Imagine rising from a firefighter and paramedic to becoming a successful entrepreneur, with over 600 providers in your team? That's the amazing journey of Johnny Weber, co-founder of three thriving mobile IV practices. In our engaging conversation, we explore his unique path, focusing on his people-first approach that’s been instrumental in shaping his success in the IV space.
We're not talking about just numbers and profits; this is a story of fostering meaningful connections, cultivating kindness in the workplace, and making a tangible impact in people's lives. Johnny shares his passion for the medical side of running a mobile IV practice, illuminating how this business has transformed lives - from rescuing people from the grips of food poisoning to providing relief to chronic migraine sufferers.
In the backdrop of our enlightening chat, we delve into the critical role played by the American IV Association (AIVA) in the industry. Johnny stresses the need for stringent laws, regulations, and resources for mobile IV practices while discussing the benefits of IV treatments. Whether you're seeking to join the IV hydration therapy industry or are already a part of it, this conversation with Johnny Weber is bound to offer you insights, inspiration, and invaluable strategies. Tune in to explore a whole new facet of entrepreneurship in the IV space!
Johnny Weber
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weber-2056b9a1?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
About
My professional career began as a firefighter/paramedic for 17 years; 4 of which were in the United States Air Force.
In 2016, my journey into the IV Therapy industry started and changed my life forever. The passion I have for the industry and, more importantly, the dispatchers/providers/leaders/owners in the industry is nothing I’ve ever felt before.
I love to help others in this new industry not get caught up in the nonsense. Love what you do and work together with your competitors. Build up the entire pie. Not just your slice. ✊🏼
“People Over Profit” - Dale Partridge
Be kind. Be patient. Have integrity. Love the process.
IV Hydration Therapy Business Academy & Networking Event FL | Registration | Register by clicking on the link below!
https://www.americaniv.com/page/events
The Tap Podcast Host, Tyler Terry
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-terry-09518154/
American IV Association AIVA – Our Mission
The American IV Association (AIVA) is committed to its members and the advancement of the IV hydration therapy community and offers essential up-to-date compliance resources for members through training, events, detailed content, and other resources, including state-by-state requirements for licensing and certification, operations, and marketing. AIVA will track government enforcement activity, regulatory guidance, and emerging trends – translating the confusing body of information int
Imagine rising from a firefighter and paramedic to becoming a successful entrepreneur, with over 600 providers in your team? That's the amazing journey of Johnny Weber, co-founder of three thriving mobile IV practices. In our engaging conversation, we explore his unique path, focusing on his people-first approach that’s been instrumental in shaping his success in the IV space.
We're not talking about just numbers and profits; this is a story of fostering meaningful connections, cultivating kindness in the workplace, and making a tangible impact in people's lives. Johnny shares his passion for the medical side of running a mobile IV practice, illuminating how this business has transformed lives - from rescuing people from the grips of food poisoning to providing relief to chronic migraine sufferers.
In the backdrop of our enlightening chat, we delve into the critical role played by the American IV Association (AIVA) in the industry. Johnny stresses the need for stringent laws, regulations, and resources for mobile IV practices while discussing the benefits of IV treatments. Whether you're seeking to join the IV hydration therapy industry or are already a part of it, this conversation with Johnny Weber is bound to offer you insights, inspiration, and invaluable strategies. Tune in to explore a whole new facet of entrepreneurship in the IV space!
Johnny Weber
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-weber-2056b9a1?original_referer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F
About
My professional career began as a firefighter/paramedic for 17 years; 4 of which were in the United States Air Force.
In 2016, my journey into the IV Therapy industry started and changed my life forever. The passion I have for the industry and, more importantly, the dispatchers/providers/leaders/owners in the industry is nothing I’ve ever felt before.
I love to help others in this new industry not get caught up in the nonsense. Love what you do and work together with your competitors. Build up the entire pie. Not just your slice. ✊🏼
“People Over Profit” - Dale Partridge
Be kind. Be patient. Have integrity. Love the process.
IV Hydration Therapy Business Academy & Networking Event FL | Registration | Register by clicking on the link below!
https://www.americaniv.com/page/events
The Tap Podcast Host, Tyler Terry
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tyler-terry-09518154/
American IV Association AIVA – Our Mission
The American IV Association (AIVA) is committed to its members and the advancement of the IV hydration therapy community and offers essential up-to-date compliance resources for members through training, events, detailed content, and other resources, including state-by-state requirements for licensing and certification, operations, and marketing. AIVA will track government enforcement activity, regulatory guidance, and emerging trends – translating the confusing body of information int
Welcome to the TAP, the podcast that hydrates our listeners' minds with knowledge, expertise and gives a front-road ticket to be in the know about all things relating to the IV hydration therapy industry. Hey guys, welcome back to the TAP podcast. Today I have a very special guest. His name is Johnny Weber. Johnny is the co-founder of not just one but three different mobile IV practices And I'm actually going to turn the time over to him in a minute but he is the co-founder of Mobile IV Nurses, the co-founder of Rocky Mountain IV Medics and the co-founder of Lone Star IV Medics. Johnny, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for taking time out of your day.
Speaker 2:Thank you, appreciate it. Looking forward to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, of course. Well, Johnny, right off the bat, I'd love for you to tell our audience a little bit about you and also tell us how you got into the IV space.
Speaker 2:Sure. So it kind of started back when I joined the military when I was 19. Back in 2004, i joined the Air Force, became a firefighter in the Air Force, did that for about four years and then it located me out into Arizona where I got a civilian firefighter job. Did that for a little while and then became a paramedic because I started to fall in love with the healthcare aspect of the fire service. And after doing that for a little bit I reached out to BuddyMind that we did Jiu-Jitsu together, reached out to him, just gave an idea for the business that he was in. It was in the IV space And running on Facebook. It was a quick little message. I didn't really know him that well, but I knew him through the fire department and Jiu-Jitsu And that sparked the conversation.
Speaker 2:A little while later we did open up our own business back in 2016 in Arizona. That business got very popular. There weren't too many businesses out doing this in that timeframe. When we opened that company Shortly thereafter in 2020, he kept that business And then I moved on with mobile IV nurses. Our team has grown since then in August 2020. And, if I rewind a little bit, we did open up Rocky Mountain IV Medics in October of 2019. But since then we opened Lone Star IV Medics in 2021. And Mobile IV Nurses Florida we opened in 2022. So we've been kind of doing it since 2016, but really focusing on the growth in our team since 2019.
Speaker 1:Wow, That is incredible And I want to make sure I say this Thank you so much for your service to our country And just have so much appreciation for that. So thank you, thanks, and I'm sure all of our listeners are thinking the same thing, of course, and also I think it's really cool that you were a firefighter as well. As I was thinking about questions to ask you and kind of getting to know your background, the word that kept coming up was scale and scaling, and I'd love for you to talk to our audience about scaling your business, scaling your practice and what goes into that. I know it's harder than we think, it's harder than it looks, but can you talk a little bit?
Speaker 2:about scaling, definitely. So one thing that we've noticed with a lot of companies is they try to scale too fast, they try to push marketing too much, they try to just make sure that they're going to be the top, the number one, all those things that you can say about your business. I think one of the best things is to just focus on yourself, focus on the growth slowly, try and do organic reach, build your team up, make sure that they have the like-mindedness. And then one thing that we've always, i mean, kind of practiced within our company is people over profit, and a lot of people just kind of focus on the end goal And they put the, you know, the cart before the horse, as they say, and it sometimes clouds the ability to get to the point that you strive for. And if you're focused on trying to beat your competitors or anything like that, it just kind of slows down that process. So since we started that and we started thinking about the people over profit mentality, dale Prochridge wrote a book about it. If anybody wants to read it, it's an amazing book. He definitely talks about how you just focus on your team, you focus on the people within your company and then organization and you don't have to worry about the patients.
Speaker 2:When we first started the company in 2016, it was very much so targeted towards taking care of the patients, which is very, very important. But then, once 2020 came around and a lot of nurses and paramedics were overworked and kind of mistreated at some organizations at the hospital you know, other places that they were working We shifted our focus to make sure that our people were taken care of. We made sure that they were happy doing what they were doing, and our goal was to create that profit and through just taking care of our people. So then we didn't have to worry about the patients The patients like. We have so many good reviews, so many five star ratings that we didn't even have to work too hard for because we worked so hard at taking care of the people that were with us, and I think just scaling that way is one of the best ways to do it. I think that's part of our secret sauce. Quote unquote. We do have over 600 providers on our team now and we started with a very small team. So to see where it's gone from where we started, it's quite amazing, and we've only kept that focus on just in front of us. We keep our blinders on, we don't worry about the nonsense on the outside, and we also work with a lot of companies that are already in the space.
Speaker 2:If you go to a new market, one of the ways or you're coming into this business or you've been in the business for a while reach out to the other competitors. They're not competition to us, they're helping people get better, feel better. Spread the word about IV therapy And one thing that I always say, and I heard from one of my mentors, is a lot of people focus on their individual slice of pie And if you focus on the entire pie of an industry that's still fairly new even in the nursing world there's a lot of nurses are like what is this, the IV therapy, mobile IV therapy industry? it's still brand new. It's still. It did grow a whole lot through COVID, but right now it's still brand new. It's still just in its infancy stages.
Speaker 2:So working with other competitors quote, unquote is not a bad thing. Work together with them. If you can't cover a call, you're able to send that call to them. They will reciprocate. Maybe not at first. It does take a little while to get them to feel comfortable and be like hey, you're not my enemy, You're not trying to figure something out or anything like that. We don't ask for referral fee or anything like that, because we're in the same game. We want to make this the quality of care that we can bring to the patients, that we see the same with other companies And if another company finds out something regulations coming down or something that they haven't heard of, we'll share with them, they'll share with us And it's just a great synergy to work together. So, to answer your question in a very long way, scaling is don't worry about scaling too fast. Work together with people, try and do it organically and build up your team first before starting to scale.
Speaker 1:I love that, johnny. Thank you for sharing that. And when you talk about people over profit, you know that really resonates to me and I feel like we've done a good job on this podcast about talking about, you know, enhancing the patient's experience, differentiating the practice and really focusing on the patient, which is great. We should always do that. But I love what you brought up the fact of talking about taking care of your team, because if you take care of your team, they're gonna take care of your patients, and when you can have the best team, some of the best talent I mean the likelihood of them providing the best care obviously goes through the roof. So I love that. And when you talk about people over profit, it makes me think of culture. I can tell just from talking to that you're Invest it in the culture of your company and all your providers and your entire team. Can you talk about things that you're doing to build culture, like long term culture, but also to attract new talent?
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. So what we try and do? we try and be the highest paid company out there. A lot of companies did take our model and You know they use the same pay structure. They use the same same ways of doing things. Because I did help a few other companies start they are. Some of them are nationally recognized across the country. Some members are pretty small with a very small team, but I love to watch the differences of them kind of growing and stuff like that. But The one thing that I always ask I never have charged anybody for helping them or anything like that, because I love this industry, i have a passion for it And I quit my career as a firefighter parametric after 18 years to do this and focus on it solely on this.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest things is to make sure that you have people on your team that have the same mindsets, that have the same goals, that want to make sure in ensure that your team is going to be taken care of And they're heard, and if there's something that does come up, we ask for a solution from them. Like we, we never want to shut anybody down. We want it to be an open door policy, as they say, and that starts at the top for sure, to where you're able to do that with everybody below you. You know our president, pamela cloud. She's been absolutely huge with creating that and she's always the. You know she's a unicorn. We use that emoji for the unicorn for her and and rainbows and she's always looking at the positive about almost every situation. To try and look at it in a different way And make sure that everybody's heard, like if there's somebody that's not heard, they can create that, you know, talking amongst themselves, and they can spread that negativity and we just do not like that. So we try and make it a very welcoming, a very open form. We do have to maintain that, that professionalism, of course, and everything with our chats and all that.
Speaker 2:But one of the biggest things I think is just from our leaders, from our management team and you know our vice president, darla, like even our dispatchers talking to the patients at the beginning and the patients speaking to our providers professionally and being kind. There's some patients that are very rude on the phone and then we get our dispatchers talking to them and they're super wonderful talking to them. They kind of bring them down and then the provider gets there and they're already in a better place than they were when they called in. Because a lot of times the patients aren't happy when they're calling. They're not feeling good. Their husband had a miscalculation of adult beverages and he's not. You know, doing stuff around the house or helping with the kids, and you know we're trying to get them feeling better. But You know why is do call in and they want to get them taking care of better.
Speaker 2:So just having that first point of just positive environment kindness it's so silly and so easy to say, so cliche, but kindness goes so far in this type of industry and I think every business, but especially in this industry, because we are hands on, we're coming into people's homes and we're speaking to them personally. So if we can start at the very beginning our customer experience specialists, aka our dispatchers they are absolutely wonderful at starting that to where our providers then get on scene and they're happy or they're in a better place, and you know the providers are happy. If there is an experience that we don't feel comfortable with, we always side with our provider, we will always back them up And you know, just them having that support, i believe goes a long way and that they're heard I'm not as involved with maintaining that anymore, but that's what we did start at Last year. We did focus on a lot of the legality things of the IB industry because of every, all the regulations and that's where Ava is coming in and helping us tremendously.
Speaker 2:So, taking how, what we learned there, and then, as we've grown, it's got a little bit more difficult to maintain that. You know, continuity of just kindness, professionalism, happiness around the workplace. You know we're all remote So it's a little bit difficult, but what we're doing this year is making sure that we're going out and doing more education seminar type deals with our teams and you know my goal someday is to be able to invite anybody to those, so anybody in the industry, not just our team. I mean, why not include other people to learn, to better support, you know, the entire industry of the mobile IV therapy and IV therapy as whole.
Speaker 1:Well, johnny, i had a lot of questions for you, but as you talk, i'm like we can talk just about this or we could sit and break up and just talk about this. So I appreciate all the knowledge that you've already dropped just in this episode. And when you talked about kindness, i couldn't agree more. I feel like it's one of the like. It's cliche, but it's one of the easiest things to do but also one of the most difficult things to expect, and you would think that everybody would just be kind, but it really does go a long way, no matter what it is.
Speaker 1:If you're at I mean, obviously I love the Chick-fil-A model, but like, yeah, you can look at just that Chick-fil-A model and what happens there, and of course you hope it's genuine. But I love, love, love what you said there about kindness. I do want to fill this back just a little bit, and I know I talked about scaling your team. But what about scaling your processes? When I say processes, i'm thinking software or regimens. What are you doing, or what have you done, to scale your processes as you're growing?
Speaker 2:Sure, there's I mean, i always there's a couple of quick classes or courses that you can do out there that you know, help you get to the point of you know having your own business, and you can download the software and it's going to help you out with everything. One of the things I'm extremely grateful for is my first business partner that I had. We worked through a whole lot of trials and things that we didn't really know at first and we learned from them. And every time that we had a hard thing come down on us regulation or whatever we had to adjust and adapt to what was going on. And I think that's helped us tremendously because if you just get handed a book, if you get handed a degree, you're not going to have that appreciation for the work that you put in and all the hard times and all the blood, sweat and tears.
Speaker 2:And you know, i think I think part of that process is how we scale. But, like systems and things like that, you can do so many things just on Facebook, instagram, reaching out to people privately. You can influence or influencers are huge. I would recommend using an influencer in your local area so that way they're not like all out and about, even like a popular real estate agent. They're one of the best people at selling themselves and selling a product that they believe in. So when you know somebody and or you look up to somebody or follow them and then they're telling you about a service that was wonderful and they then feel good, all that stuff that goes a long way with the people that are following. I think one of the biggest ways to scale and you know I quote unquote on scale as well is keeping that customer like connection. So when your provider goes out and sees that patient, they can reach out to the patient the day after, reach out to them, see how they're doing, check in on them. If they had a good experience, they can definitely send them a Google review or you want to leave that review.
Speaker 2:Sometimes we would ask our patients and one of the things that I would do with this just a touch on it and it does help is if you're with the patient and you're doing the service and you can tell, you can kind of feel how the services going, how they're talking. You can also look at their age, demographic and at the end when I leave it would stick, and nine times out of 10 at work, because I'd leave with a silly joke of like hey, you know, i hope you enjoyed your service today. If you did, you can definitely leave us a review on Google or Facebook. Or if you didn't have a good experience, then you can reach out to Tom on MySpace and leave review over there. He'll listen to you and everything you take care of, and that usually would get a little chuckle. You know, same thing And it does have to be the right age, demographic, because some people don't even know what MySpace is anymore. But you would get that continuing contact with the patient. They would laugh at that and then if they didn't leave a review because we could see that and see if we got another review, especially at the beginning we'd reach out and be like wait, i didn't see a review on Tom's page, did you? Tom didn't let me know that you had a bad experience, did you have a good experience? and then just do a little fun, banter back and forth that sticks with people, resonates with people, and then you can kind of continue that on And I think a lot of people focus on, like paying a bunch of money on Google ads, which we do.
Speaker 2:We spend a lot of money on Google ads just because we want to be at the forefront, we want to be on the first page, we want to get out there and make sure that we're getting calls to our team. We try our hardest doing it that way. But there's also other strategies on social media to where you don't even have to pay any money for that, because it's very expensive to get out there. So reaching out to your previous clients is huge. Keeping that contact, making sure that they know who you are. Don't do it over the top You don't want to have them sending you to junk mail or anything like that but just continuing that conversation. It's like a friendship. A lot of our providers do build that friendship with their clients, like to where they're getting invited over to Thanksgiving dinner and weddings and stuff like that.
Speaker 2:It's pretty amazing to see the relationships that you can build through this, because it's not like a hospital where you treat the patient and then you don't know what happens to them. It's not like the fire department where you treat a patient, you take them to the hospital. You don't know if they live or die. It gets to that point where you're just like, oh my goodness, how did they go, and that always sits with us. I wonder if they're doing well at this. You can reach out to them and be like hey, how are you doing? How is this going? Is there anything that we can improve on? I think that's one of the biggest ways of scale is literally to stay in contact with the people that you've already made contact with and have enjoyed your services.
Speaker 1:I really like that. It feels like a grassroots approach. It's not going too fast or having to be too edgy or doing something too new. It's remembering just that talk track Anybody listening here could use that talk track that you had to end with a joke with Tom from MySpace. Obviously, depending on the demographic, a 25-year-old is probably not going to know, but somebody in their mid-to-late 30s is definitely going to know.
Speaker 1:I know or even really, I'd say, in your 30s. I really like that. You should think yours a little bit here and I want to be respectful of your time. but I have a few more questions for you. Can you shed light on what about having your own mobile IV company attracted you to start that? Just talking about what is the most important aspect of owning a mobile IV company?
Speaker 2:Well, at the beginning, like I said before, i was very much so patient driven. I wanted to take care of people. That's why I became a firefighter. That's why I became a paramedic. I love the medical aspect. I love being able to walk.
Speaker 2:Somebody go from. You know, having food poisoning That's one of my favorite sicknesses. To help out is somebody who has food poisoning that has waited till the last minute. They have expelled all everything out of their body. They're not feeling good. Their stomach is like a drying up sponge on your kitchen sink, to where it's like. It's just thirsty, it needs everything and you're just hunched over.
Speaker 2:You're cramping up and you get to go in there, get to get them hydrated extremely fast, compared to if you're going to use oral intake with water or fluids. You're going to not retain all of it, it's going to run right through you because now you don't have all the vitamin, nutrients, everything to retain it. You're not going to take it in, it's just going to flow right through you. So you're not able to eat, you're not able to drink at those times. So when you go in there and you get to hook them up with the IV, get them hooked up. They feel great. They're already sitting up by the end of the IV and you're just like this is good, This is good work. It works in the home. You don't have to go to the hospital, which is a petri dish at times, and you don't have to expose you or your family to another illness that you could bring home to your other loved ones. So after COVID, us being mobile going in there, it's a very controlled environment. If somebody is sick, we can mask up, we can use our PPE. That will help us not spread to other people in the home or ourselves or our families. So that was our first and foremost initial thought of why IV therapy was awesome.
Speaker 2:Then I started seeing the changes that were made in people's lives. The people on our team, the individuals that put so much effort and time into our business to where they can now do this as their sole income. They quit their careers as firemen and firewomen and nurses and they're out of the hospital, out of that grind that they've been doing for 17 years. Our president, she was in the PICU at one of the largest and best children's hospitals in the country, at PCH, phoenix Children's, and she was able to quit that, even though that was an amazing career for her, and it was an amazing thing that she does, and there are special people for that. Now she has another source to be able to come home to her kids all the time, or be at home with her kids all the time, and she gets to still be able to take care of people and love on them.
Speaker 2:Me personally, my passion is now on with people, with the people that are within our organization. I revert back to that the people over profit mentality. That's where I'm at right now. I will say, though, that we have seen a lot of companies that have gotten started within our company and outside of our company to where they think that it's going to be this amazing thing, to where you get to take care of your patients and you get to care for them and use your knowledge and everything to help them become better, and it's sometimes the business aspect of it takes away from that love and that passion, and I felt that. But then I quickly moved on to taking care of the people within our organization, and it turned into a different type of passion. At the beginning it was very much patient driven, health based, and then it turned into making sure that we're passionate about the ones that, anybody that wants to do this. That's where I'm at. I'm passionate about the entire industry, anybody that wants to start their business, anybody that wants to improve their business or do something different in this whole industry. I'm all about it because I just it changed my life for the better and I haven't looked back since and that's where I drive and I continue to drive.
Speaker 2:But I will say, owning your own business and working for a business kind of as a 1099 subcontractor type deal is very similar, except you don't have to deal with the other things that business comes into, where you kind of lose the fun of being able to just take care of your patients. That's why we like to have the subcontracted 1099 type nurses. They can have their own LLC, they can have their own deductions, their own time, they work whenever they like. We never put a schedule on them. They work whenever, and freedom is.
Speaker 2:One of the biggest aspects of this is that I choose. I don't choose anymore, but when I did work and I did run calls, that's when I chose when to work. I chose when I wanted to have time with my family. I chose when I wanted to work hard all day and run 18 IVs or whatever it was. Once I got to the point where I was the business owner and we had to scale in a different way and it took more time out of me. That's when I kind of started losing that, i guess, passion with the patients and it turned into passion for the people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Thank you for sharing that, johnny. Honestly, it's super powerful. I feel like this has already been one of my favorite episodes that we've recorded and on this I've learned I've already learned a lot. What I love most, yeah, no, i'm serious. What I love most is so Shark Tank's, one of my favorite shows, and I always love hearing entrepreneurs and how they came up with their idea or what sparked it, what sparked that invention, or how did they get connected to that product, service, whatever it is What I love.
Speaker 1:As I'm sitting here listening to you, i'm like, wait a second. Johnny was a firefighter and a paramedic. He was providing medicine or medical care to people Mobile medical care to people but you didn't have that element of knowing, like you said, how they were doing. After course, you hope you could, but now you're actually able to provide mobile medical care. That is making somebody feel good and you can actually track it and trace it and hopefully even create a deeper connection for them to continue. Coming back to your practice, so super powerful, and I know there's so much more to that. That's one little glimpse or one viewpoint, but anyways, i was just thinking like, wow, it makes sense. I love your connection to the IV hydration industry. One of my next questions actually relates to Ava, the American IV Association. What are you most excited about as you've learned about Ava, as you've experienced Ava? What would you like to share with our audience in relation to that?
Speaker 2:Well, i mean, ava is something that our team we started a American IV Association as well. It just wasn't. We were in the process of it. We had our violas, we had our officers, we had everybody in. We had a farm deed that's also a naturopath. We had a bunch of people that were going to be on the board, but then we got an email one day through Ava and it was actually Gina who emailed us or whatever, and I'm like whoa, i'm like this is kind of like what we're doing.
Speaker 2:So then we looked into it more and the only reason why we were starting that is because there wasn't anything out there. We didn't have the time or the resources to kind of give up for that. so it's kind of slow rolling. Once we saw that, and once we saw that Florida Health Care Law and Jeff Cohen, like once that came out and we saw that we're like, oh my goodness, this is exactly what we need, because there are a lot of people out there, a lot of governments out there in the states that don't like this, but they don't have the research, they don't have the resources to reach out to us and see and we have the book for them Like we want to give them. This is our history, this is what we've done. This is how many patients we've seen and how many negative responses we've had. So we have the data to show them. But we haven't been able to do that in the timely manner because we've only been technically in business with our organization since 2019. So I mean, it hasn't been that long. And also going through COVID and everything like that like we couldn't get in there. So when Ava came around, we were just ecstatic about it and they've been doing awesome. They've been doing wonderful to find out those laws that we have to abide by and then the ones that we have to you know teeter on that, because there are some that aren't. They're still in the gray area. We don't like operating in the gray area, but hopefully someday we'll have it online to where everybody can just go to Ava, get all the laws in each state and then they're able to know what they can and can't do.
Speaker 2:For instance, in Florida there's a lot of paramedics that are operating doing IV therapy In Florida. You cannot do that as a paramedic. You can be an RN out there, which I don't agree with because I'm a paramedic and I'm biased, but I feel like we're one of the best at recognizing sick or not sick. One of the biggest dangers with this is not recognizing when somebody is sick and they cannot get an IV from us, they need to go to the ER. If somebody has CHF, ckd, things like that that we cannot treat, that's super dangerous to add more fluid to them. You know, those are the types of things that we love, that we have a lot of paramedics and paramedic RNs as well. Rns are much better at taking care of patients long term. I believe that paramedics are great at recognizing things really quickly.
Speaker 2:So in Florida you can't use paramedics. There are companies that still do. It's teetering on that gray area but, like in Colorado, you can, because they are not called paramedics, they're called IV specialists or something like that instead of using an EMS term. So that's kind of where ABA comes in to make sure that we're operating in the right way and not in that gray area to where we can have the laws drawn black and white as closely as possible And then, if it's not drawn in black and white, then we can have, like ABA can go to the states, make sure that they go to the lobbyists or whatever whoever is in charge of that. They can give them the book and then they can put it into into law, to where we don't have to worry about somebody in government coming in and saying I don't like this or I heard something bad about this, and then they shut it down.
Speaker 2:There are way too many people out there that benefit from this, that don't need to go to the hospital.
Speaker 2:People that just get reoccurring chronic migraines that we can treat in the home without narcotics is so much more beneficial than going to the hospital, being exposed to the flu or any other illnesses, and then you go there and you get narcotics. Narcotics aren't good for you, i don't care who says it. Yes, they are needed for certain things, but if we can take that migraine away with some you know regalin, toretol, you know benadryl if needed, you know those types of things magnesium magnesium is huge with migraines. It helps so much with the vasodilation. It just helps the patient not have that migraine anymore and it'll let them rest and let them heal up and then they're good. You know, that's one of the biggest parts of ABA and why we were so excited about it is one they gave us more opportunity to focus on our industry and our businesses to grow, and you know we could work with them Side by side instead of trying to create our own. It was much, much better to see them further ahead of us and we were happy when they came through.
Speaker 1:That's perfect And for our listeners I mean, you're going to get straight from the source, from someone who saw the need, was in the process of creating something just like ABA, but obviously, with being so busy and so focused on what you do every day, the fact that Gina and Jeff were able to come together and the rest of the founders of ABA were able to come together to provide the solution and that could be there their main thing, and providing value and providing all those resources I mean I love that this came straight from you and you can actually share the value and the benefits and, hopefully, the future vision of Ava. So, johnny, i just want to say thank you so much for your time. I will. I want to just pass the time over to you one more time to share any final thoughts, anything that's on your mind that you'd like to share with the audience. It could be anything And then we'll end the podcast.
Speaker 2:Sure, i mean one of the things that I just tell everybody. It's kind of like Gary Vee says Gary Vaynerchuk, he always says just you know, take it. I mean, respect the process, like don't go too fast. A lot of people got into this industry, especially, you know, like business owners through COVID. If you don't like it, if you don't like running that business, don't just shut down. Don't just run away Like don't stop doing what you're doing, try and reach out to another company, try and get involved with them. If you don't like doing the actual, like business side of things, trust the process of growth too.
Speaker 2:A lot of people try and rush in there and try and get to this number or try and get to this many patients or whatever. If you just slow, roll it and you take care of each individual client, one patient can turn into 100, 100 can turn into 10,000. It really does grow slowly but surely. Our repeat customer base is about 40 to 45%, so that's a huge number when you make sure that you're doing the right thing. So, and always just focus on doing the right thing, don't try and go outside, don't push too hard, don't don't try to stretch anything, don't try and not pay your people, because you know if somebody has high blood pressure or whatever and you're like, oh well, sorry, get them on the next one, we always compensate our providers if they go out to any patient. Even if it was a mistake on on their end, if they missed the IV, even we still compensate them. They took time out of their day to go try and help somebody, and if they did end up having a tough stick, we will try our hardest to get it and we'll make sure that we take care of the patient, but just try not to take advantage of your people.
Speaker 2:I say it all the time and I said it here kindness goes a long way And, like you said, it's very, very easy to be kind, extremely easy to be kind. It's hard to set your pride aside and it's hard to set your your like when quote unquote like you can definitely be kind with any single person out there. Your team needs to be the forefront of that, though. We want to take care of our patients, but if you don't take care of your team and you have a disgruntled employee or or nurse with you or paramedic, it does not work out for the best, and we've seen that happen And we won't let that happen again.
Speaker 2:We came from a pretty toxic work environment, and if you're in a toxic work environment, find somebody else. There's another business out there that deserves you, and there's a lot of companies out there that do mistreat their people. They either have a big investor or they started early and then they have a large team and they they just aren't slowing down And but it still creates a toxic work environment. You can find somebody better. So there's plenty of businesses out there. If you can't find one, reach out to me and I'll find one for you, because we have a lot of relationships all over the country And we love doing business with like minded individuals.
Speaker 1:Johnny, again, it was such a pleasure having you on the show today And I would love to have you back. I very much respect your time And I already look up to you just from what I've learned today on this podcast. Thank you for being so genuine in regards to being willing to help others. I mean, i know you mentioned you don't even charge people to give them some insight and advice and to consult them just to better the industry. So I just want to say thank you And again, we'd love to have you back on the podcast.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that I'm very long winded, as you can tell, but I love this industry and. I'm definitely passionate about it, so I'll be back anytime.
Speaker 1:Okay, perfect, well, thank you so much, johnny. Thank you, do me a favor And if you enjoyed this episode, be sure to hit that subscribe button so that you're notified when our next episode is posted. Also, rate and review this podcast and share it with any of your friends and colleagues. The TAP podcast is brought to you by the American IV Association, also known as AVA. The American IV Association works to deliver training, education, legal compliance and business excellence to advance the IV hydration therapy industry. Ava is for industry professionals who want to successfully navigate the complex and ever-evolving regulatory and business landscape of the IV hydration therapy industry, addressing for members the most important legal and compliance topics. We proudly offer member benefits that enhance your ability to sustain and grow your practice or operations in compliance with laws, regulations and best practices. Stay current, compliant and fully informed with the American IV Association. Join today to learn how AVA can benefit you.