Outbound Contact Center

E8: Navigating career transitions and scaling startups with Robby Romance of HealthBird

• Courtland Nicholas • Season 1 • Episode 8

Share episode

In this episode of the Outbound Contact Center Podcast, we dive into the dynamic journey of Robby Romance, Director of Strategic Partnerships at HealthBird, as he shares his remarkable transition from a career in photography to the world of health insurance. Joined by Alex Levin, Co-founder and CEO of Regal, Robby reflects on his diverse professional path and offers valuable insights for entrepreneurs navigating the complexities of startup growth and industry regulation.


Main Topics Covered:

  1. Introduction to HealthBird: Robby Romance provides an overview of HealthBird, a health insurance solution focused on self-enrollment and AI-guided selection tools.
  2. Career Evolution: From photography to biotech startups, Robby discusses his journey through various roles and industries, highlighting the pivotal moments that shaped his trajectory.
  3. Lessons Learned: Robby reflects on the importance of resilience, continuous learning, and mindfulness in navigating career transitions and overcoming challenges.
  4. Challenges and Opportunities in Health Insurance: Alex and Robby explore the impact of regulatory changes and political dynamics on the health insurance industry, emphasizing the need for adaptability and strategic foresight.
  5. Scaling a Startup: Robby shares insights into HealthBird's growth strategy, including the transition from B2C to B2B and the significance of building a cohesive team and prioritizing resource allocation.
  6. Leveraging Technology: The conversation delves into the role of technology, data personalization, and customer-centric approaches in driving sales effectiveness and fostering long-term customer relationships.
  7. Looking Ahead: Robby discusses the future outlook for HealthBird amid evolving market trends and regulatory landscapes, highlighting the importance of agility and innovation in staying ahead of the curve.

To learn more about everything Outbound Contact Center, read more posts at regal.io/blog or email us at hello@regal.io.

Alex Levin:

Hi, this is Alex, the co founder and CEO of Regal, and I'm here with Robby from HealthBird. So Robby, to get us started, maybe tell us a little about HealthBird and then we'll jump right in.

Robby Romance:

Definitely. So I am Robby Romance. I'm the Director of Strategic Partnerships here at HealthBird. HealthBird is a health insurance solution for the common person. What we are is a self enrollment platform with educational pieces, as well as an AI guided selection tool, in order to give our users the best health insurance plans possible.

Alex Levin:

Cool. And so, I think a lot of folks are interested in, how you got to where you are today. I know sort of you've had a very a variety of roles like in, in your life, which is interesting. So maybe start with college. Like when you left, did you know what you wanted to do?

Robby Romance:

Yeah, absolutely. So if you asked me when I was, 22 years old, I would have told you definitely I know what I'm going to do for the next, 50 years of my life. That was very wrong. So what I was doing at that time. I was a creative. I was working as a photographer and that began during my time at Florida State University. That was, a desire to fulfill my creative passion of photography, and it also got the bonus perk of, working with our national championship football team at the time. So I was living life, working for, all my favorite sports teams, doing what I love, taking pictures so I thought that was the answer for me. From there, I took that experience and I took a job with the Buffalo Bills of the NFL. Again, I was on cloud nine. I was working for one of my favorite football teams. I was traveling all over the country. I was around some absolutely amazing professionals and just getting to learn from them all day, every day. But what that ended up being was a passion. Exactly that. There, there was something that was missing within either my career or my life. I knew, while I enjoyed taking pictures, it wasn't meeting ends with other aspects. So that is when I decided to, jump into a formal business role. Around that time, some former colleagues of mine were building a biotech company known as Green Scientific. And that company was something I had had on my mind, something I had envisioned for myself, as the supplementary role to to working in photography. So I ended up taking a client facing role with Green Scientific that quickly became a very successful startup into a growth stage company, all the way eventually to a public offering. And in that role, I started as a, answering tickets as a client specialist, basically. Bottom of the barrel customer support. I took that into a director position within a year and a half. What I had in me was a hunger to succeed. I had known that relentless mentality from, being an independent photographer, trying to pick up, whatever oddball job was next, if you're not working for your main contractor. So what that was, it really. Allowed me to not only bring in, a bunch of new revenue for this company, but I was just so eager to learn. I felt as if I had not, truly learned aspects of business working in the creative world. So there was just such a hunger there at that time that I. Massively succeeded at that company. I'll say which ended up opening quite a few more doors for me, including healthcare, eventually. So yeah, within Green Scientific, Green Scientific was acquired last year by a company called Smithers. That is another larger biotech company. And from that I left and went into a larger pharmaceutical biotech organization known as Tentamus. Tentamus is a Berlin, Germany based conglomerate of laboratories. Essentially, I was tasked with the role of kicking off two of their operations in America as they began to expand internationally. I was there for about a year, and at that point, I was receiving calls from some of my former green scientific colleagues that they had a new company. They're working on, and it was going to be something totally different. It wasn't going to be biotech, but we were going to deal with people's health and it was going to be health insurance. So, hearing that and just knowing the characters I was dealing with it was a pretty easy, yes for me. These are a group of people that we not only cohesively worked together in such success previously, but we were taking on a new venture. Something that, to be quite honest, a few of us had experience in, but a few of us didn't and we were eager to get that experience. So that was really, the, the basis for me coming to HealthBird and we're, we're rapidly growing these days and, and, we're bringing in more of those former colleagues. So it's, it's been a great journey to see over two separate organizations, kind of the, the same faces making their way around. It's, it's always great to win with your friends.

Alex Levin:

Yeah. I mean, it's fantastic that you get to work with them all over again.

Robby Romance:

Yep.

Alex Levin:

But, big change from like a biotech firm to now being a consumer company, that, that takes a lot. I mean, as you, as you think back, like, is there any advice you'd give your younger self, like when you were, in college as a photographer that you, is there anything you would do differently?

Robby Romance:

I mean, any advice I'd give myself, I would, while I'd love to give myself, my, my current set of knowledge and skills and just, place myself back in, a freshman in college. It's just simply not realistic. And the way I did, build these skills was through failing, massively failing. There's such a beauty in learning through failure and continuously growing that route. I would have no idea, that the photography wasn't the lane I wanted to be in. If I didn't take that approach, I could see myself going straight into business and kicking myself for not being creative. So, it was really, an either or situation that I have grown through by really just taking it all on. So as far as something I wish I knew earlier in my career, I'll say not much cause I've learned so much, but one, if anything, that I'll give you mindfulness. I was so motivated, so hungry early in my career, 60, 70 hour weeks, felt like nothing to me cause I knew it was on the other end of them. That that was that was something that I truly didn't understand. I knew how to hit the gas. I didn't know how to hit the brakes. So so I'll say if I could go back to, my 22 year old self, I'm gonna teach him some basics of meditation, teach him how to accumulate energy before spend it and teach him how to truly rest.

Alex Levin:

yeah, for sure. It's good advice. So, as you think about, like, the, the sort of path Healthbird's been on, what, what's, what's sort of come easily for the company and, like, what have some of the challenges been where, really, you've had to figure out some harder things?

Robby Romance:

Yeah, definitely. So with the experience of our team coming into here, one thing we knew how to do, we knew how to sell insurance. Plain and simple. Our CEO, Ariel Dominguez has already came from a growth stage health insurance organization. He sold that company and now he's working on HealthBird. So we, we have the experience of very successful minds in insurance. So coming together, one thing they knew how to do was sell insurance. Now, as far as that challenge in selling insurance, it's easy to sell insurance to one person to ten people to a hundred. We're trying to sell insurance to a million. So that has really been, the biggest challenge in accessing, the largest amount of clientele we can, whether that be through marketing efforts, whether that be through our own internal tech that we're building out whether that be through strategic partners such as Regal and how we access them that would be, the biggest challenge is expanding, on what we already are experts at.

Alex Levin:

Yeah, and why why did you guys start using regal?

Robby Romance:

Yeah, so as far as regal, I mean that I mean I'm a bit newer into the regal use so I'll tell you I Have I can get I can go all day on this one But as far as the outbound issues we were dealing with before, you know They were really countless and that's the main thing regal helped us solve, our outbound sales motion. It was pretty disjointed there's a bunch of different moving pieces that weren't synchronous and what Regal did, Regal came in and not only increased our answer rates, because that was a big issue we were struggling to even get on the phone. They increased that as well as bringing our sales process together, whether it be getting some cohesion between our SMS and our calls and our, we have a customer service line that's coming in with info and we need to get that info out. So, really from an organization. Standpoint, Regal has gotten us into such a better flow of things that can really, allow us to focus on the things we want to grow in.

Alex Levin:

Great. And as you think about you know What what you guys need to do over the next year or two? Like what are the the critical things as a business that you need to get right?

Robby Romance:

Yeah, absolutely. So this is a huge year for us, it's our second official year in business, the first year, maybe a little more leeway, we're experimenting with things. Now within, what we got to get right this year, we're, we're moving on to our business as a whole is business to consumer B2C. We're now working on our B2B angle. It's been worked a bit in the past, but that's a big one moving into the future. We've perfected essentially how to sell insurance on a B2C manner. Now the goal is to do it in a B2B manner. And really taking that, making sure we have the resources allocated properly, making sure the core of our business, the B2C, is not suffering at all because of our focus onto the B2B aspects. That is the biggest challenge we are currently facing. And how you do that, that's, it comes first and foremost with your people, you have to have the right people in the right projects whether that means hiring more or not, that's been really, really a big thing. We've expanded from 0 to almost 200 employees now in a year, and, we understand that, maybe some were over hired, maybe some were under hired. It's a matter of trying to perfect that. And, I think we're on the right path as far as our new B2B ventures.

Alex Levin:

Yeah I mean to your point you guys have grown very quickly and it's a challenge to Keep up with all that growth if nothing else. I mean in your markets There's so many companies that either are still doing it offline, so they're still doing it like completely paper and pencil the old way, or they moved online and their strategy has been great. We're going to do it online, but we're going to do it as efficiently as possible and treat everybody the same. And the problem with that is that, it has diminishing returns, like companies that are calling everybody the same and. Treating everybody the same, see lower answer rates, see lower conversion, don't win, a higher percentage of these deals. And so they really struggle in the long term. So I think part of what we love working with you guys on is how do you actually create, differentiated experience for each customer. So use data to personalize the outreach. With the right channels, the right customer, the right mobile, the right message to drive like the best possible outcome that you can. And ultimately like that puts you in a position where you can build a lifetime relationship with that customer and really keep them for a long time. So. I know you guys just went through your, like, very, very high period at the end of last year as customers were choosing their health care, and now you get an opportunity to go and invest in some new projects. So it's always exciting to, like, to work with you guys on that stuff. I mean, looking, looking forward as you think about what comes next, not just in your industry, but, w, across these, these, companies in your space, like, what do you think is coming down the pipe? Like, what do you think is happening? Is

Robby Romance:

As far as what's coming down the pipe, I'll have a much better idea in the health insurance world if I could tell you after the election. But that it's it really is

Alex Levin:

decider? Like if the Democrats win one thing, if the Republicans win another,

Robby Romance:

exactly that. Yeah. And we've seen in the past with within either either through covid, there are some very pro health insurance policies with the Republican office. And then, the Democrats have a much different take on it. So, being that we are selling essentially a, a government product and ACA insurance, the, the election is, is going to be such a deciding factor for us. Now, as far

Alex Levin:

party would result in better business for you guys?

Robby Romance:

mean, being that we do sell what we would call Obamacare I would say if it stays, if it stays blue, that would be positive for us, but there are positives and negatives to, to both sides for us.

Alex Levin:

is it just the, the state level politicians that matter or do the federal, like who's in the white house matter?

Robby Romance:

Absolutely. It matters on a federal level as well. Just insurance being on a state to state basis. There are also states that are federally mandated. So, while we deal with, state governments for individual licensing, et cetera, we do deal with federal government for those federally mandated states. So if we want to do business in California or New York that is taken and handled on a federal level.

Alex Levin:

I mean, it's one of the challenges and opportunities to working in a highly regulated industry is there will be changes. And if you are the company that can understand how to work with those changes best, you can grow at least more than your competitors, even if absolutely less. But yeah, you know that you could definitely be thrown a curve ball very quickly in regulated industries.

Robby Romance:

most definitely.

Alex Levin:

So that's something you guys will watch very quickly. I mean as you think about the sort of things that, that you guys should have done or could have done earlier. Like you've been in a couple of these startups now. Like what advice do you have to folks who are starting companies? Like what do you think people should start thinking about earlier than they usually do?

Robby Romance:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's going to go without saying having the right team first and foremost, though, it's gotta be people, you can work with when it's Friday night at, almost midnight and, you can still have some cohesion with them the same way you do at, 11 a. m.

Alex Levin:

Get on the computer now. We need

Robby Romance:

Yeah, exactly. That, that level of comfort, sometimes it's almost too much that I find but, but there's a beauty to it.

Alex Levin:

the next bedroom.

Robby Romance:

that. Exactly that. So there's, a level of understanding between, your teammates of, really the communication between everyone. We have some seriously analytical people here and we have some seriously charismatic business people here. Making sure they can communicate with one another is utmost importance. Outside of the low hanging answer of having the right team, I have to say, just ensuring that you're not drowning yourself in opportunity. One thing you see in startups so, so frequently is, you have the right team, your products, the market fit, you just released, it's going well, everything's great, you're maintaining fine, and now you're looking to cross sell a new future to users. Now, knowing how and when to deploy that new cross sell feature is so vital to an organization. I touched on earlier how we're jumping into a, a B2B angle here at HealthBird. And just knowing when the timing for that was correct is so important to us, because if we're taking some of our devs and putting them onto a new B2B project and our B2C projects are falling apart, we didn't properly resource ourselves, we're drowning in opportunity, while there may be money to be made in this new cross sell we have, can it even be made if there's not infrastructure in place? So, that that's a real big one, just not taking on too many projects, but at the same time. Taking on as many as you can handle.

Alex Levin:

Yeah, I know it's tough to know, like, when you should continue to focus on the core versus actually start to. You're going invest in new things like I love thinking about sort of these S curves, right? So every new product is slow to start. It's curve and then eventually it slows down and you hope to have the next product or thing ready to hit. It's accelerated sort of part of the curve right as the other one stops and it's almost impossible to get it exactly right. But definitely something that people try to do.

Robby Romance:

Exactly that.

Alex Levin:

Well, thank you. So, if anybody wants to learn more about HealthBird, where can they go?

Robby Romance:

Absolutely. I mean, HealthBird. com, that'll be our first and foremost. It's a beautiful website. It is designed to educate users, purely. So yeah, HealthBird. com, plain and simple.

Alex Levin:

Cool. Well, thank you very much for your time today. Talk to you soon.

Robby Romance:

Absolutely, Alex. You too.