#159 - Chris Crawford | Making Prescription Drug Costs Affordable

[00:00:03] This is the Lets Grab Coffee Podcast and I'm your host, George Khalife.

[00:00:07] Chris Crawford, thanks for finally being on the podcast. I know this is a long time coming.

[00:00:11] I appreciate you being on and kickstarting back the Lets Grab Coffee Podcast.

[00:00:16] Yeah, really looking forward to it. Thanks for having me.

[00:00:19] So for folks who might not know you, you are currently the founder and CEO of RxSafeCard,

[00:00:25] which allows employers to access prescription drug cash and discount card prices, which allows

[00:00:31] both the company and employees to save money. We're going to get into all of this. And as I said before,

[00:00:37] I think what folks would really benefit from hearing is just kind of debunking a lot of the

[00:00:44] complexities in the pharmaceutical space, which as you know, could be a bit tedious and very technical

[00:00:48] unless you actually are in the industry. So I'm excited to get your take on all of this, your

[00:00:54] thought leadership. What I usually do with episodes before we get into the nitty gritty is just get to

[00:00:58] know the person behind the business. And, you know, I think you have a stellar story. So I wanted

[00:01:03] to start with you in terms of how does someone start with an accounting background and find themselves in

[00:01:08] the pharmaceutical space or the healthcare space?

[00:01:12] Yeah, it's a great question. I think accounting, you know, I've got a daughter in college now and

[00:01:18] more kids kind of thinking about it. And it's like that big question, right? Like, what do you study?

[00:01:23] I was first person in my family to go to college. And so just kind of get advice from my counselor.

[00:01:28] And it was like, well, the world needs accountants. So go be an accountant. I'm like, well, that sounds

[00:01:33] good. I like business, I think an accounting degree sounds good. And it was actually, you know, fantastic

[00:01:39] training, just learning about businesses, learning the basics of financial statements, how businesses make

[00:01:45] money, cash flow, and everything else. So it was a great training grant. And just, it's sad in a way

[00:01:52] to go back because I started a company called Arthur Anderson that doesn't even exist, you know, and in

[00:01:56] Chicago, it was the headquarters at the time that was, you know, the place to go work and just the

[00:02:01] network still, people I still keep in contact with from there and just things I've learned from my peers,

[00:02:08] my managers, my partners, it's just like the ultimate training ground to get started. So loved all that.

[00:02:14] I didn't like being an accountant very much. So I think that's sort of what I realized after a

[00:02:18] couple of years, but they want to be more, you know, talk with clients every day, helping solve

[00:02:24] problems versus kind of being in the, in the details of financial statements. So then that's when I

[00:02:29] went into, I was an executive recruiter, placing accountants really corporate America. Yeah. So

[00:02:36] always a good, good experience to be a hundred percent commission, you know, at some point in your

[00:02:41] life. And my parents were like, you're a CPA. Why did you do all this? I'm like, I don't know.

[00:02:46] I got a plan. I got a plan. And so that was just a really good experience of being in sales, right.

[00:02:52] And kind of figuring out how to connect with people, how to solve problems. And that is what led me in

[00:02:58] to ultimately join Mercer. And so Mercer at that point was bringing in salespeople for the first time.

[00:03:05] And so it was a really great experience where I knew very little about benefits or, you know, HR.

[00:03:11] But I was inquisitive and liked to ask questions. And so that was a great training ground. And that's

[00:03:16] where I got my start in the, I'll call it the benefits, HR, and now ultimately, you know,

[00:03:21] pharmaceutical space that's going on. Yeah. 25 years, you know, something like that. So it's,

[00:03:29] it's been a while and it's been a lot of fun and it's interesting to just see how much

[00:03:32] things change, you know, in this industry. And now I think we're at this pace of

[00:03:37] hyper change. So it's an exciting time to be in it.

[00:03:40] Yeah. 25 years going strong, my friend. What, what were some of those early questions you were

[00:03:44] asking at Mercer?

[00:03:46] I think at Mercer, it was such a big company with so many things to do, you know, sort of

[00:03:52] an ultimate training ground, I think for a young person coming in, which it was, you know, just reach

[00:03:56] out to benefits leaders and folks in HR and just ask a lot of questions. And so I think, you know,

[00:04:01] one of the benefits sometimes, and I have to remind myself of this is when you aren't an expert in

[00:04:07] space, you get to ask a lot of questions and you kind of learn pain points and you learn, you know,

[00:04:11] what people are dealing with. And so my job at that point was ask a lot of questions, find out

[00:04:16] what was, you know, something that, you know, as employers needed help with, and then go back to

[00:04:21] Mercer and, you know, there were experts everywhere in every different field and, you know, across the

[00:04:25] United States and across countries where sort of the problem was, I felt like we could find somebody

[00:04:29] to help solve it. And then, so then you bring the person out, then you hear, you know, how we're

[00:04:33] going to help solve that. You work through the projects, you just kind of keep picking up

[00:04:37] a new skill or learning something new really on every project and with every client. And I think

[00:04:42] a key thing there just in consulting in general is just good to know that clients make decisions in

[00:04:48] different ways and what, you know, there's no cookie cutter solution for what an employer is trying to

[00:04:54] do with their workforce, you know, where it kind of sits, how they want to manage financial goals,

[00:05:01] employee attraction retention, just is no one size fits all. And I think that's what was just

[00:05:07] a huge lesson that I still take to this day is how can we be flexible to meet employers where they are.

[00:05:13] David Pérez Was it a steep, because I think there, now that you're saying this,

[00:05:15] I see the connectivity between accounting, consulting, and even the, I mean, any industry

[00:05:21] you're going, I think the accounting background really helps because you're very detail oriented,

[00:05:24] you're trying to connect the dots, you're sort of buried in the minutia, but it was,

[00:05:28] was it difficult for you sort of a steep learning curve to crack into the benefits, the employer

[00:05:34] services space initially? Because I think someone listening to this might be thinking about pivots

[00:05:38] as well. Yeah.

[00:05:39] Whether it's in corporate or corporate to startup or startup to corporate. And I think I always like

[00:05:43] touching a little bit more on the, on the pivot side of, of one's career.

[00:05:47] Yeah. I think the thing that I would just caution people to do is just make sure you're very aware

[00:05:55] of what you know and what you don't know, and just being open, I think with the people that you're

[00:05:59] talking to. So I'd be very open to the employers that I was working with and calling on is I'm just

[00:06:05] here to ask questions and I want to keep asking more and more questions to make sure I truly,

[00:06:09] truly understand. And the more questions I asked them, more I understand. And then I,

[00:06:14] then I can explain it in layman's terms, you know, to our experts when they come back,

[00:06:19] I think the worst thing, and I just always had to watch myself,

[00:06:24] never wanting to give advice if I truly didn't understand it, or if I truly didn't know,

[00:06:28] because I feel like that's the worst mistake you could make is feeling pressured to say something

[00:06:33] if you don't know the right answer. And so I just always tried to remind myself to, to not do that,

[00:06:38] be very open with my knowledge set, what I knew and what I didn't know. And I think that was a good

[00:06:43] way to start it. Now, clearly as you progress in your career and everything else, you pick up more

[00:06:48] information, you become more knowledgeable, you become a student of the game, and then you can,

[00:06:53] you know, share what you know, but anybody getting started, just keep asking questions.

[00:06:58] Because I think there's also a tendency, especially, I would say some consultants,

[00:07:04] you know, who are really smart and have worked at this stuff forever. It's like,

[00:07:07] they're waiting for a chance to tell you what they know, versus totally listening to the end thing that

[00:07:14] the employer really wants to do. And so sometimes people could talk to a potential buyer or customer,

[00:07:21] and they're laying out their problems. But you kind of jump in before they get to the real problem,

[00:07:27] with just with your solution set. So I think just given space, making sure you can ask questions and like,

[00:07:32] truly understand what's really driving it is just the best way to handle that.

[00:07:38] Yeah, that's very interesting. I mean, you spent most of your career, if I'm not mistaken,

[00:07:42] you were always in Chicago. Is that correct?

[00:07:45] A couple years in Denver, in Colorado with Mercer, but otherwise, mostly Chicago. And that was actually

[00:07:52] interesting because there, I don't think I'd ever been to Colorado before I moved out there. So,

[00:07:57] you know, it was like, I didn't know the industry, didn't know anybody there, didn't have a network,

[00:08:03] you know, so that's the ultimate, which is, I'm just here to ask questions and learn,

[00:08:06] you know, as much as I can. So you, you go to Denver a little bit for work, basically,

[00:08:12] you kind of relocate with Mercer to Denver? Yep. Nice. Yeah. Well, that was my first job. So it's

[00:08:17] like, Hey, we're, we're not hiring in Chicago. We're hiring in, in Denver. If you want to,

[00:08:21] you know, if you want to come out here. So I mean, it was a great experience, love the mountains,

[00:08:26] learned to ski, did all that stuff. Now the mountains are kind of in my blood, but yeah,

[00:08:29] it was a really great experience. So all seven years were in Denver? No, two in Denver. And then

[00:08:35] Mercer was really great about moving, you know, be back to Chicago is always kind of like a shorter

[00:08:39] term thing where Chicago was going to be home. So I've been in Chicago since now for the last

[00:08:44] 20 straight years. Yeah. What did you see early on between Denver and Chicago? Curious from a city

[00:08:50] perspective, was one harder or easier to crack into? That's a really great question. You know,

[00:08:57] and I think Denver's probably changed a lot since I've been there. What I found was for Chicago,

[00:09:03] you know, as you've learned, I think being here, you know, it's a pretty connected city. You know,

[00:09:08] it's like, if you go through, I mean, my closest friends to this day are friends of mine from college

[00:09:14] at the University of Illinois, that we have been all living in Chicago for however many years, you know,

[00:09:20] since we graduated. So I think as a new person coming into Chicago without a network, I think it could

[00:09:26] probably be a tough industry to crack where Denver, just so many people were transplants, there were

[00:09:33] very few locals, because it was just a desirable place to live. So a lot of people were moving out

[00:09:37] there. And so for that, I think you had a lot more openness to meeting new people and new people

[00:09:42] coming in. But it was a really, I'll call it a middle market town, you know, then not a ton of

[00:09:49] large employers. And I think it's, it's obviously just blown up and probably a much different market

[00:09:56] now, as far as employers there than when I lived there.

[00:10:02] Very interesting. Yeah, I've, to your point, I've been here for five years now. And

[00:10:07] it's funny to me, like Chicago is very much, I would say similar to Toronto, I actually, I would even give

[00:10:13] it the same analogy to your mid market example, you know, where it's, to me, it feels like a small town,

[00:10:19] even though I know it's a large city, it's the third largest in the US. But it still has that

[00:10:23] connectivity where it seems very intimate and personal. But at the same time, it takes a while

[00:10:28] to really get those relationships moving and building that momentum, especially if you're new.

[00:10:33] And I also think Chicago has changed within the past couple of years. So you've been here much

[00:10:38] longer than I have. So you've seen kind of the old vintage, the new vintage. I've only been here for five,

[00:10:43] right. And a lot has changed within those five years, pre post COVID as well. Yep.

[00:10:48] So yeah, I still think it's a, it's an amazing city to do business in. There's large companies

[00:10:53] here, you know, it's, because it is small, I believe also, reputation does matter. You know,

[00:11:00] people want to work with people that they trust. And so you know, that, that you do, to your point,

[00:11:06] you kind of get this small community feel, you know, almost in there where word does get around of,

[00:11:13] what people do and who's good, who can be helpful, who can, you know, relationships really do,

[00:11:18] really do matter. And that's one of the reasons why I like it so much. It's just, you know,

[00:11:23] people who do what they say they're going to do, and you quickly learn out, you know,

[00:11:26] who those people are that you can count on and trust.

[00:11:29] Love that. Love that. So we're back in Chicago. At this point, you decide to leave Mercer,

[00:11:33] right? And from what I can tell in your career, it's been sort of a different stints of consulting

[00:11:38] mandates at different firms, you know, and sort of senior positions. Did you know at that point,

[00:11:43] when you left Mercer, this was the track you wanted to start developing?

[00:11:47] I knew I wanted to be in a smaller company. I think more boutique. Yeah. I'm just

[00:11:54] impatient person by, by nature and getting stuff done. And Mercer was amazing for the opportunities

[00:12:01] that it granted, you know, people and recognizing people and given a lot of opportunities. And I think

[00:12:06] also with that though, then you realize, is this really what I want to do? And I think what I

[00:12:11] realized is I just, I like being with customers and solving problems and kind of being in more of the,

[00:12:20] it's a kind of day to day, you know, working with things where large organizations and kind of

[00:12:26] management and, you know, those kinds of pieces taking you further away. Wasn't really where I got a lot

[00:12:31] of my energy. And so I think that was also the idea of, well, all right, let's, let's do something

[00:12:37] on my own and start a business. And so again, back to going into being an executive recruiter,

[00:12:44] 100% commission, you know, like I'm, I'm, I'm okay with calculated risks. And I saw an opportunity,

[00:12:51] you know, in this market and, and one to, and wanted to give it a go. Yeah. So you go from a huge

[00:12:56] company to again, being by yourself with no, you know, no, no clients, no revenue, just, you know,

[00:13:01] an idea of something that you want to build. So that was a lot of fun and, you know, all those other

[00:13:09] kinds of things that everybody talks about. It's like, if you knew how hard it was when you started

[00:13:14] it, would you still, you know, do it? Probably not. Of course, here I am again. So I don't know,

[00:13:19] maybe you're just not that bright or something to, to go about it again, but it's so rewarding when it works.

[00:13:25] And that was when, when you started a CMC advisory group. Yeah, exactly. Right. And so,

[00:13:29] yeah, that was in the benefit space. And so sold that business in 2000 and team.

[00:13:39] And so that was also, you know, the size of the groups you're working with pharmacy,

[00:13:42] kind of getting back to our, like it just became the bigger issue. So before it was, you're dealing

[00:13:47] with all things, medical and hospital pricing and carriers and what's called network discounts

[00:13:53] and the medical procedures, then pharmacy just kept ticking up as being more and more and more

[00:13:58] important and more and more of a driver of costs. And also I think as an advisor,

[00:14:06] you know, what I realized is I didn't know enough, you know, like you're, you, when you're negotiating

[00:14:12] with pharmacy benefit managers on behalf of employers, they have the information, they have the data, you know,

[00:14:19] how they write contracts and things like that is clearly to benefit them financially. It's how they

[00:14:23] make money. And to really be able to do that, you have to be an expert at pharmacy and know it really

[00:14:30] well. And I think that's something you see a lot of benefit consulting firms doing now is sort of

[00:14:35] figuring out, Hey, we can't just be a generalist on this. Like we actually need deep subject matter

[00:14:42] expertise. And after merged with Kyman Butler, which is the company that, that bought CMC advisory group,

[00:14:49] and they were amazing people and loved it there. I just want to get deeper into pharmacy. And so I

[00:14:54] joined a friend of mine that had a pharmacy benefit consulting business. And that was just a great

[00:15:01] experience of working these huge contracts, you know, multi billions of dollars under management

[00:15:06] and just seeing these large contracts and how they work and just getting, you know, kind of

[00:15:10] deep knowledge on PBM contracting, how it works, where the money's being made, how that impacts

[00:15:17] employers really just focused on the pharmacy benefit industry since it's fascinating. And I think over

[00:15:23] that time too, it's become more and more of an issue, you know, so fast forward now, you know,

[00:15:28] we're recording this in October and over the last four months, you know, we've seen front page articles

[00:15:35] in the New York Times, Washington Post, we got the FTC, you know, looking to break up some of the big

[00:15:40] PBMs, you've got PBM executives having to testify before Congress. We've got, you know, lawsuits where

[00:15:47] first class action lawsuits of employees suing their employer for violating their fiduciary

[00:15:53] responsibility specifically to pharmacy benefits. So it is the issue, it is kind of the,

[00:16:01] it's just a fascinating time with so much change happening all at once. And it's just one of those

[00:16:06] things that used to be a smaller number. It wasn't really material to your overall

[00:16:11] benefit spend or healthcare spend. And now it's really the thing that most are focused on.

[00:16:18] Let me ask you this before we get to Rx, I want to drill down on two things.

[00:16:22] Yeah.

[00:16:23] So, and this will be the last part on the consulting phase, but I really do want to drill

[00:16:27] down for people who really aren't in this industry and know nothing about it. What were you actually

[00:16:31] doing on the consulting side? I think that would be a nice segue before we get to Rx. So I want to

[00:16:36] ask about the consulting, give us kind of like an example of maybe a project that you worked on. And then I

[00:16:41] want to drill down a bit more on the PBM space, i.e. what does the map actually look like in the US

[00:16:45] for folks who want to even live, you know, in this side of the world?

[00:16:49] I think it's a really great question to take a step back. It's like, yeah, what do consulting

[00:16:53] firms offer and what do they do? Right. I mean, so first and foremost, it usually starts with the

[00:16:58] people, you know, the person who's the lead consultant for the employer, who's a subject matter

[00:17:03] expert and whatever that issue is that the employer is dealing with. Right. So it's like,

[00:17:08] have they been through the space? Have they seen it a hundred times before? Do they know kind of

[00:17:12] all the questions to ask and the options? Then it's really data. You know, what information do we

[00:17:18] have? What tools do we have? So at Mercer, for instance, it could be, we need to do compensation

[00:17:24] benchmarking. Who runs study and surveys that has, you know, all of this data? It could be in healthcare.

[00:17:31] It could be, we've gone through our claims repository. What does that look like? What are average? What are

[00:17:35] trends? And so I think it's taking all the data, then having experienced people who've dealt with

[00:17:42] that data before translate that back to employers and then good consultants, in my opinion,

[00:17:50] lay out those options for employers based on, you told me this, this is what your really pain point

[00:17:56] is. Here are the options we brought to you. Here's the data to support those and kind of the pros

[00:18:00] and cons along with them so that the employers then can make educated decisions in subject matter

[00:18:08] areas that they're not an expert in. And so I think just so many of these areas, it's like, well,

[00:18:12] if you run a, run a pharmacy benefit, you know, request for proposal every three years when you're

[00:18:19] evaluating it, you know, you do that once. Is it realistic to think you're going to understand

[00:18:24] all the different data flows, points in a contract, all these things compared to a consultant who

[00:18:29] maybe has done it a hundred times, you know, in the last year. So I think it's just that knowledge

[00:18:34] of the market, knowledge of solution sets, knowledge of emerging, I think, ideas, technologies, vendors,

[00:18:42] basically bringing all that back to customers with information and how it fit, you know, all into what

[00:18:48] that, what that employer is doing.

[00:18:51] I love that. Okay. Much clearer now, at least to me, and hopefully people are listening.

[00:18:56] So with that, I wanted to ask you to just break down what, what does PBM mean? Number one. And

[00:19:02] number two, for, for someone not living in the U S can you give us like a very quick, brief,

[00:19:07] high level overview of what the ecosystem actually looks like from your vantage point?

[00:19:14] Yeah. So, uh, PBM stands for pharmacy benefit manager.

[00:19:19] And so over the last few years, pharmacy benefit managers have merged in with other, I'll call it

[00:19:26] health insurance carriers or providers. So, you know, little known,

[00:19:30] statter, at least this kind of blows me a bit, especially for folks who don't live in the U S.

[00:19:34] But if you look at the top 16 companies in the fortune 500, three of the top 16 United healthcare,

[00:19:45] which owns Optum, which is their PBM CVS health, which has Aetna, the insurance arm and the PBM

[00:19:54] business. And then Cigna, which has express scripts, which is the PBM business. So when you think about

[00:19:59] that, those three companies are three of the 16 largest companies in the fortune 500.

[00:20:06] And the PBM, the pharmacy benefit, the PBM business. I like to think of it's really what

[00:20:11] opens up all the profitability for those organizations, because when you own the PBM,

[00:20:17] then you get to sell those services back to the health insurance company.

[00:20:22] Right. And you get to decide what you're going to charge that health insurance company. So if I

[00:20:26] have a health insurance premium and it's called fully insured, meaning I'm offering rates to the

[00:20:32] marketplace, right? Nobody's telling me what I can charge my own insurance company for that drug

[00:20:39] or what I'm making, you know, somewhere else. And so it's, it's really fascinating business where it's

[00:20:45] so a pharmacy benefit manager, you know, for folks who aren't aware of it, they set the price that

[00:20:51] employers pay for drugs, even though they don't buy the drug. Right. They're the pharmacy benefit

[00:21:00] manager. So they're telling the employer, this is what you have to pay. And then they're negotiating

[00:21:04] with pharmacies for a price. And basically I'm going to charge the pharmacy. I'm going to pay

[00:21:10] the pharmacy $2, you know, for this drug, I'm going to charge the employer $4 for that same drug.

[00:21:19] I've made $2 that's called spread. That's my profit. That is the traditional business model of

[00:21:26] pharmacy benefit manager. And 90% of all PBMs in America of the volume operate in that manner.

[00:21:35] So, and it gets better. The pharmacy benefit managers, then what they've done is a vertically

[00:21:40] integrated, right? So they figured out, Hey, let's combine with health insurance and do these things.

[00:21:46] And then on the pharmacy side, what they also do is if you want that drug sent to your home,

[00:21:52] or you can't pick this drug up at a local retail pharmacy, delivery service.

[00:21:57] Yeah. Mail owner, home delivery, whatever it is. When you do that, they typically mandate that you

[00:22:02] use their pharmacy that they own. So if you're with a big PBM, when a drug gets sent to you to your home,

[00:22:09] it's usually coming from their pharmacy. So now what I've done is I've told the employer,

[00:22:14] this is what I'm going to charge you for this drug. Actually, you don't tell it upfront. The

[00:22:18] employer usually doesn't know until after the claim comes in. So you don't know how much it's going to

[00:22:22] cost. You can't buy it from anywhere else. Cause I'm telling you exactly where you're going to buy

[00:22:28] it, which is from me, which means there's zero competition in this whatsoever. And the PBM

[00:22:34] business, the pharmacy benefit manager business almost is the open up the sales channel for every

[00:22:40] other business that happens. Cause it spreads the revenue around and it spreads volume. So that are,

[00:22:46] you know, that is what a pharmacy benefit manager does. So they're approving the drugs. So go further.

[00:22:54] They, they operate what's called formularies, which means these are the drugs that if you're

[00:23:00] an employer and you choose them, they tell you which drugs you can buy, which drugs you can't buy.

[00:23:05] They tell you which drugs require what's called a prior authorization to say, well, if you want this

[00:23:11] drug, you, you know, your doctor needs to walk through a couple of these steps,

[00:23:15] you know, in order to get that drug. Then they also say, oh, and if you want that drug,

[00:23:18] here's how you have to get it back to that home delivery. You can't pick that one up at a retail

[00:23:23] store. We're going to have to send that to you by the way, we're going to send it to you from our

[00:23:26] pharmacy, you know, when it comes to you. So it's this total control of the value chain,

[00:23:32] essentially their control of everything in the value chain. Right. And then what they also do

[00:23:36] is where this gets complicated is that it also, so if I'm a pharmaceutical manufacturer

[00:23:42] and I want, I've just developed a new drug. It's an amazing drug. I want to sell it. I sell drugs.

[00:23:50] That's what I do. How am I going to sell it? I've got to go through the pharmacy benefit managers. I've

[00:23:54] got to get put on their formularies. I got to make sure that it's available for patients when they need

[00:23:59] it. And let's say there's two drugs that could be offered, you know, for it. And that pharmacy benefit

[00:24:04] manager already has one drug, you know, on the formula or competing drug comes out. Now it becomes this money

[00:24:10] game. And this is where a lot of scrutiny comes in on something called rebates. So basically what a

[00:24:15] rebate is, is a pharmaceutical manufacturer negotiating with a pharmacy benefit manager

[00:24:21] to say, I want my drug to be covered under your formulary. And the pharmacy benefit manager says,

[00:24:28] well, that's going to cost you. And so what it does is now you get volume. So pharmaceutical

[00:24:34] manufacturers are paying pharmacy benefit managers for the volume that the pharmacy benefit

[00:24:39] managers deliver to them through their employer customers gets better. Those organizations are,

[00:24:49] there's a separate organization called group purchasing organizations or GPOs. So you've got

[00:24:55] the pharmacy benefit manager and the PBM. Then a few years ago, they started creating another entity above it,

[00:25:02] called a group purchasing organization. That group purchasing organization is the one who

[00:25:06] negotiates with the pharmaceutical manufacturers. And that in the group purchasing organization then

[00:25:13] decides how much they're going to, so I've taken this amount of rebate from a pharmaceutical manufacturer.

[00:25:19] I'm going to share some of that with my PBM, right? Same company owned by the same people. I'm going to share

[00:25:25] it with this. And then from the PBM, the PBM is going to share some of that back to the employer.

[00:25:29] So lots of different revenue angles and lots of different, you know, money incentives to be made,

[00:25:35] you know, which then gets back to with employers. Like, well, what the heck am I supposed to do?

[00:25:41] How do I know what information I can rely on? You know, how do I know how much this, you know,

[00:25:46] these drugs are actually going to cost me when it's all send up? Who do I go to for advice?

[00:25:51] You know, any guidance on all these things back to the consultants and who's helping me evaluate?

[00:25:55] It's just, it's so complex, you know, and I think when you see the amount of volume that comes through

[00:26:02] to on a pharmacy contract. So generally, it's about one prescription per employee per month.

[00:26:11] It's kind of generally. So if I have an employer, right, that has, you do that math, 10,000 employees,

[00:26:16] how many prescriptions are coming through, you're seeing about 10,000 prescriptions a month.

[00:26:22] How do you know the cost of all of those? You know, like you look at them and I'll see things where

[00:26:28] the PBM charged, just posted about this this morning, actually, $13,000 for a drug.

[00:26:35] That should have cost like $400, right?

[00:26:37] What's that?

[00:26:38] I saw your link. That should have cost like $400. I saw your link.

[00:26:40] Anybody without insurance could go buy that, right? And those are the, those are the things that

[00:26:45] people are sitting on the screen and say, well, wait a second. How can this make any sense?

[00:26:49] I thought you were so large. I thought you were negotiating these lower prices. I thought it

[00:26:53] clearly it'd be less if I was going through my PBM. When you turn around and say, oftentimes it's

[00:27:00] cheaper to not use your insurance at all. And I'm using insurance and PBM, you know, kind of in the same,

[00:27:05] I'm interchanging those a little bit because people think of their insurance. They don't necessarily

[00:27:09] think of the back end PBM. But those are the issues you find in those claims. They're just sort of lurking

[00:27:15] in there. Because if you're a benefit manager, are you looking at every 10,000 claim that came

[00:27:19] through and comparing the price to what's available? It's a tough job to do, but then

[00:27:25] think if you're an employee or you're somebody and you're in your, what's called your deductible

[00:27:29] phase for people outside the US, which means there's a certain amount that I have to pay out of my own

[00:27:33] pocket before any coverage kicks in. Right? So go through that same example.

[00:27:40] If an employee comes in and I got to pay thousands of dollars out of my pocket,

[00:27:46] I'm forced to pay that through my insurance, or I don't even use my insurance. And I pay cash out

[00:27:52] of my pocket. Then it's like, well, what was I just paying premiums towards my health insurance plan for?

[00:27:57] Because I paid premiums and I'm not even using my insurance because the drug's cheaper elsewhere.

[00:28:01] Mm-hmm.

[00:28:02] You know, and those are kind of the connection points, you know, that RxSaveCoverty has really

[00:28:06] built around and say, there's a marketplace out here with lower prices. And this kind of being

[00:28:11] locked in to only have prices set by your pharmacy benefit manager, we wouldn't do that in any other

[00:28:21] procurement strategy of anything we did. Right? If I went to any company and said,

[00:28:27] here's a MacBook over here and it's $1,000. So we have a contract with somebody to provide all of

[00:28:32] our IET. So we have to get the MacBook from them and it's $15,000. You wouldn't do that. It's the same

[00:28:39] exact thing, same exact product, you know? So I think it's trying to bring, you know, some of that clarity

[00:28:46] to the market and find those opportunities when it is less expensive and making sure employers

[00:28:51] can access those prices and employees can also access them. It's a big deal because we think about

[00:28:56] everything in the aggregate all the time. It's like, well, we spend $10 million on drugs. Well,

[00:29:02] 5,000 more, 5,000 left, maybe get back to accounting. Like we always learn materiality.

[00:29:07] Is this material? Does this really change anything? And no, but if I'm the employee

[00:29:12] and I'm forced to pay $5,000 out of my pocket for a drug that I need,

[00:29:17] Yeah. 5,000 is very material.

[00:29:20] And so I think it's important to step back just for, you know, what we remind ourselves every day is

[00:29:25] there's financial models and there's all these other kinds of things. But at the end of the day,

[00:29:29] people need this drug.

[00:29:31] Yeah. There's an actual human behind that drug who also really needs it.

[00:29:35] There's an actual human behind this drug that needs it. One of those examples I posted about this morning,

[00:29:41] um, you know, it helps people with organ transplants

[00:29:45] to make sure their organ isn't rejected. That person needs that drug. They need that. You know,

[00:29:52] these things are literally sometimes a matter of life and death. And I think we just,

[00:29:57] we just always want to stay 100% focused on this. What we're doing is actually allowing people sometimes

[00:30:03] to get a drug that they couldn't otherwise afford. And that's what we wake up every day thinking about.

[00:30:09] Have you heard, I was, I was telling you, I did some, some light homework, uh, right before the,

[00:30:13] the podcast. I mean, just some stats that to me were, were kind of mind boggling. The,

[00:30:19] the one I wanted to bring up with you, speaking of drugs is Zolgensma. Yep. Have you heard of this?

[00:30:26] I have.

[00:30:26] Yeah. I mean, is, is it still the most expensive in the U S?

[00:30:30] Not anymore.

[00:30:32] It used to be right. It was like 2 million bucks for a course treatment. It's a one-time payment,

[00:30:37] you know, but this is for spinal muscular atrophy, I believe a rare childhood disorder,

[00:30:43] but 2, 2 million bucks, a one-time payment is. Yeah. You've got, it's, it's a category column,

[00:30:51] Excel and gene therapies are these really innovative things. Um, and I think it's,

[00:30:57] it's tough because if you're, if you're a parent with a child who has one of these conditions,

[00:31:03] if you're somebody who has any conditions and all of a sudden there's this breakthrough technology,

[00:31:07] like, man, I want to access that. Right. And I'm going to stick up for the pharmaceutical

[00:31:12] manufacturers just a little bit here. It's also, if you're going after these very rare conditions

[00:31:18] where there's maybe a few thousand patients every year who have this condition, right. Getting back to

[00:31:26] pharmaceutical companies or businesses, right. From my business, what's my total addressable market?

[00:31:32] Very small. Not many. So if I'm going to go through and do that R and D and develop this and do this,

[00:31:36] how do I capitalize that to make sure it's appropriate? Now I'm not saying $2 million is

[00:31:40] the right fee. I'm not saying anything like that, but it's like you have these kind of rare diseases

[00:31:45] where people are doing some very cool things where there's cures now potentially for things that didn't

[00:31:51] exist today. You know, that's amazing. I think, but then you've got all the other drugs, 92% of all

[00:31:59] drugs dispensed in this country are generic.

[00:32:01] Jim O'Byrus, generic drugs. Yeah.

[00:32:02] Jim O'Byrus, generic drugs. Right. Meaning they've been off patent for a while. And so you almost have

[00:32:06] to bifurcate it a little bit of say, Hey, these really serious conditions where new drugs are coming

[00:32:12] out and we're looking at the data and they could be blockbuster and really, you know, be the difference

[00:32:16] between life and death or improve quality of life for people. How you handle those is kind of one

[00:32:20] decision. But then you've got all these other things where it's like, this is just a drug that's

[00:32:25] out there that costs literally pennies to make. And some, and those drugs can also be very important

[00:32:31] for people managing chronic conditions. People take these drugs every day. How do we make sure they

[00:32:36] get what they need? So was this the biggest pain point that led to Rx?

[00:32:42] I think the pain points that we saw was just, you've got, obviously we've got Congress,

[00:32:49] we've got all these kind of exposés happening on the pharmacy benefit management industry, people

[00:32:54] looking at it and saying, well, how, how does this make sense? How do these folks make money? How do I

[00:32:59] know what I'm supposed to pay and what I'm supposed to afford? So you can add that piece. Then you had,

[00:33:05] actually give big credit to Mark Cuban.

[00:33:09] Cost plus two and a half years ago. Yeah. He, you know, along with his co-founders there in the team said,

[00:33:15] we're going to sell drugs differently. And, you know, so he created this pharmacy and his name and

[00:33:21] passion has really drawn a lot of attention to this. And so when we talk about those examples

[00:33:26] in the lawsuits, I don't know if those would be able to happen if you didn't have a published

[00:33:34] transparent price that's available to anyone with or without insurance. And that's what cost plus drugs

[00:33:40] really does. And so now you've got this reference point to compare everything.

[00:33:44] Um, and so that was a big piece. And then when you looked at it and started looking at data,

[00:33:49] you're like, wow, that's a lot of examples here where the cash price is much cheaper than what's

[00:33:53] being charged by my PBL. And then you have discount cards. So again, for folks who aren't kind of in

[00:34:01] the U S work in the system, you can just download or download, you can just go on websites and there's

[00:34:06] these pharmacy discount cards that you show at the counter. And oftentimes those are less expensive

[00:34:12] than your insurance. And again, you're thinking, I don't understand how does this work? And then you've got

[00:34:19] you know, the ERISA lawsuits when the United States, um, ERISA employment, retirement income

[00:34:25] security act, which basically kind of manages if I'm paying premiums out of my meaning money out of

[00:34:31] my pocket employee, I'm paying my employer for health insurance for this coverage employer.

[00:34:37] You have an obligation to make sure that those dollars we give you are well spent. You're monitoring

[00:34:43] the plan. You're making sure we're not, we're paying, we're not paying egregious fees,

[00:34:46] you know, those other things. And the lawsuit really pointed to those exact examples, which is

[00:34:52] you charge me $10,000 PBM. I can buy that drug for 50 bucks over here. And you forced me to pay

[00:34:59] the 10,000 versus the 50. And then the second lawsuit that was, uh, February, I think in 2024,

[00:35:06] another lawsuit happened in July, alleging the same exact things using basically the same

[00:35:11] backed patterns. And so we kind of sit back and you're like, okay, well, I've got

[00:35:16] employers are struggling. What do I do? How do I manage this? You know, these, how do you give me

[00:35:20] visibility? Right. Cause in many cases I might not even know.

[00:35:23] Exactly. Get back to that 10,000 claims running through. How do I know? How am I going to do that?

[00:35:29] That the opportunities are there. Um, you've got these PBMs that I mentioned, you know, three of the

[00:35:34] 16 largest companies in the fortune 500 large companies, you know, and then employers are

[00:35:40] comfortable contracting with them. And so it's like, well, how, how do we help them? And so that's

[00:35:45] really where we build our solution to say, you don't have to replace your PBM. It can work with any

[00:35:50] PBM, but in our everyday lives, we shouldn't be bound just by those prices that the PBM offers.

[00:35:56] If it's cheaper somewhere else outside of it, as an employer or as an employee trying to pick up my drug,

[00:36:02] I should get access to those prices. And that's really what we've built everything to do. Make it a

[00:36:07] simple add on. So if it's a discount card, that's less expensive, let's do that. If it's going through

[00:36:12] cost plus through Mark Cuban's pharmacy, it's less expensive. Let's do that. If there's a cash price

[00:36:18] offered, this is a very interesting one. There's a cash price offered directly from a pharmaceutical

[00:36:23] manufacturer, which there's some examples out there of weight loss drugs and these GLP ones, which is

[00:36:28] a very hot topic in the U S the cash price for that. If you don't have insurance is 70% less than

[00:36:34] what an employer pays when they're going through their PBM, 70% less. And these drugs, by the way,

[00:36:41] if you're running through your PBM, they're probably gonna cost you $15,000, give or take

[00:36:45] per person who's on that drug a year. And by all estimates, you've got north of 50% of the U S population

[00:36:54] could be approved for one of those drugs based on the indications approved by the FDA.

[00:36:59] So an employer says, this is a new expense. I didn't have this before. What the heck am I supposed

[00:37:06] to do? Especially if I want to help my employees who do want this drug, I can't afford this. What

[00:37:11] am I supposed to do? And so that's where, well, let's pay the cash price, you know, directly through

[00:37:16] the pharmaceutical manufacturers. So we've thought about all these different ways. And really the

[00:37:20] headline to an employer is any market that sells the drugs, like that we want to access, if they

[00:37:27] offer a lower price, then you should be able to access those. And that's what we've been built to do.

[00:37:32] How do you plug into all those alternative sources through a discount card?

[00:37:37] From the engine perspective, I've always been kind of curious about that.

[00:37:41] Yeah. So discount cards really, and this gets back to the complexity of pharmacy benefit contracts

[00:37:46] and how they work, but it's a really important topic. So when a pharmacy benefit manager contracts

[00:37:54] with employer, they give something called an aggregate discount on the drugs. And it's a discount off

[00:38:01] of something called average wholesale price, which is AWP, which the joke is stands for ain't what's paid

[00:38:06] because it really means nothing other than it's just a marker in the industry. And so the employer

[00:38:12] contracts with the, an employer contracts and PBM says, we're going to give you this discount, but

[00:38:17] it's on the whole basket of goods, right? So all these fills coming through. And the PBM at the same

[00:38:24] time is negotiated with pharmacies to say, what average wholesale price discount are you going to give us

[00:38:30] for all this volume we give you? Right? So, but again, it's an aggregate. So when you're doing things

[00:38:38] in aggregate, what does that mean? If I'm giving you an average price and I've got a hundred thousand

[00:38:44] claims that are coming through, I'm going to be overpaying for some claims to subsidize the cost of

[00:38:51] others. When you kind of average it out to that number, that same thing is happening in PBM contracts.

[00:38:58] So when you show up to your pharmacy, somebody has the best price for that drug at that pharmacy.

[00:39:06] You just don't know who it is. And so when you aggregate all these different contracts underneath,

[00:39:12] so what we do is we aggregate more than 10 of those different discount cards. And what we're doing is

[00:39:17] saying, Hey, think almost reverse option concept. Somebody's got a price in there. I'm shopping real

[00:39:23] time with our aggregated discount card solution to pull the best price from over 10 different options.

[00:39:29] And it automatically comes back. If I just have one option, right? That's the only price I get. And if

[00:39:35] that was one of those drugs that that PBM didn't have a great price on, but they had great prices on

[00:39:40] others, we just want to keep taking advantage of those best prices at the individual pharmacy in this

[00:39:46] aggregate discount model just means nobody's ever going to have the best price on every single drug

[00:39:54] at every single pharmacy can't work that way. So we want to make sure we have as many options

[00:39:59] checking in real time, every single time we're at that pharmacy and that's how we pull up the best

[00:40:04] prices. So we aren't always cheaper than what the pharmacy benefit manager is for the employer.

[00:40:11] Sometimes we are, but when you look at an aggregate, we are reducing an employer's

[00:40:16] generic retail spend. So everybody goes to the pharmacy, picks up all those drugs by 50%,

[00:40:21] 50% five, zero. Yeah. I mean, just by the nature of doing this and employees save less employees are

[00:40:27] getting a lot of drugs for free now, but they had to pay before because there's so much savings to go

[00:40:32] around when you just use this concept, which is, well, let's check the best price every single time.

[00:40:37] So back to what you started with, what's an employer supposed to do? Who's monitoring this?

[00:40:42] Who's looking out for this? We are now the ones checking that price. If it does run through the PBM,

[00:40:46] it's the best price for that drug. And the PBM doesn't have the best price for that drug.

[00:40:51] And we run it through our get a discount card solution. And that's what employers get access to.

[00:40:57] Justin Donaldson Interesting. So it seems like everybody

[00:40:59] sort of wins as so long as one party wins a little bit less. Is that a fair statement?

[00:41:06] David Morgan That's it. I never thought about it that way. I think that's a good way to look at it.

[00:41:09] I mean, yeah, our solution here is when we tell employers, yeah, in our solution, everybody wins.

[00:41:14] So either you had a good PBM contract on that drug and it fills kind of coming through,

[00:41:19] you're protected. We found a better price. You save money. The employees save money.

[00:41:26] You don't have to change PBMs, which can be, you know, time consuming and a risky process

[00:41:31] for employers. So it's like, I don't have to change PBMs. I get the kind of overall call with a wrap

[00:41:38] pricing from them, but I get to on every single drug check to see if there's a better price. And if there's

[00:41:43] a better price, I access that. So it truly is what we've been built is just to say everybody wins,

[00:41:50] you know, in this scenario and employees get the drugs that they need back to that. Like,

[00:41:54] why are we doing this? At the end of this, there is a person who needs this prescription and we

[00:41:59] want to make sure it's affordable for them and they can get it.

[00:42:02] David Morgan Yeah. I mean, not to simplify

[00:42:04] it this much, but the easiest way I can think about it is I remember I used to go to Best Buy when

[00:42:09] you buy electronics, you know, physically and before they sort of give you the retail price,

[00:42:15] you're like, Hey, can I just check it on Amazon and maybe we can price match because it might be

[00:42:19] cheaper on Amazon. But at least I had that sort of virtual marketplace as a benchmark versus buying

[00:42:25] it for a hundred bucks. Like if I wanted to get an iPad, if it hypothetically costs a hundred bucks,

[00:42:29] but on Amazon it's 70 bucks, Best Buy had no choice to be like, well, I'd rather price match

[00:42:34] because at least I have foot traffic and you're buying through our store versus.

[00:42:38] David Morgan Well, and in that market, you had prices

[00:42:41] out there that you could buy.

[00:42:43] David Morgan Exactly. It's visible. It's known.

[00:42:44] David Morgan The challenge of the pharmacy benefit

[00:42:45] manager is nobody knows the price. You don't know the price until you show up at the counter.

[00:42:49] And that's where we really come in to provide that transparency, provide that visibility.

[00:42:55] Or even if the employee just shows up, that 50% savings number that I mentioned,

[00:43:00] that's the employee going to the same pharmacy they always go to,

[00:43:03] David Morgan The same drug they always get. And just the exact example

[00:43:07] you brought up, just checking to see if there's a lower price that comes out. And so it really is

[00:43:12] just a procurement play of checking to see lower prices and not just paying what one person has

[00:43:20] negotiated in the entire supply chain.

[00:43:23] David Morgan I want to spend the last part of this segment with you, Chris on,

[00:43:26] and thank you, by the way, that this, I was thinking to myself, this is kind of like PBM for dummies.

[00:43:30] I don't want to say it this way, but it's like the book, you know, the, the sort of set learning.

[00:43:34] David Morgan Yeah.

[00:43:35] David Morgan Yeah.

[00:43:36] David Morgan Yeah. So thank you for that, you know,

[00:43:38] simple simplification, but also just, I would say very valuable overview.

[00:43:42] David Morgan What kept coming to mind is,

[00:43:44] I'm trying to think of the founder right now that's listening to you speak.

[00:43:48] David Morgan One question I can really tell that they would be wondering to ask is,

[00:43:52] how difficult it is, it is for you, having spent now what four months building RxSafeCard,

[00:43:58] how difficult has it been cracking into a very regulated, established market with larger,

[00:44:05] more dominant players? I can think of other verticals similar to this, like fintech as an

[00:44:09] example. It could seem intimidating, right? Like you're, you're still an earlier stage startup.

[00:44:14] You've raised a small amount of funding, which we can get into in a second, but yeah, is it,

[00:44:19] is it intimidating for you? How do you get past the challenges of being the smaller incumbent?

[00:44:24] David Morgan Yeah.

[00:44:24] David Morgan Just curious.

[00:44:27] David Morgan It is a long sales cycle, generally,

[00:44:30] to your point. You know, so I think when you go into the space,

[00:44:33] it's takes a long time for employers to evaluate decision. You know, they often might only make a

[00:44:39] decision on a vendor every two or three years. And so you do have companies, it takes a long time

[00:44:45] to get that momentum, which to your point can be very daunting and take a lot of capital, take a

[00:44:51] lot of money. And that's why you see venture capital being very involved in this space too,

[00:44:56] with different innovative solutions and how you look at it. When we looked at this, we wanted to

[00:45:03] take a little bit of a different path, which is we're not trying to be a pharmacy benefit manager

[00:45:08] or a PBM. We're not trying to compete in that space. What we're trying to do is find a simple

[00:45:15] solution using technology and our knowledge of the market to just make it easier to sit next to it.

[00:45:21] David Morgan And so I think for an employer, then it's a much less

[00:45:25] risky decision, you know, to go with a company that's only been around for a few months, like you

[00:45:30] said, because I still have my PBM. And really what we're offering is just access to these prices and

[00:45:35] everything. David Morgan Supplement

[00:45:43] the payment and access of those from a data standpoint. So that is what has allowed us,

[00:45:50] I think, to really hit the ground running, you know, and have lots of new customers coming on

[00:45:58] already for January, even though we missed an entire, we really didn't hit the sales cycle for

[00:46:02] what, you know, pharmacy benefit managers do, but people are seeing the value and they're seeing,

[00:46:07] you know, how this can fit in to their benefits. So it's incredibly exciting. And every time we talk to

[00:46:14] pharmacy benefit consultants who are in the space who know it, you know, usually kind of go through

[00:46:18] the conversation and like, what are you doing now? What, you know, what's going on? And we explain it

[00:46:23] and it's like, okay, I get it. I do think I clearly have an advantage of just being in this space for a

[00:46:30] long time and knowing, uh, you're a lot of, yeah, in the people. So there's, I've built some credibility

[00:46:39] and trust that we know the problem that we're solving. We have a unique way to do it. So I

[00:46:46] don't know if that answered your question directly or not, but we've got a little bit of a gap,

[00:46:49] but it could be a long capital intensive, you know, road to really develop a solution in this space.

[00:46:57] Yeah. Well, and certainly, um, you know, a large market opportunity, I think from one of the press

[00:47:01] releases, I, I read when you announced your, your funding round, it's a sort of a 600 billion market.

[00:47:06] Definitely could be, could be more as well. And, you know, obviously giving color to, I forgot to

[00:47:11] give Sean, uh, our, our fellow friend here, a shout out, speaking of how cap intensive it can be,

[00:47:16] but you know, a nice shout out to, to our mutual friend, Sean, Sean Ellis from distributed ventures.

[00:47:22] And the DV team is phenomenal. And I know they want to be early backers and pioneers in this space,

[00:47:28] primarily anything to do with employer services and insure tech. And so having, you know, raised,

[00:47:32] I think it was a million and seven, if I'm not mistaken, something close to that. I'm sure that

[00:47:36] helps, especially at this stage to get you running. And it sounds like you guys already have tremendous

[00:47:40] momentum. Yeah, it was super helpful. And just, I think the advice and guidance, you know, so when

[00:47:46] you're finding a partner, and I think also because we started off thinking, well, we're just going to

[00:47:52] build this on our own, you know, maybe we don't need, you know, any capital to do with the idea of we,

[00:47:56] we're not going to be a PBM. That's not kind of what we're interested in doing.

[00:48:01] So I think that helped a little bit. We always kind of had this lean mindset on what we're going to do.

[00:48:07] So now that just enables us to be, just accelerate that, you know, a little bit of building the things

[00:48:12] we need to build, you know, well in advance. So we are ready, you know, for those new,

[00:48:17] you know, customers that are coming on and that's, we have our heads down, you know,

[00:48:20] working on now every day to just make sure it's flawless come January with those new customers to

[00:48:26] join us. Love that Chris, I'm going to end it off with one last question on your side,

[00:48:32] which is quick lessons from, I want to say, it's not fair to deem you as a first time founder,

[00:48:38] because you've created your own consulting, you know, boutique firms in the past, but to the extent

[00:48:43] that this is that your first startup, let's say on the, on the sort of health tech side,

[00:48:47] what lessons have you learned so far in a four month journey?

[00:48:53] I think positioning, you know, kind of in the market and making sure that, that product market

[00:49:00] fit, whatever it was, you know, that we really kind of understood the dynamics of the industry,

[00:49:05] you know, and I think it's one of those things where just knowing all the different pieces and

[00:49:10] seeing where we think it's going to go. Like for instance, I think the cash marketplace

[00:49:14] is going to continue to evolve. I think that manufacturers are going to start selling more

[00:49:20] directly to consumers in these direct websites. I think there's gonna be more and more drugs now

[00:49:26] that are offered in transparent ways outside of it. And you also still have the largest companies

[00:49:33] in America who have shareholders to answer to, and how they're going to respond to that to make sure

[00:49:38] they keep their profit, you know, where it needs to be. And your point about new drugs coming to market,

[00:49:43] and everything else, it's when you look at health spend and what's going on, it's increasing. And

[00:49:49] it's increased, it kind of did a little bump this year, much higher than it's been recently. And a lot

[00:49:54] of that is driven by prescription drugs. People are on more drugs now than they ever were before.

[00:49:59] People are living longer, more drugs to help with that maintenance, new drugs coming to market.

[00:50:03] Again, think the GOP once. A market that did not exist two years ago. And now these are probably the

[00:50:10] best selling drugs, you know, in the country when they come out. So it's an area where there's always

[00:50:16] going to be pain and what we need. But I also think just checking with potential customers to understand

[00:50:24] what stops them from making a change. Why do you still want to do business with this entity?

[00:50:31] What would you need to do to help you? How do we make it easy and simple?

[00:50:36] So I think those were the biggest things. Like you can have a great conceptual idea, but if you don't

[00:50:42] understand how your end customer, what spot does that help them or not? Is it more work or not? Is it

[00:50:48] more risk or not? Like what are they really trying to accomplish and meeting them where they are,

[00:50:52] I think is one of the biggest things that we've learned and continued, frankly, to kind of

[00:50:58] iterate a little bit on what that model looks like and how it can be super helpful for them.

[00:51:04] Love that. Love that. Chris, I want to thank you again. I know we, I've gotten to know you now over

[00:51:10] the past, I want to say month. It hasn't been that long. Very fond of what you're building. I think

[00:51:14] I've liked every single LinkedIn post that you've, you know, that you're highlighting, not just around

[00:51:18] the company, but around the space that you're trying to crack. And I think you're doing

[00:51:22] excellent work. And I want to commend you on both you as a thought leader in the space, but as a

[00:51:27] founder, a Chicago based founder, which always is a nice cherry on the top. So I want to thank you

[00:51:33] for being on the podcast, my friend. Thank you very much. This is great. Enjoy it. If you found this

[00:51:37] podcast useful, make sure to share that with your community. If you haven't already done so,

[00:51:41] subscribe to the podcast. I'll see you next time.

[00:51:44] Bye.