Founded in Tech
The tech industry is a rapidly evolving and dynamic ecosystem, requiring tech companies and their founders to work tirelessly to overcome the difficulties of growing and scaling their businesses. Tune into Founded in Tech as we engage in insightful interviews with technology professionals and industry experts who discuss the challenges, success stories, and innovations within the industry.
Founded in Tech
Learn How Nomad Health Persevered During the Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic posed numerous challenges around the globe. While communities banded together to answer those challenges, technology companies helped bolster ongoing efforts by providing solutions.
Join host Mark Eckerle as he discusses Nomad Health’s revolutionary solution in the HealthTech field, how the COVID-19 crisis impacted their business, and tips for entrepreneurs in the space.
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Speaker 2:Welcome to this episode of founded in tech. I am your host mark accurately. And today I sit down with Jess[inaudible], who is the CFO of nomad health nomad is bringing the health tech industry to the forefront by prioritizing medical staffing for nurses and physicians, which is relevant now more so than ever. On today's episode, we discuss nomads business operations and how they handle the COVID-19 pandemic just gives us his thoughts on being the first finance professional hired and how he believes attitude and culture are critical starting at the top within a company. And finally, he provided some tips that he has learned throughout his career that he thinks are important for all professionals, not just upper management to know and understand in order to be successful. I had a great time catching up with Jess today and learning more about nomad health. They're really working on some exciting stuff. So I really hope you enjoy this conversation.
Speaker 1:[inaudible]
Speaker 2:Please join me in welcoming Jess from nomad health to the show, just as the CFO and joins us today. Talk about his background as well as nomad health and some of the exciting things that they're working on. Welcome to the
Speaker 3:Show today. Thank you, mark. It's great to be here. It's an honor to be here. I appreciate it. Uh, looking forward to it. Of
Speaker 2:Course. Yeah. Likewise. So, so why don't we kick things off by you giving us a quick background, um, introduction of yourself, your career, and kind of how you ended up as the CFO.
Speaker 3:Okay. I'll try to put two decades in a few minutes to keep everyone's engaged in here. So, uh, I started my career at price Waterhouse Coopers, and I, and I got to this place a little bit, uh, not in the traditional way. Uh, so I started PricewaterhouseCoopers as a restructuring advisor where, you know, what I like to say is you're advising companies that are on the emergency room of corporate health. They're either about to be in bankruptcy or going to emerge out of bankruptcy. Uh, and they're, uh, I spent a lot of time building financial models and building up some accounting chops, uh, and got to learn a lot about credit and bankruptcy. And that led me into a distressed debt fund. Um, and I spent about eight years there, uh, investing in a lot of companies, uh, investing in small trenches of corporate debt. Uh, also we purchased the company and then sold it. So I got to see some operational aspects of actually running a company. And during those eight years, I really became inspired with looking at different investments and you'd see founders who started a company with like$5 million of EBITDA and grow it to a hundred million dollars of EBITDA and they get taken private or get bought. And I was like, how do companies do that? How did companies grow that way? And I knew that a lot of that was in the operational aspect of it. So I wanted to leverage my finance background, uh, which was built on advising and investing into this, what I found very inspirational as an operator. Um, so that pushed me down the path of what I think is the best place in the world, which is New York city's technology scene. And I landed at a company called gust where we did cap table management and 480 evaluations. And it was like a deal room for angel investors. So entrepreneurs often needed to provide information as a lot of entrepreneurs know to potential investors. And Gus captured that I spent some time there. It was my first operating experience. I loved learning everything from HR to fundraising and all the nitty gritty that lies in underneath the hood and startups. And then I got a chance to meet Alexa, who was the CEO of nomad health and Justin and the rest of the team. Um, and after six years of gust and meeting that team, I felt like what nomad health was doing was extremely special. The team was stacked and I felt like it was a good time for me to join them at health. Uh, and so I did, and I haven't looked back. It's been really exciting, you know, we've grown substantially since I've been there. Happy to talk more about that now, too. How long have you been with nomad health? Three years now? Over three years. Yeah,
Speaker 2:The time's flying by it. Right. See how you kind of, you want it to jump down the operation side of things. And even though you're, you're the CFO, you're on the accounting side, in these technology companies in the startup world, you're working under the umbrella, kind of doing both wearing multiple hats, right? You're, you're doing, uh, a Jack of all trades. So you're not just kind of strictly focused on the accounting side of things.
Speaker 3:I was the first finance hire at Gus. And again, the first finance hire at a nomad health. So being the first finance hire, you take a lot of the outsource bookkeeping and you bring it in house and you really start to press upon what really drives the company. And to do that, you need to build relationships with all the stakeholders in the company. I need to understand, you know, what our engineering team is doing. I need understand what the product team is doing and you get, you go so far down the path with all these teams and you build strong relationships with them. And why would I like to do in my role is, you know, normally finances is a person though don't spend any money or no, no, no. And what I like to do is I try to figure out how to empower them to really be the best at their jobs and how can you empower them to make the right investments. So it's my job to try to elicit the information that allows us to make really smart investments and empower them to like, Hey, go be the best you can be, go, go run after it. And that requires you to get into a lot of parts of the company that otherwise I wouldn't necessarily see if I was, you know, stuck in simply a finance role. So I'm off the talking with the ops team, the sales team, the engineering team, the product team, uh, our people team. I mean, across the board, I know a lot of what's going on in the company and I truly enjoy it. That's one of the best parts about the job is building a relationships with many different stakeholders.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's a great strategy role. And I mean, there's a lot of juggling going on just part of cash management, kind of just seeing how things are coming along. So, so, so jumping right to the company now what's give me a background of nomad health, kind of what's the, the overall operations look like the structure. Um, and, and the one thing I w wanted to kind of clarify is are these services only offered in the United States, is this international what's that kind of look like as well?
Speaker 3:Uh, yes, we have, uh, we are only in the United States and there is a huge opportunity in the United States. So we're pretty happy we're going after that opportunity now. Um, so, um, as far as what nomad health does, if we just zoom out for a minute, Nova health is, uh, we created the first online marketplace for travel nurses to search for an apply for travel nursing jobs across the country, or all clinicians. In fact, that is different than what exists in the industry today. Uh, we, we brought transparency. We've brought a delightful experience to clinicians trying to find temporary employment across the country. W what's happened over the past few years is especially with COVID is the demand for what we offer, uh, has just accelerated. So clinicians want transparency and they want to be able to search. They want to be empowered to find the jobs that they want when they want at a certain pay that they want. And by offering them a delightful experience, very good pay a nomad has really become a leader in temporary health, healthcare staffing. And the opportunity is large. I mean, it's, it's a$20 billion plus opportunity out there. I feel like we're just getting started. So when I joined, you know, the organization, we probably had about 20, uh, corporate employees and we had a collection of traveling clinicians. Um, and in terms of the structure we have, uh, we have just grown and focused on the areas where we feel like we're the strongest and actually want to be the best in the world that, uh, and so far it's worked out well. And like I said, the adoption we've seen because of COVID, uh, we actually needed, there was a ton of demand for travel staffing across the country. And no, Matt actually answered the call because we were able to intake a ton of jobs. Uh, we were, we had a source of clinicians that really wanted to run towards the crisis. And as a result, uh, we saw new users, uh, register. We saw, uh, uh, a spike in applications, uh, and we saw a spike in actually placing nurses and doctors by the bedsides. You know, we felt like, uh, we, we were at the right place at the right time. And our technology is providing a great experience for this clinicians. And, and I think, you know, as we look forward, we've been able to retain a lot of the clinicians, uh, that are traveling for us. They do like the experience and the products for itself as this is the full experience. So,
Speaker 2:So just to confirm your nomad is not a staffing agency, it's all these traveling nurses, these traveling positions, they're they're employees of the company, right. They're totally under your umbrella.
Speaker 3:Yeah. They're employees of nomad. Okay.
Speaker 2:And I don't want to say it was a good thing, but the 2020 was a positive year for the company. Right. Just based on everything that happened, being industry that you're in it, you guys saw a lot of opportunity last year. There's a lot of growth. Um, so I'm curious, kind of overall, what did 2020 look like? Another path I wanted to take this down was there was so much focus on the immediate need for the impact of what was happening with COVID. What kind of happened with like elective surgeries or things like that. How did that impact the company? Was there anything that was kind of put on pause or time out as we've got to focus on what's happening strictly COVID and let's prioritize that as opposed to kind of some other elective or other avenues that maybe the company is trying to pursue.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's, it's a good question. So in 2020, um, what we saw, obviously we are in the market of making sure our clients have the right qualified individuals when they need them the most, and the qualified individuals are at the right place. So what we saw in 2020 was the, the need, like you said, for elective surgeries, a lot of them were canceled because the hospitals had to deal with the influx of COVID related patients. So a lot of our travel nurses, they were canceled, but that was offset by the need for, uh, nurses to come into, to come into the hospitals, a huge spike in needs for nurses to come into the hospitals, to deal with the, the influx from COVID patients. So what was, you know, a cancellation from elective surgeries, and it seems like now it is coming back, uh, it was offset by a demand in another part of the healthcare, uh, industry. So, uh, it was a little bit of a whipsaw and we felt that for sure. And I think the whole, I mean, the, the entire country felt it, uh, but it, you know, the good thing is that no man was able to respond very quickly. Right. We were able to put those jobs out there the same day we got them. And we were able to put nurses. We were able to get applications in as quickly as we got the jobs to where the hospitals needed the most. Um, and we were able to do that with speed and accuracy, and we were able to land highly qualified clinicians to where they want it to go. Uh, again, it goes back to, you know, if you think of a place of, you know, what our clinicians are doing, they, they really ran towards this, uh, situation. And, uh, it was impressive. And I'm sitting in, you know, I'm sitting behind a computer and I'm really honored to try to put these nurses, uh, and these doctors in the places where they needed the most. So, uh, I was happy to be a part of the solution, but not to the same degree that our clinicians were part of the solution. Yeah.
Speaker 2:The, the, the, the real heroes, I guess, right. They're the ones with their feet on the ground and where you actually go into battle. So, so I guess the growth standpoint, so you said there was rapid growth in 2020 just to fill all these needs. How quickly was that happening? Like, can you guys not feel some of these needs quick enough? Like, what did that look like? How, like, cause I'm sure there was just so many roles that needed to be filled. So where you guys like, like the hiring process, what did that look like? Well, you guys just constantly like 24, 7 operations for basically Q1 Q2 last year of, of 2020. Like, because that was when COVID hit, hit the
Speaker 3:Hardest. Yeah. So there was, as you indicated, there was a huge demand for clinicians. There's always been a supply and demand imbalance for, uh, w with respect to clinicians, but we felt it more so now than we ever had. We saw a huge demand and we were trying to introduce these jobs for our nurses as quickly as we can and get those nurses to apply to those jobs as quickly as we can. And for sure some of the jobs we couldn't fill, uh, I don't think any agency out there was able to fill all the jobs they received. We were able, we were to do so at a very high quality, and we did fill a lot of jobs, but I think there's also in, in grant, you know, if you look at this industry, there's a lot of jobs that go unfilled, even when there's not a pandemic. I think what we were able to do is step into a place and actually improve the fill rate in certain cases, because we had a huge supply of nurses already, uh, and as, as nomad employees, but also we were able to acquire a lot of nurses that wanted to be empowered to search for these jobs themselves, as opposed to go down the traditional route of speaking to an individual, um, or getting calls from an individual that was saying, Hey, I have these jobs, if you're empowered to search for these jobs. And you know, that there's a thousand jobs, we were able to open up and widen that part of the funnel that allowed nurses and empowered them to search those jobs and actually intake these applications. And this is where we think technology is making a big breakthrough in healthcare staffing. Not only does it offer a delightful experience, a lot of transparency and enable, you know, us to pay our nurses very well, but it also allows the, it also tries to right-size the supply and demand imbalance, because, because of the way we can intake a lot of data. And that's, you know, one of the process of building this scalable company, um, that allows us to what we think is going to change the way healthcare staffing. For sure. For sure. Yeah. So, so I guess
Speaker 2:Really quickly, I don't want to spend too much time on it. Take me into what that process would look like on the nurses side of things on your employee side of things. So they get staffed, they're traveling, they're going directly to someone's house, or they go into a hospital. Is that a four a week? Is that for a day extended period of time and kind of, what does that look like from the employee side of things?
Speaker 3:Sure. So, um, if you focus on just say a nurse assignment on average, these nurses assignments at 13 weeks. So think about the nurses experience. They will search for jobs on their mobile phone or on their desktop, and they find a job that they liked that they're qualified for, and that will apply. And then we will end up, uh, making sure they get submitted into the actual job. So we have to go, you know, we, we do our own work and qualify them and just collect a lot of information. The nurse then starts in assignment probably, you know, anywhere from two weeks to a month later. And those nurses will then work for on average, say 13 weeks, that's the standard assignment length. And then at the end of that assignment, the nurse will find another assignment. And, you know, they often find another assignment with nomad because they just enjoy the experience. And that that's on average what it looks like now, there are a certain cases where some assignments are shorter, some of summits are longer, it varies, but overall that's, that's the nature of the assignment makes sense. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah. I wasn't curious what the timing would look like. Is someone just kind of, is it like it's every two days looking for something new to 13 weeks? It definitely makes it more,
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's part of the industry that does, uh, like for example, per diem, um, they may have, you know, shifts that they need to get filled just daily shifts. Um, so there are parts of industry where a lot of other, um, a lot of other companies are focused on, we're focused right now on, uh, the 13 week assignment and the travel nursing industry. Um, but you know, I think there, like I said, there's a lot of opportunity, uh, overall. Uh, and the other thing I'll just mention that you brought up, do the nurses actually go to someone's home. The nurses actually in, uh, uh, all of our clients are mostly just large hospital networks. So, uh, the nurses, the hospitals that aren't going to that,
Speaker 2:And you're, you're sending nurses around the country, right. It's not like the country within your area. They can go, they want to sign up to go to another state. They can basically try and assign themselves to do that. Yep. Very good. Awesome. So, so taking a step back, um, right. I'm curious to get your thoughts on the health tech industry as a whole. So you guys are obviously a big player and especially in the last 12 to 18 months, it's been, I mean, the opportunity there has just been massive for, for nomad health. So I'd be curious to get your thoughts on where the industry can go. There's been a lot of great advances and technological breakthrough. So just where do you think the industry is going? Where do you think some of the needs are not necessarily what your company's working on, or maybe what they are working on, but just kind of picking your brain a little bit. What, what do you see for the
Speaker 3:Future? So, I mean, healthcare is such a loaded term, right? And there's, there's so many different avenues there. Um, I will speak to it from my vantage point because I know there are much, uh, there are people that are better at talking to other parts of the healthcare industry, especially as it relates to technology. What would I see a lot? And I noticed this as soon as I joined is that there, there exists a lot of efficiency and inefficiency and overlapping of systems where automation can prove to not only maintain a degree of accuracy, but also shift kind of the value structure of, of where value can actually be created and had. So for example, you know, w I deal a lot with hospital building billing and time sheets and payroll systems. And I think there is a really big opportunity to remove a lot of the inefficiencies that exist there, as well as some of the inaccuracies. And I know, um, probably the hospitals and other channel partners, we have probably feel that same pain point. And, um, I have a feeling that, you know, healthcare, the, the behavior behaviors are always hard to change and healthcare has operated in a certain way for a long period of time. But now there is, uh, there is a lot of investment and there are a lot of smart people trying to improve this because they realize that there is a fundamental problem in the industry where there's a lot of money being spent. Uh, and there's a lot of room for technology to come in and improve the way that money is being spent. So it, so there can be value had by all stakeholders, patients, clinicians, um, you know, they can share in this, it doesn't need to be as expensive as some of this stuff is. Uh, so I think that there is a lot of inefficiencies that exist in a system. Um, I see it a lot from the back office, and I feel like we can improve that with technology because a lot of that can be automated. Um, you know, and I also think when you, when you start to think about healthcare staffing, um, there are a lot, there are a lot of products out there that try to improve the efficiency within healthcare staffing. And I think nomad is going to, if not a leader now it's going to become one in terms of, you know, making sure hospitals are staffed, uh, at the right, uh, at the right level so that they can actually become a very efficient organization and do what they want to do best, which is serve their patients. And, and I feel like nomad is going to be, you know, if not already, we're going to be pushing towards that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I mean, I mean, we, and not just in healthcare technology, but in, in, just in our everyday lives, we have an abundance of data, so right. Being able to have the systems to read the data and manipulate it, kind of tweak it to what we want it to say and, and having those right systems to automate it. And you're, I think you hit the nail on the head is building that automation. And I don't think it's just in your industry. I think it's across the board, across the board. A lot of companies just need to catch up right. With where we are on our technology, technological advances, um, and really building that up. So I think that would be definitely a big thing. And I can personally say that I am not a fan of time sheets as I have to do on myself. So yeah. Wait, ought to be that I am a hundred percent on board.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um, yeah, I, I, yeah, I think, you know, w we're, we're basically in the business of making sure our, our clinicians can get the jobs they want and we want to make that experience just an absolute delight for them. Cause they're working extremely hard day in and day out and we want to, we want to serve them. So anything we can do to make that experience better is what we're pushing towards. And I think technology is one of the answers to getting us closer there. Okay.
Speaker 2:No, I totally agree. So I'm gonna, I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit now, and I think this would be a good, good point for some of our listeners as maybe they're facing some of these. So what hurdles would you say you have faced during your time with other, at no matter one of your previous jobs, kind of something that you've learned during your experience that you have overcome from a company standpoint, some obstacles that you faced where you kind of had to pivot or change course, or you realize it was, it was a good learning curve.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it's a good question. I think oftentimes in early stage companies, when you are, when you, when you have a vision going from a to Z requires you going from B, C, D, and so on to get to Z, Z. And they're like, oh wow. That's and you know what? We need people to see Z. We need people to have that vision and look so far down the path, but, but the way to get there could be curvy and it's not as direct. And I think what I've seen oftentimes is a, and w the way I like to address it and I, and it takes, you know, uh, and it takes certain people to be able to do this is let's look at the hard truths. Let's look to the numbers, let's look at the data, let's say these, this is what we know. And, and rather than talk about, let's speculate about the future. Let's look, let's look at what we know right now. And let's continue to learn more about how to actually get there. What's the quickest path to get to Z. But in order to do that, it's, it's based on what actually occurred and then iterating on that and hypothesizing about what's going to occur the next month and the next month. And what did we get, right? What did we get wrong? What do we learn about? And you close that gap between knowledge and speculation. And I feel like that gets you on the right path. So the hard thing, and this is not new information, it's look at the hard truths of the business and acknowledge them and don't ignore them. And, you know, I think at nomad, we've done a tremendous job at that, to be honest, where we often look at, I know, I know it's, you know, data-driven companies, I hear it all the time too. And there is a lot of data out there, but there's not a lot of action as a result of that data. And maybe, maybe there is, but I know at nomad, we try to take action with our data. If we look at this data and we learn from it day in and day out, and I feel like that is something that we've adopted, uh, and it's, and it's really up to our business because ultimately it's, that is the pulse of behavior that we're seeing in our industry. And it allows us to make the right moves to help our clinicians and our clients that that's how you get to fulfill, I think the vision. So it sounds easy, but it's really not, because sometimes you have such a strong perspective on where you think things should be, that you often have a bias that is focused around the center of the universe that exists inside your head, but not outside and how the real world works. So I feel like you have to look at the heart truths and you have to respond to them. And that is something that I think is one of the differences. There's many differences between, you know, successful companies and not successful companies. But I think that's one of the differences between a successful businesses and not there, not like I said, there are many, um, but that's one area that I like to focus on because it requires a degree of discipline. And you have to unhinge yourself from your own internal biases and say, okay, how is the world working? I expect it to work this way, but if it's not working this way, I need to change. And I need to know how it's working. And that's where the data comes from.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And I, you know, a lot of people have their vision, right. They, they set out on their course. They go through, like you said, from a to Z, so they're, they're going along their journey and they have their vision. There's definitely some bias built in there, but kind of taking that step back throughout that journey and just saying, okay, am I where I want to be in my, I expect it to be, do I need to change course, do I need to pivot? Do I need to do something? Um, in order to get to my goal, you're like you said, facing those hard truths. It's, it's not always easy. It's not always to look not just introspective, but also just look when you're thinking of a company, looking at the numbers, looking at the data as a whole, and really taking it in and processing and seeing what you need to do as next steps, rather than just going through the ebbs and flows, because yeah. You could go down that journey and realize that you should've done. You should have looked back sooner while you had the time and you went too far down a rabbit hole and it's too late.
Speaker 3:Yeah, no, you're right. And I think the, one of the important pieces of that is it's not like let's look at the data at one point in time, it's developing the muscle to look at the data over and over again and seeing it and reflecting on not only what happened in the past six months, it's like, what happened the past week? What happened the past month? Uh, you know, our, what is this? Is this, is this something for, is this something we should be concerned about? Is it not why let's dig into it a little bit, let's learn. And you know, every, every, every month it's like a little test, you know, and, or a hypothesis and you try to learn more and learn more. Uh, and that's, I think that's what developing a strong business is all about. And getting to that Z is about learning information all along the way, so that you can respond the right way and really, you know, ultimately serve your clients and your clinicians or whoever your customers are the right way. It's, it's a constantly, it's a constant learning environment and data helps you learn. Yeah. Yeah. So, so
Speaker 2:I guess flipping to the other side of this equation, what would you say has been the most rewarding part of your job in your three years at nomad? Easy
Speaker 3:That's easy and it's, it's the people, it's the people, you know, like I got to meet Alexey the first, you know, when, when I, when I spoke to Alexa the first time I really enjoyed having a conversation with him. And over the past few years, and, you know, again, the relationship has grown, same thing with Justin. And now, you know, I have a team of people that I work with and the team within the company. I think, I think if you're around enthusiastic passionate people that are aligned, um, anything's possible. And that empowers me, that inspires me because the energy reciprocates throughout the organization, the inspiration reciprocates, when I see, we just had a meeting the other day and someone put together a document where I was like, oh my gosh, that's amazing. That person puts so much time into it. They, it was, it was sourced with a ton of data and it was just, it was, it was so well done. And, and we've seen that a lot in the organization, but I said, wow, you know, I thought to myself, it's like, you know, it's great to work at a place that has such discipline and rigor around some of the things that is we're trying to do that. It starts at the top, but it permeates the entire organization. And I feel like, you know, the people that I work with at nomad are always in search or in pursuit of this excellence that I like to do, or I like to pursue as an individual. Um, and it's great to be around that. Now that doesn't mean we don't make mistakes. It doesn't mean we don't stumble we're tolerant because people, we know their heart's in the right place and their, and their intellects in the right place. But being around that is a very special organism. It also, it's hard to build that, right. So you have to hire the right people for it. And it takes time to do that. You know, that's why I think, you know, you, you should hire slowly and get the right people on the bus for the right role and being, you know, the companies want to grow. So the people have to have the capacity to grow within them. And it's hard to capture that in like four rounds of interviews. Um, but you need to do your best at that. So I think, you know, you take your time hiring and ultimately it comes down to, I think the people you work with and the mission that you're on and if they are aligned and everyone's pursuing the same thing, then you know, the flywheel catches and it is, and it is beautiful.
Speaker 2:So it's funny you say that because I'd be curious, you were the first finance hire at your past two companies, right? Yeah. So, so I'd be curious. So you've had basically the opportunity to build out your full finance and accounting team. Um, and so the people, so I'd be curious to kind of pick your brain as to how you can, I mean, it's tough, right? The interview process is not easy, but judging someone on a couple of rounds of interviews. Do you have any tips there? Is there any like recommendations, like have you learned anything during that process of building out those teams?
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. Actually I have now, you know, as the first hire, the first finance hire, you know, you have to be, I call it, you got to go from bank statements to boardrooms, you know, so you have to span the entire spectrum of, you know, I got to get into the weeds. No, the bank statements, forget, forget about what the books and records say right now, because I need to own these numbers. So you've got to get so far into the weeds, but then you also have to zoom out. So you can explain things to your CEO and to the board about how things are working. And that spectrum of information is something that you own. So you have to contextualize all that. But also it requires a certain attitude that says, I need to roll up my sleeves. I need to dig in. And what I've learned is it's the first hires that I've made have been more about attitude, uh, and also complimentary to what I'm not that great at. I'm, I'm good enough at things, but, you know, I, I'm not a CPA. So I need, I needed someone as I was building on the team. I needed someone to come in and really own some of the controls around accounting and, and also they needed to have the right attitude, you know, so, and it's really hard. And I say attitude, because, you know, oftentimes we say cultural fit, et cetera, but you know, you can get a sense of an attitude from someone, uh, over a certain course of time, because not that we're working 24 hours a day, but like, if it's midnight, you want to be, you want to have fun working with that person still. It's like, you know, you're tired and I'm not saying we do that, but if you could work with someone 24 hours a day and they have the right attitudes, like I really like working with that person. Um, so what I've learned is that attitude matters and it's contagious. And the first few hires are the ones that are going to set the tone for your department, not let alone the company. Um, but in finance alone, I hired for attitude and skill set, uh, and ambition. And then, uh, and also just the compliment of what I wanted to feel good on a certain path. And I knew I needed help down another path, but I wanted to compliment that. So, um, there were like the first couple of hires, but then as the organization grew, I started seeing the functional needs, uh, expand because I wanted to take some things off the CEO's plate and the COO's plate, because that should live within my department, but the company was growing. So my role without taking those things on was expanding. So if I wanted to be better at my job and partner with my team, I wanted to, I wanted to assume some of those responsibilities, so they could be the best at their job, you know, and in order for me to do that, then I needed to start building out these functional departments in our organization. So, you know, the first hire was around accounting and then it started becoming more functional because we have different departments in our business, whether it's billing, payroll, accounting, et cetera. So I started building out those verticals and that's kind of how we've grown into the department we're in right now. Um, and that's how we're going to continue to grow so far. It's working out pretty well. Yeah. I think going back, I think the first fire, the first hire has to be around attitude and skill set that complements certain things. And then you have to respond to what is needed most in the organization as you grow. Uh, and that could be, you know, little functional silos or, or not. It just depends on your organization.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I, I, I think you're, you really hit the nail on the head there because I, I think attitude and personality are kind of at the forefront when I'm thinking of that process. I mean, you could, you could teach a lot of skills if someone doesn't have it. I mean, obviously you were looking for certain needs, so maybe things that you skills that you didn't have, you were looking for someone to fill those needs as well. Um, but I think you could teach a lot of things in a job. So, so reading someone's resume for what it is and saying they can do ABC. You might be able to teach someone that like, can I get along with this person? Is it going to be a short relationship? And my, like, I look at that stuff. I prioritize a lot of stuff for my mind. Not everyone obviously works that way, but
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's neat. Know another way to actually call out the word attitude. Just be a perspective on the work that you're doing. So, you know, in early stage companies, you're not off, you don't know exactly what you're doing six months from now, you have no idea, but I want someone to be excited about that. I want someone to be excited about learning something new, and if they come to the, if they come to the office or to now zoom meetings with this level of excitement, it says like, Hey, this is totally new. Yeah. I want to own this. Let me run with this. Let me learn about this. That's the attitude, because this is not, you know, Hey, come into the company and start checking the boxes. This is, we don't know what box you're going to have to check six months from now. So, but you're going to tell me what the box should be and where we need to really focus. And that's the attitude that I want where it's, I want to get after it. Um, and you know, I want to get better at it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Ride the wave. Just jump on, jump on the train. Cause we're, we're moving full steam ahead.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. So,
Speaker 2:So a couple of final questions I have for you, um, before we wrap up. So one is what is one thing that I think that one thing that you haven't, or maybe the company hasn't quite accomplished yet, right? Something that you're striving towards, what are one of your goals that maybe you want it to achieve in the last year or two years that maybe kind of got pushed by the wayside? Just because things have changed. Like you said, you don't know what you're doing six months from now. So the job is always changing, right? Um, yeah. What's kind of something that you're working towards and it could be, it doesn't have to be company specific, just maybe even something that your team you're trying to fill a role, or you're trying to work on building your, your, your systems or something, integrating automation, something to that effect.
Speaker 3:So I'll, uh, I'll answer this question. And I think one way to phrase it would be, you know, what mistakes did you make or what could you, what would you wish you had avoided, right. Potentially, and try to ease it a little softer than fine. That's fine. Um, I, I think over the past year, um, I think what we, so you go into the office day in and day out and you have your job to do, and the volume just starts packing up. And what I w w what I should have done. And some of the things that I've learned is once you realize that you need, and this was actually said to me, so I can't take credit for this, but once you realize you need someone or something, it's actually too late, because no, Madam is just, it's going and it's, but you have to, I've always taken the perspective of, I want to run kind of a lean back office, because I want all of our investment dollars to fund growth and value creation. So, you know, I can run through Google sheets and Excel, and I can deal with all this stuff, but sometimes I need help. And I feel like you have to, once, once I realized I need help, that's the point at which it was a little too late. So it's thinking about six months to a year from now and building the team so that when the volume does come in, you have someone to help you with that. So you can make sure nothing falls through the cracks now, um, you know, we've upgraded systems. I think one of the things we need to do is continue upgrading systems. That's an area that I wish we did a little earlier. Um, but now, now we need to do it and we're going to start doing, and we're going to do that. Uh, and when I say systems again, this is more, you know, finance side of things. Uh, and I'm speaking only from the perspective of like me and potentially your audience, which is more, you know, uh, finance and accounting related. It it's, um, it, it's thinking more about bringing on earlier capacity. When we always, we are often looking at dollars coming in and dollars going out, and you want to be very lean and responsible and discipline, but you still have to think six months down the road or a down the road and stress test the scenarios and say, what if this happens? Okay, well then if that happens, if we should have a system that can do this, we should have a team that can do this and try to plan a quarterly plan accordingly. You know, I'm not saying go out and hire a hundred percent finance team for a small organization because you have this a to Z vision, but you can kind of keep the pulse of certain things. And I think it's also, you know, I would like to make sure the team, uh, has, I want my team, my job is to make sure the team is going to be the best at their job. So you have to think six months down the road. And, uh, I w I, in certain areas, I've done that in other areas. I think I could have done better.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, that's, it's not easy to do it also, like you said, you, you don't necessarily know the volume you can expect for, you could budget for it and plan for what you're expecting the company to be in six months, 12 months, but hitting those marks and making sure it's, it's tough. Sometimes you just kind of you're playing catch up. Right. And it's not, it just happens.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yep.
Speaker 2:So to wrap up here, what, what recommendations I asked this question to all of our guests, what recommendations do you have for other founders, other executives that are really spearheading a startup or emerging technology company? Not, it doesn't have to be specific to the health tech industry as a whole, and any tips or tricks that you've learned that you think have worked well for you or your companies that you've experienced during your time career.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think, um, I think listening is extremely important. Listening to the people around you, listening to your clients, listening to your users, that you can't do enough of that. Um, I'm not saying don't make decisions because you don't want to be paralyzed in, in making those decisions. But I think listening to them often provides you with some information that you weren't expecting to hear, or that could help you become help you serve them better. So I think, I think it is making sure that you listen. Um, the other thing that I think founders, uh, should consider is, um, when you're building out your team, you know, I think culture starts at the top and I think founders should really, or, or even just executives in general, when you're building out a team, find people that have the same attitude or the attitude that you want to exemplify in the organization. Um, hiring people is so important. And oftentimes I was saying like, sometimes you, or, you know, if you, if you find out you need someone it's often too late, so you may be rushed into making a hiring decision. Um, so that's why I think building the team around really good people is one of the most important things you can do. The alternative to that is hiring someone that could potentially be toxic to the organization. And it could cause so much friction. So I would say that, you know, it's, it's the people you surround yourself with that it's going to make the organization that you want to exist in the future. So it's extremely important to get that right, and take your time and really understanding of what it is you need. Um, attitude starts at the top, starts with that. Yup. Yup. Awesome.
Speaker 2:Fantastic. That just about wraps up today's episode. Thank you for joining me today, Jess. I really
Speaker 3:Thank you, mark. I appreciate the time. It was great talking to you.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Learn more about nomad health. Feel free to visit nomad health.com and we will see you all on the next episode. Thank you for tuning in. If you liked it and want to hear more, you can follow us and subscribe and we'll see you next time on founded insec.