  to take them wherever they need to go.
• 31:57
  Now, no one has these wheelchair accessible vehicles just sitting
• 32:01
  around. I mean, we're talking about 7060
• 32:04
  to $80,000 vehicle. Any business that that own, owns
• 32:09
  and operates these vehicles, they want them moving.
• 32:13
  Otherwise, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're not
• 32:16
  making money. So when the hospital makes the
• 32:20
  decision to discharge a patient and they know where that patient
• 32:23
  is going, they start making phone calls to different
• 32:26
  transportation companies to say, can you send a vehicle to take?
• 32:31
  So and so to that, that the skilled nursing facility or the
• 32:36
  transitional care unit. And most companies that are in
• 32:41
  this space, they're small operators, the, you know, they
• 32:45
  have few vehicles, a handful of vehicles.
• 32:48
  So normally it's, it's a family member that's answering the
• 32:52
  phone and at the same time he's driving.
• 32:56
  So the, the response is, Yep, we, we can do this.
• 32:59
  We'll get to you whenever we, we can.
• 33:02
  And now the patient is still still sitting in the bed.
• 33:06
  The nursing staff are still dealing with the patient.
• 33:09
  They're not making money because insurance pays based on the
• 33:13
  number, based on whatever code that procedure is.
• 33:16
  And if, if, if, if you've met the number of days to to get
• 33:21
  reimbursed and you're not leaving, you're not making money
• 33:26
  and you can't admit somebody new into into the hospital.
• 33:30
  So it's costing you money. It's causing friction into your
• 33:35
  entire system because now you're nursing staff and discharge
• 33:38
  nurses and social workers are chasing after transportation
• 33:42
  companies to figure out when is somebody coming in to take, take
• 33:47
  that patient to their next place.
• 33:52
  And that, that that system is so broken.
• 33:56
  They, they, they refer to it as the patient throughput.
• 33:59
  It's discharge. So you can admit a new patient.
• 34:04
  And that system is so broken now for us just looking at it and
• 34:09
  it's like, why are you doing it this way?
• 34:11
  There has to be a. Completely fresh perspective to
• 34:14
  bring, yeah. So we came up with a solution
• 34:17
  which is easy to implement, but it's also hard to implement,
• 34:23
  which is allocate a vehicle to the hospital and vehicle and a
• 34:28
  driver, obviously. And the minute they make the
• 34:30
  decision to, to discharge a patient, they, the, the, the
• 34:36
  hospital staff can either communicate with us
• 34:39
  electronically or the driver is sitting on, on site.
• 34:45
  The driver will go get the, the the patient and take him
• 34:48
  wherever they need to go. So instead of waiting hours,
• 34:51
  it's done in minutes. And it's, you know, just the
• 34:56
  return on investment is beyond. I was going to say, I bet these
• 35:01
  hospitals love you guys. The ones that give us the time
• 35:04
  of the day to listen to how we solve this problem, they, their
• 35:09
  response is, where have you been and, and why can we do this?
• 35:16
  Because we're fortunate now to be large enough to have a client
• 35:20
  care team, a dispatch team. We've invested in technology to
• 35:24
  be able to respond to our partners real quick.
• 35:29
  We have the resources to put vehicles at hospitals versus
• 35:35
  versus. I'll respond to it whenever I
• 35:38
  can. The incentives for a
• 35:42
  transportation company that there's no disadvantage for a
• 35:46
  transportation company to if they show up on time or they
• 35:50
  show up 3-4 hours, there's no penalties.
• 35:54
  They're still making money and they're making a ton of money.
• 35:58
  Verse versus if you look at it from the hospital standpoint,
• 36:01
  it's costing them money and they're not making money for us.
• 36:06
  They subscribe to our service. We allocate a vehicle and it's
• 36:12
  it's smooth, so. Depending on the size of the
• 36:15
  hospital that you're working with, there's a minimum of 1
• 36:18
  vehicle dedicated to them. Perhaps there's more depending
• 36:21
  on, you know, if they've got more patients that they're
• 36:23
  moving. So it's not like a, they just
• 36:25
  call you like when they need you kind of a thing so that you can
• 36:29
  really help with that patient throughput and, you know, be
• 36:32
  there to deliver the best service to their clientele, to
• 36:35
  their patients. You have to have somebody and
• 36:38
  their vehicle dedicated on site. Absolutely, absolutely.
• 36:42
  We're, we, we are in a position and have been doing this for a
• 36:46
  long time, allocate a vehicle and a driver and this vehicle
• 36:50
  can serve somebody that's in a wheelchair, somebody that is in
• 36:55
  a stretcher or somebody who's ambulatory.
• 36:58
  And the model is very, very simple.
• 37:03
  Sometimes when I describe it, I say we're like Southwest before
• 37:06
  Southwest changed how they do things.
• 37:10
  We don't charge more if somebody is in using an oxygen tank or if
• 37:16
  somebody has their suitcases and they're, they, you know, they,
• 37:22
  they, they need help, they or somebody's bariatric.
• 37:26
  We, we don't charge more where other companies, they start
• 37:30
  adding up. Before you know it, you're
• 37:32
  paying two to three as, as a hospital or or a patient just or
• 37:37
  insurance company for this. We it's transparent 1 price and
• 37:44
  we'll serve you and we'll serve you faster than anybody else and
• 37:47
  better than anybody else. What's it look like for Envoy
• 37:51
  when you go into a new geographical location?
• 37:55
  So I have to imagine that you need some sort of minimum
• 38:00
  capacity in order for it to make economic sense for you.
• 38:05
  So every expansion that we've had, we, we went in with an
• 38:09
  existing client or a client that says I would, we're going to do
• 38:14
  business together. So we have the time to hire and
• 38:19
  train and, and, and launch the geography.
• 38:22
  We know how many vehicles we need, how many drivers, the type
• 38:25
  of vehicles that we need. If it's ambulatory versus
• 38:30
  wheelchair accessible vehicle and we plan it, then we, we, we
• 38:34
  launch, when we launch into a new geography, we, we always
• 38:38
  bring experienced drivers to, from different areas to go into
• 38:43
  that geography because we want to head it out of the park on
• 38:46
  day one. The last thing we want to do is
• 38:49
  fail somebody, because if we fail somebody recovering from
• 38:53
  that, then. You got to put your best foot
• 38:55
  forward, so you're bringing in experienced drivers from a
• 38:58
  different area so they can show that, show the client, hey, this
• 39:01
  is how we do things and I'm guessing they're probably
• 39:04
  helping to train some of those first drivers that are local to
• 39:08
  that area. They they absolutely they play 2
• 39:11
  roles, 1 is interviewing and training the new team members
• 39:17
  and the other one obviously is to deliver the service.
• 39:21
  Yeah, it's, it's the technology inside the vehicle from as
• 39:26
  simple as the type of wheelchair that we use.
• 39:29
  It's called Broda chair. That Broda chair, the investment
• 39:33
  we make in Everett chair is about 7 to $8000.
• 39:37
  But that chair can be managed by one person versus 2, it can be
• 39:42
  used as a wheelchair. It can lay flat, it can incline
• 39:46
  decline. It's easy to maneuver.
• 39:48
  We have inside the vehicle, we have a winch.
• 39:52
  So when just picture a boat on on a trailer and you're pulling
• 39:58
  the boat, you don't want to be pushing the boat.
• 40:00
  You you want you want it done using a winch and we have
• 40:03
  winches inside the vehicle. So when somebody is is is
• 40:09
  bariatric, you don't want the driver to be pushing 300 three
• 40:13
  £150 chair and. And patient so this way we
• 40:19
  medicate the risk injuries workers comp and your this is
• 40:24
  your business. So we we control our cost and we
• 40:27
  can pass on the savings to our clients by doing things
• 40:31
  differently. You know the vehicles are
• 40:34
  equipped with dash cams, telematics, it's all technology
• 40:39
  that ties You mean by. Telematics, Casey use an
• 40:42
  example. Yeah, we similar to like Uber
• 40:45
  and Lyft. When you order an Uber, you know
• 40:47
  where the car is, when the car is moving, how far the car is.
• 40:52
  But also one step further is somebody on the phone using
• 40:57
  their phone and driving. We get notifications when that
• 41:00
  happens. Are they taking hard turns?
• 41:04
  Heartbreaking acceleration, all these things are, are monitored
• 41:10
  telematics. We, we, we between what we've
• 41:13
  developed and using companies like Azulga on the dash cams, we
• 41:19
  monitor what our drivers are doing and this way we mitigate
• 41:24
  the risk for, for, for our clients if somebody is driving
• 41:31
  safely and, and we, we get a safety score on every driver
• 41:36
  after every trip. We praise them, we recognize
• 41:40
  them. We thank them for for doing a
• 41:42
  great job and the ones that need coaching, we coach them up and
• 41:47
  coach was. Going to say this sounds like
• 41:48
  there's probably some people who push back a little bit.
• 41:51
  Oh, Big Brother, you know, but but I mean, you guys, when you
• 41:54
  get right down to the root level of it, you're really just
• 41:56
  interested in improving the level of customer care.
• 41:59
  And so if you find an opportunity to coach somebody
• 42:03
  up, say, hey, you did this, this here's a better way to do it.
• 42:07
  It just benefits everybody. Absolutely.
• 42:10
  One of the services we offer for our clients and this is more on
• 42:14
  the senior living is we, we offer full management.
• 42:17
  So some senior, a lot of senior living communities, they have
• 42:23
  their own fleet and they have their own drivers, employees of
• 42:27
  the company, but they don't have the experience, the expertise to
• 42:32
  manage an in house fleet. So one of the services that we
• 42:36
  offer as we bring the technology, the know how to, to
• 42:41
  help you manage your fleet, everything from compliance to
• 42:45
  maintenance to the things that I've described.
• 42:49
  Are they speeding? Are they, you know, doing a good
• 42:53
  job? Just last Friday, one of our
• 42:56
  drivers that, that the client that we the senior living
• 43:01
  community that we're serving, we got notified that he was going
• 43:05
  45 mph in a 25 mile zone. There's a resident sitting in
• 43:10
  the front and the driver was not wearing a seat belt.
• 43:14
  Now this happens every now and then, but God forbid there's an
• 43:19
  accident, who's going to get in trouble?
• 43:22
  One, you're going to injure the, that the person, the old,
• 43:25
  there's a chance you're going to injure the older adult, the
• 43:28
  resident. And then people these days are
• 43:32
  happy suing each other. So if the driver caused the
• 43:35
  accident, somebody's going to get sued.
• 43:38
  And, and we, we mitigate this, we reduce the chances of doing
• 43:43
  things that can cause harm to everybody, including our
• 43:47
  business partner. Casey, I'd like to shift gears
• 43:51
  and talk about a serious challenge that you've overcome
• 43:54
  in your life. Whether it's something personal
• 43:56
  or professional. How did you get through it and
• 43:58
  what did you learn? Where do I How much time do we
• 44:02
  have there? There's a lot of things that,
• 44:08
  you know, mistakes that I've made and learned from these
• 44:11
  mistakes. One of them is yeah, we, we, we
• 44:17
  grew with one of our corporate clients and we've been serving
• 44:22
  them since 2017 and continue to grow with them and grow and
• 44:28
  expand to many States and everybody from the board members
• 44:34
  and people that, that, that my mentors like you, you have most
• 44:40
  of your eggs in one basket. You, you need to find new
• 44:43
  clients like we're growing and look at all the growth.
• 44:47
  Unfortunately, that corporate client was acquired.
• 44:51
  The company that acquired them did not see the same value in
• 44:57
  what we brought to them as the company that that we were doing
• 45:02
  business with. And it got to a point where
• 45:05
  they're they were putting pressure on us to reduce prices
• 45:09
  and change how we do things. And it was a race to the bottom.
• 45:13
  And we've decided to walk away from that business.
• 45:17
  And this this happened in January this year.
• 45:21
  It was not an easy decision to walk away from one of our
• 45:26
  largest clients and, and, and having to reduce, basically
• 45:32
  eliminate 10s of jobs, if not hundreds of jobs and, and having
• 45:38
  to, to, to impact people's livelihood.
• 45:43
  But this was a big mistake, a challenge that that that we, I
• 45:48
  had to deal with. It was my mistake for not
• 45:52
  listening and not not taking the advice that our board was was
• 45:58
  giving me. And it it, it was a bad, it was
• 46:03
  a lesson that's. Brutal.
• 46:05
  And I, if I'm sort of connecting the dots here, you're saying,
• 46:08
  you know, long time client that you've been growing with, they
• 46:10
  got acquired. So the people coming in didn't
• 46:13
  have visibility into the what it looked like before you guys had
• 46:18
  come in with this solution, right.
• 46:20
  They probably just looked and saw you as a line item and they
• 46:25
  were like, oh, here's a place where we can reduce costs.
• 46:29
  Not understanding the full value of what it is that you're
• 46:32
  providing. Do you think maybe this is a
• 46:35
  question you don't even want to entertain?
• 46:36
  But do you think that after a period of time, you know, after
• 46:40
  you're gone that they're going to realize sort of what they're
• 46:43
  missing and come back or you just kind of like we, we have
• 46:47
  moved on to other things now? I, I don't know, I, I, I, I
• 46:52
  don't know if we'll ever do business together, if they will
• 46:56
  ever come back to us, but this was a blessing in disguise for
• 47:02
  us. OK, let's hear.
• 47:05
  It was a blessing in disguise because it made us.
• 47:08
  It was a wake up call that when, when we started this company,
• 47:13
  we, we were focused on bringing tremendous value and we continue
• 47:17
  to provide tremendous value to, to our clients and the, the, the
• 47:23
  people that are part of our corporate clients.
• 47:28
  But with all the growth, we, we, we, we, we forgot about some of
• 47:34
  these things. We, we, we've always done a good
• 47:37
  job for our clients, but it was more now let's grow, grow, grow.
• 47:42
  It was growth versus why are we growing and how can, how can we
• 47:47
  continue to, to, to do the things that we wanted to do?
• 47:52
  It was a blessing in disguise. It made us realize we need to go
• 47:57
  back to the hospitals. We need to be a little bit more
• 48:01
  proactive and reaching out to them.
• 48:04
  We, we need to just just go back to our roots and, and, and focus
• 48:11
  on what made us great in the past and, and continue to, to,
• 48:16
  to keep that in the back of our mind as, as, as we rebuild the
• 48:20
  company. And so that was earlier this
• 48:23
  year recording this in June of 25, you migrated away from this
• 48:28
  client in January. This year, January 8th to be
• 48:32
  exact, Yeah, of. Course, you're going to remember
• 48:34
  that day for a long time. Days of my life.
• 48:38
  How are things going since then? Obviously there's incredible
• 48:42
  pain. You've got to pull off a lot of,
• 48:45
  you know, really difficult band aids right away in terms of
• 48:48
  letting people go, kind of right sizing the ship, changing
• 48:51
  directions. Now you're sort of six months
• 48:54
  into this kind of paint a picture for us today.
• 48:57
  We, we, we again. I go back to, we've been blessed
• 49:02
  the we, we've signed new clients in the healthcare, healthcare
• 49:10
  hospital system, skilled nursing facilities, senior living
• 49:14
  communities that the if we look at some of the key performance
• 49:20
  indicators, the average revenue per trip is 3X what it was prior
• 49:25
  to January 8th. Whoa.
• 49:28
  Gross margin is about 15 points higher.
• 49:34
  It it took about 6 to 8 weeks to, to, to figure out, OK, what,
• 49:41
  what do we do? What, what, what, what, what do
• 49:44
  we need to do? And how do we leverage the
• 49:49
  relationships that we've had and go deeper with the, the, the
• 49:55
  existing clients that know us and trust us to, to expand, go a
• 50:00
  little bit wider with them and deeper.
• 50:03
  So we, we, we've signed up a lot of new clients.
• 50:08
  There's going to be, or, or we've made some announcements
• 50:11
  last week and about two new relationships that we, we, we
• 50:16
  have, we, we'll make more this, this week.
• 50:21
  These are large organizations that have problems that we can
• 50:26
  solve the the patient throughput problem when if it's a skill, if
• 50:31
  it's a hospital. We didn't talk about senior
• 50:34
  living communities, but with senior living communities, they
• 50:38
  we solve a major problem for them which is reduce their
• 50:42
  capital and operating expenses, eliminate the capital
• 50:45
  expenditure which every community they have.
• 50:49
  Meaning that they don't need to have their own transportation
• 50:51
  vehicle anymore. Right.
• 50:52
  So when they every vehicle they buy a bus, it costs between
• 50:57
  100,000 to 140,000. They don't need to do this with
• 51:02
  if, if they work with us, they don't need to spend money to
• 51:07
  operate the vehicles from gas, insurance, maintenance,
• 51:11
  registration. They don't need to worry about
• 51:14
  hiring staff and train them and background screen them because
• 51:18
  we do all of this. They don't need to worry about
• 51:21
  the insurance, the that the risk if their drivers are not doing
• 51:25
  what they're supposed to be doing.
• 51:27
  So with, with senior living communities, we, we, we bring a
• 51:31
  lot of benefits from the help them deliver better care to the
• 51:35
  residents that live there. Help them differentiate
• 51:39
  themselves, help them reduce their their cost, help mitigate
• 51:43
  their risk and allow them to focus on the things that they're
• 51:48
  good at. Their core competency, which is
• 51:49
  serving residents inside the community versus now you need to
• 51:54
  learn how to manage a fleet. So I want to ask you what is
• 52:00
  meant by mirror and window, because I think this is probably
• 52:04
  highly relevant to this very difficult period that you just
• 52:06
  went through. Yeah, so this is a concept that
• 52:10
  I've learned only 25 years ago from just right.
• 52:18
  Let me take a step back. I do a lot of reading.
• 52:20
  I and I like to read the classic books from The Seven Habits of
• 52:24
  Highly Effective People, Doctor Covey to to belt to last and and
• 52:32
  good to Great Jim Collins and just a lot of other books from
• 52:38
  blood scaling to the hard things about hard things.
• 52:41
  And the, this concept, the mirror and the window is from
• 52:45
  the, I want to say the Seven Habits of Highly Effective
• 52:49
  People where it talks about when things go right, the, IT, it's
• 52:56
  always good to look at the window and give praise to the
• 53:00
  team that is playing a key role in, in making things go right.
• 53:08
  So when, when we sign up a new client or go from a pilot to, to
• 53:14
  a full scale contract, it's not me, it's not, it's, it's the
• 53:18
  team, the drivers that are driving and delivering great
• 53:21
  service. It's the client care team, it's
• 53:23
  the recruiting team, it's the operation team that's keeping an
• 53:27
  eye on everything and making sure everything is going right.
• 53:31
  So we make sure that we look to the window and give praise where
• 53:36
  praise is due when things go wrong.
• 53:39
  I am a lot of times things go wrong from and I gave you one
• 53:44
  example on, on us putting all of our eggs in in or most of our
• 53:49
  eggs in one basket. That's on me.
• 53:51
  I'm the one who made that decision and didn't listen.
• 53:55
  So you look at the mirror and and hold yourself accountable
• 53:59
  for the mistake and but take a step back, learn from that
• 54:05
  mistake and figure out what do we need to do to recover.
• 54:09
  And I think it's a. It's it's an attribute that I
• 54:13
  see in a lot of good leaders, good coaches, right?
• 54:16
  When something goes wrong, Hey, this was me.
• 54:19
  Buck stops here. You know, ultimate
• 54:21
  responsibility is mine. When something goes well, you're
• 54:25
  looking through the window and you know this metaphorical
• 54:28
  window where you see your team members, It was you, it was you,
• 54:31
  it was you. You know, you guys are the ones
• 54:33
  that delivered this great service.
• 54:34
  You're the ones that made this happen.
• 54:35
  Hard to do sometimes, right? Because you're never sort of
• 54:38
  taking credit for the good stuff.
• 54:40
  But man, you're you're letting all the bad stuff kind of fall
• 54:43
  right on your face. I, I don't know if it's hard,
• 54:49
  It's it, when I look at my job, it's not about getting the
• 54:54
  credit, it's about building something and growing something
• 54:58
  and, and, and take care of the, the clients that we take care
• 55:02
  of, but also offer employment opportunities for the team
• 55:08
  that's working for us. Offer them things that they can
• 55:13
  get somewhere else from. You know, we promote from
• 55:16
  within. We, we, we, we, we try to get
• 55:22
  people to learn new skills. So, you know, if you start in
• 55:26
  dispatch and you want to go into client care, absolutely.
• 55:31
  If you start as, as a part time employee when you're in high
• 55:35
  school, junior in high school and you want to learn how to do
• 55:39
  client care and then move into accounting, we'll, we'll work
• 55:44
  with you. We'll teach you.
• 55:45
  We'll invest in you. So it's, yeah, that that's the
• 55:51
  way I look at my job. It's, it's, it's to help develop
• 55:54
  the team. It's to help drive the
• 55:56
  performance of the standards. And, and if I do a good job,
• 56:01
  then that company's going to grow and everybody's going to
• 56:04
  benefit. Yeah, It's, it's, it's not about
• 56:07
  I did this and you did that. It's it's we're all we were all
• 56:11
  together. So you've got this incredible
• 56:14
  attention to detail and focus on customer satisfaction.
• 56:17
  How can you help the patient? You are leveraging technology in
• 56:22
  all kinds of powerful and creative ways.
• 56:24
  And we've just scratched the surface with with our
• 56:27
  conversation here today and the the scale at which you're
• 56:31
  operating. I mean, all these things
• 56:34
  together suggest to me that it's going to be difficult for
• 56:37
  competitors to kind of catch up to you and what you're doing.
• 56:41
  As you look forward several years, where do you see are the
• 56:46
  biggest opportunities and maybe the biggest risks for Envoy
• 56:49
  America? That's a great question.
• 56:54
  What we do is serving clients, listening to to them and serve
• 57:01
  them. Transportation happens to be the
• 57:04
  way we provide the service. Can somebody do this?
• 57:10
  Probably. It's not like this is brain
• 57:12
  surgery where you have to, you know, learn how to operate on
• 57:17
  somebody's brain. But it takes investment.
• 57:20
  If, if, if we've had this discussion nine years ago or 10
• 57:25
  years ago or even five years ago, we, we, we didn't have what
• 57:29
  we have today. So it, it takes continuous
• 57:33
  investment, learning, pivoting as needed.
• 57:38
  Can somebody do this? If, if they take the time and do
• 57:43
  this? Yeah, they can.
• 57:45
  But it it takes effort, it takes investments and just how much
• 57:51
  we've invested, we've invested millions to develop our own
• 57:54
  software. Can somebody go develop it
• 57:57
  tomorrow? Maybe.
• 58:00
  But but you don't buy this off the shelf and say, OK, plug it
• 58:05
  in and let's go. You got to continue to invest.
• 58:10
  Where do I see ourselves, you know, five years from now, two
• 58:14
  years from now, 10 years from now, just continue to do the
• 58:18
  things that we're doing. We continue to provide service
• 58:22
  to clients, both corporate and the individuals that that need
• 58:27
  the service and help them meet their business needs and
• 58:32
  continue to grow with them. Are we going to go public?
• 58:38
  I don't know. Are we going to get acquired?
• 58:41
  We're not building it to get acquired, but if it happens, you
• 58:44
  know, as long as they we continue to deliver service to
• 58:48
  the company, we'll entertain it. We're we're, we're building it
• 58:53
  to serve people and we haven't even scratched the surface.
• 58:57
  Yeah, it, I think there's a common thread throughout your
• 59:00
  story here. It's and you just sort of
• 59:02
  touched on it briefly here for a second.
• 59:04
  It's that you, you followed what the customers have asked, right?
• 59:08
  Like your initial idea was to serve like 1:00 to 1:00 and then
• 59:13
  somebody saw you in the paper and they said, hey, you know,
• 59:16
  we're at a hospital, can you come help us?
• 59:18
  I don't know, I can't, you know, and like each step along the
• 59:21
  way, hey, can you go to this city?
• 59:23
  Can you provide this service? Can you guys help us with this?
• 59:26
  You've just constantly been responding to, to your customers
• 59:31
  request to their needs. And so I think anytime you're
• 59:34
  doing that, that's a pretty solid way to build a business.
• 59:37
  We, we, we've taken risk like, you know, anybody who starts a
• 59:41
  company has to be a risk taker. So for us, we take risk and
• 59:46
  sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't.
• 59:49
  Like for us, we know what we're good at, which is who we hire,
• 59:55
  how we train them, how we retain them as as employees and drivers
• 1:00:00
  and. Delivering service to older
• 1:00:03
  adults, patients, people that have disabilities and do it
• 1:00:07
  better than anybody else, but do it to make money, you know, not,
• 1:00:13
  not not steal money from people as in charge of more, but make
• 1:00:18
  enough money to be able to grow the business.
• 1:00:22
  And continue to provide the great services that you.
• 1:00:24
  Are absolutely, that's what we do.
• 1:00:27
  I mean, you, you hit, you hit the nail on the head.
• 1:00:31
  We, we've listened, most of the growth came from clients saying
• 1:00:37
  can you do this for us? One of our great partners is a
• 1:00:41
  company in, in, in Minnesota called Live Spark.
• 1:00:45
  Live Spark acquired 30 senior living communities.
• 1:00:50
  This was in 2021. And they, they, they said, hey,
• 1:00:55
  we have no idea how to run transportation.
• 1:00:58
  Can you guys take over? Like can we take over?
• 1:01:01
  We don't what if you think we can?
• 1:01:04
  We can. And we started working with them
• 1:01:07
  and, and now we manage all their transportation.
• 1:01:11
  And from there it expanded to so many other type of clients from,
• 1:01:17
  and it's across the country. They, you know, transportation
• 1:01:21
  is a headache for senior living communities.
• 1:01:24
  And I, I mentioned how we help them reduce their cost, deliver
• 1:01:27
  better service, help them increase their senses.
• 1:01:31
  And it all started with live Spark.
• 1:01:33
  Matt Kinney is, is, is is my friend Live Spark.
• 1:01:36
  Like, can you do this? We don't want to do it.
• 1:01:39
  Can you do it? I'm like, if you think we can,
• 1:01:42
  we can. We will.
• 1:01:43
  Figure it out. We and we just.
• 1:01:47
  So Casey, before I ask my last question, I want to first let
• 1:01:50
  people know the best way to get in touch with you directly or or
• 1:01:53
  the company or follow your story.
• 1:01:55
  How would that be? Our website, envoyamerica.com.
• 1:02:00
  I'm on LinkedIn. My e-mail address is
• 1:02:04
  myfirstinitiallastname@envoyamerica.com. I'm not going to give my phone
• 1:02:11
  my cell phone. That's up to you.
• 1:02:14
  I, I think it's best to start with the e-mail on the website.
• 1:02:17
  I think people will be able to get what they need there.
• 1:02:18
  And we'll include links to all of that in the show notes for
• 1:02:21
  folks. But last question I have for
• 1:02:23
  you, Casey. We have a great conversation
• 1:02:26
  here today. I hope you and I stay in touch.
• 1:02:28
  Let's say a year from now, we're sitting down together because
• 1:02:32
  you're celebrating something. What's that thing you're
• 1:02:34
  celebrating a year from now? That's a great question, what
• 1:02:39
  we'll be celebrating in a year from now.
• 1:02:44
  We lost a lot of people in January.
• 1:02:47
  It was not their fault that we had to reduce our headcount.
• 1:02:52
  We'll be celebrating that we recovered that the business that
• 1:02:57
  we walked away from and we brought the team members back
• 1:03:01
  and added more team members celebrate that we continue to
• 1:03:07
  deliver great service to to the type of clients that we serve
• 1:03:12
  from healthcare to senior living communities, faith-based
• 1:03:17
  organizations just just continue to do more of what we're doing
• 1:03:22
  today and continue to bring real benefits value to people that
• 1:03:28
  need it. Yeah, they, we started this
• 1:03:31
  company because we could not find anything for our own family
• 1:03:35
  members and it still doesn't exist.
• 1:03:39
  Transportation for older adults and patients, it's broken.
• 1:03:44
  There are no there, there are few.
• 1:03:48
  There's some companies that do it at a local level, but doing
• 1:03:52
  it at scale and be able to, you know, serve thousands and 10s of
• 1:03:58
  thousands across the country. This doesn't exist.
• 1:04:02
  We play a key part in this. So celebrate that more and more
• 1:04:07
  people know about it and, and, and, and we continue to serve
• 1:04:12
  them. KC Kanan from Envoy America, I
• 1:04:16
  want to be the first to thank you for sharing both your time
• 1:04:19
  and your story with us today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:04:21
  My pleasure. Thank you again, Anthony.
• 1:04:23
  I look forward to staying in touch.
• 1:04:27
  Folks, that's a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories
• 1:04:29
  podcast. Thanks for learning with us
• 1:04:31
  today.