Episode 7: Derrick L. Miles
Revolutionizing Healthcare Delivery with Derrick Miles
The mark of a successful entrepreneur is the ability to identify and serve a need in the marketplace and, with the rise of the pandemic, the need for door-to-door healthcare delivery became critical. Derrick Miles, Founder and CEO of CourMed, not only provides such deliveries and services but does so while putting encouragement at the center of the patient experience!
In this conversation, he talks us through the turning point that drew him to leave a six-figure salary to start this venture and critical inflection points that have allowed them to keep growing. We dive into his intentionality in creating generational wealth for his sons, and his personal philosophy of remembering the value of real relationships.
Derrick shares innovative tactics for securing world-class talent, and what it takes to bring a board of directors' strategic vision to create value in the market. You'll also hear stories of the clandestine meetings that set him on the path to his hard-won success, as well as an outline of how his leadership principle of encouragement filters through to every level of the company. To hear Derrick’s top advice for other entrepreneurs thinking of taking the plunge, tune in today!
Episode 7: Show Notes
Key Points From This Episode:
• • Derrick Miles introduces CourMed and how it has revolutionized healthcare delivery.
• Hear the inflection points that allowed the company to grow and build.
• Reflections on how margin is the biggest influence in any pivoting decisions.
• Strategically choosing the board of directors in order to leverage their expertise.
• The life-changing advice he received early on that saved CourMed time and time again.
• An innovative approach to staffing and how he's built a team of A-players.
• Derrick shares his top leadership principle: the power of encouragement.
• The hugely positive feedback that's letting them know the customers feel encouraged.
• How they've also used encouragement to build revenue for community pharmacies.
• Some great advice for anyone considering leaving stability to become an entrepreneur.
• Hear some stories of meetings with people who changed the course of his life.
• Talking about becoming a martyr to create generational wealth for his sons.
• Discussing the realities of creating a startup: the struggle behind the curtains.
• The story of growing up in a low-income area and deciding he wanted more for himself.
• Derrick shares the importance of family to him and a great book recommendation!
Tweetables:
“CourMed started off as a prescription delivery service. We're a much different company today. We haven't stopped adding to what we're going to potentially be over time. We think big over here.” — Derrick Miles [0:07:35]
“On a daily basis, we're sending out thousands of messages of encouragement. Who we are at the core, we're a company that allows people to become more and more encouraged in the healthcare space.” — Derrick Miles [0:22:12]
“It's simple. If you have an idea that's about ‘you’, stay in corporate America. Don’t leave. But if you have an idea that's going to improve the lives of others, take the leap.” — Derrick Miles [0:26:47 ]
“Most people don't recognize that it takes a lot of failures to get to any method of success.” — Derrick Miles [0:34:21]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
What Got You Here Won't Get You There
[TRANSCRIPT]
EPISODE 07
“DM: I'll tell you the story. I had already had an inkling that it was something else for me to do. I was as afraid. Then one day, I was talking, it's amazing. I'm in Miami. I'm eating lunch yesterday at a restaurant. I’m going to bring this round full circle. There was a physician back in Raleigh, North Carolina, who I knew and he says, “You need to meet this guy named Joel Wiggins. He was a well-known entrepreneur.” I think he became a millionaire by the age of 31. He said, “There's something about you too, and you need to meet so I'm going to put you guys together.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:33] JU: Welcome to The Paint & Pipette Podcast. My name is Jeremy Utley. It's my job to illuminate the tactics of world-class performers across domains. As a day job, I teach at the Stanford d.school. Helping students learn what it takes to come up with ideas. I've realized, I need to stay in the classroom learning myself, and this podcast is my classroom.
[00:01:22] MH: Hey, hey. I'm Marcus Hollinger. I lead Marketing and Creative at Reach Records, in Atlanta-based Independent Record label. I'm also co-founder for Portrait Coffee, where we are seeking to reimagine the picture that comes to mind for folks in specialty coffee. I'm so excited to pull up my desk, alongside my good friend and fellow learner, Jeremy. I think, you all are going to love what we have for you this season.
[00:01:53] JU: We've got some amazing stories on deck, and we can't wait to dive in and learn alongside you.
[00:01:57] MH: Grab your pipette and your paint brush, and let's make something beautiful together.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:02:05] JU: Today, we talk with Derrick Miles, the Founder and CEO of CourMed, who is revolutionizing healthcare by putting encouragement in the middle of the patient experience.
[00:02:15] MH: Derrick left a six figure salary to start a venture, taking on the martyr role to create generational wealth for his family, and solve a need that he saw in the marketplace.
[00:02:29] JU: We were amazed to discover Derrick's innovative tactics for securing world class talent and his point of view on what it takes to bring a board of directors' strategic vision to amplify his ability to create value in the market.
[00:02:45] MH: We think you'll enjoy this conversation as much as we do.
[00:02:49] JU: All right, so we're here with Derrick Miles. Derrick, we're thrilled to have you with us. You want to tell us just a little bit for folks who don't know CourMed. What it is that you have built?
[00:02:58] DM: Yes. Hey, Jeremy, first of all, thank you so much for the opportunity. I just really have to, even before I begin that, just say thank you to you guys out there at Stanford, because even before CourMed had any traction, you guys gave me the thumbs up as this is something that I should pursue and that gave me courage to go and pursue it. Thank you for that –
[00:03:19] JU: Absolutely.
[00:03:21] MH: Let me tell you what we built. Think of Uber, Lyft, Grubhub, Postmates in your backyard DoorDash and how they use a Crowdsourced delivery platform to get people food and grocery to people's homes. Well, CourMed uses a very similar enterprise software with real crowdsourced delivery drivers. We don't deliver people, we don't deliver food, we don't deliver grocery. We're healthcare exclusive. Think prescriptions, high-end vitamins, immunonutrition drinks, CBD Oil.
What we're really excited about now, is that we're actually bringing healthcare services into the home. If you need a monoclonal antibody, remember when former President Trump got sick with COVID-19, they got him into the hospital, he got a monoclonal antibody and he was discharged. Today with the – what is it? The variant, the Delta variant going back up, people can get the monoclonal antibody. Don't have to worry about their COVID-19 progressing into a hospitalization. We do that in the home, you don't have to go into a hospital. I think the hospital is ground zero. People in there are sick. The virus is just swirling around the house, but you don't want to go to the hospital, right now. You want to be able to stay in your home, get your services.
As I was sharing with Marcus, we also do IV vitamin. I'm here at the Edition Hotel, which is one of our first luxury hotels going to provide CourMed to their guests. If you had a little bit too much to drink, you can request CourMed, we can bring IV Vitamin therapy right here on site, and within an hour you're back to 100 percent. Again, in a nutshell, just think of a crowdsourced delivery model that's exclusive to health care products instead services. That's what we created.
[00:05:01] JU: That's amazing. It's amazing to see especially how far you've come in what, I guess, when we intersected it was four years ago? Is that right? –
[00:05:10] DM: You nailed it. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
[00:05:13] JU: Can you tell us about a couple of key decisions that you came to as you look back, you say that was an inflection point for the business. Maybe you didn't know it at the time, but looking back, you can point to that and say something changed there and how you made that decision?
[00:05:29] DM: Well, I got to go back, you and Pierig, right? I don't know if you remember this, but McKesson was the first big Fortune 500 Company, or Cardinal Health, but so is the bigger medical distribution company. There's three medical distribution companies that are really large. You have McKesson, which has headquarters in Dallas, Texas, where our main headquarters is, Cardinal Health, which is out of Ohio and AmerisourceBergen, actually has a very significant presence in DFW, but their headquarters is somewhere else.
I remember you, I was really excited. We had got an NDA with Cardinal Health, very early in the process. They liked what we were creating, they made a inquiry about purchasing CourMed. I sent you guys a note about it. The feedback was, “Derrick, we've seen this before, go raise some more money, and keep growing.”
That was the best advice that we could have ever gotten, because we've talked to Amazon, we're under NDA with Amazon pharmacy. We've talked to Uber under NDA with Lyft. All the big ones have inquired about what we're doing, but because of the advice that we got from you guys, we never really just settled in and say, “Hey, we just hoping to partner with these guys.” We just continued to build our platform. That's what where we are today.
Another inflection point for us is when we did Microsoft for Startups and Google for Startups. There's only four companies with a trillion dollar market cap and two of the largest ones have invested in CourMed, right? What they have shown us over time is to not be a one trick pony. Don't just be a prescription delivery service, look for an opportunity and provide a solution. We were just doing prescriptions, then we see an opportunity for high-end vitamins. We had high-end vitamins. We saw an opportunity for immunonutrition drinks, with Abbott. We added immunonutrition drinks. People needed CBD or we have members of my family who are using CBD or we added that. We just continued to add COVID-19 vaccines in the home, monoclonal antibodies in the home, IV vitamin therapy in the home, and we're not done.
Google started out as a search engine. Microsoft started out as office productivity software, they're much different companies today. CourMed started off as a prescription delivery service. We're a much different company today. We haven't stopped adding to what we're going to potentially be over time. We think big over here.
[00:07:46] JU: I love it. I love it. I think it's the only way to think. One of the things I wonder about is, I know a lot of founders question the basis of a pivot. How do you know when to pivot? How do when to offer a new product? I'd love to hear how you operationalize making those kinds of decisions, adding something like CBD, for example. Then how do you know whether you made the right decision? Because the reality is you've got attention, bandwidth considerations, right? There's only so many things that you can attend to, how do you decide something's worth pursuing? Then how do you know whether you made the right decision?
[00:08:22] DM: Thank you so much, but the answer is margin. We look at how much margin we're going to make. I hate to be a downer, but prescription delivery is not high margin. We learned that very early, even though we learn how to make money on every prescription, that is not a high margin business, it's the other businesses outside of prescriptions that are high margin, like vaccines, it's a very high margin business. Monoclonal antibodies, a very high margin business, IV vitamin therapy is very high margin business. That's what we really look at is, if we're going to provide that service, we make more money on a vaccine. We would have to do maybe 70 deliveries to make as much money we would make doing one vaccine delivery. The answer to that question is all about margin.
[00:09:11] JU: So to me, that's a very cold answer, in a sense. All right, that's a spreadsheet answer. What I'm curious about, Derrick is maybe backing up a level, what inspires the various paths you entertain pursuing? How do you even become aware of higher margin opportunities?
[00:09:33] DM: Well, I didn't tell you this, but I'm a former Healthcare Executive. Spent 15 years in some of the nation's largest academic medical centers, like the University of Alabama, University of Florida, or in Chicago land with the largest health care provider in entire state called Advocate Health Care. I did some for profit with a company called Universal Health Services. Also I didn't mention that I became CEO at the age of 31, but by the time I turned 37, 38, I realized that healthcare was just not as innovatively supportive of my idea. As an operations guy, your responsibility is to make money and bring on new revenue and decrease expenses. A lot of that requires innovation and in the healthcare space, they were not innovative enough to keep me interested. I left and became an entrepreneur.
What gives me an advantage is by working 15 years as executive, I know where all the bones are buried. Then our board of directors has been strategically identified. The chairwoman of our board is a former physician. Then we have secretary who's the Chief Compliance Officer at UCLA Health, he's still in the trenches. Another board member is the Vice President of a company called Henry Schein, but he also had stints at Abbott and Cardinal Health, and Pfizer, so he's on the ground. Then our last board member was over sales at Vizient. Vizient is the nation's largest healthcare group purchasing organization.
When you add in all the expertise that we have, and our minds, and the individuals who are still on the ground every day, we see an opportunity. We get together as a board and say, “Hey, Derrick, we want you to consider this. If it makes sense. We go and do it.” Hopefully, that wasn't as cold.
[00:11:12] JU: No, that's cool, though. I mean, to me, that's actually a really incredible tactic and a way to leverage your board. I would say, my projection there is that the way you engage your board is maybe different than some other entrepreneurs do, because what I'm hearing from you is that you're actually using them as a sensory network to help you understand, what are opportunities that you may have overlooked. How did you establish that relationship with them? How often do you meet? How do you structure the meetings so that you're able to be learning as rapidly as you clearly are?
[00:11:46] DM: Yeah. I met a guy a long time ago, maybe 10 years ago. He’s a billionaire by the name of Peter Daniels. I was researching him. I started pursuing him. I get a phone call one day. I was living in Raleigh, North Carolina and he says, “Derrick, this is Peter Daniels.” Then my mouth almost dropped, right? He says, “I'm coming to America, and I want to spend some time with you.” I was like, “Hey, I don't care what part of America you in, I'm going to fly to be where you are.” He says, “Well, I'm coming to Raleigh, North Carolina.” I'm like, “No way. I'm in Raleigh, North Carolina.” He says, “I'll be there in two weeks. Let's set up a time, an hour and a half for me to share with you.”
As we're sitting down, we go into this very swanky hotel in Raleigh, North Carolina. We sit down for an hour and a half, but in the conversation he turns to me and says, “Derrick, I know why you haven't been successful at your previous ventures.” He says, “You don't have a board of directors.” He says, “You need a board of directors.” He says, “There's a lot of ups and downs, as an entrepreneur or in any type of company. If you have a board of directors who have means, they will save you in different instances when there's the downs in the business.”
I was very strategic in finding people who I had worked with previously, like the chairwoman of the board. I work with her 20 years ago, and I was at University of Alabama at Birmingham. The guy who's the Chief Compliance Officer at UCLA Health, I worked with him 15 years ago at the University of Florida, right? The guy who's at Vizient, I had an opportunity to meet him when I was working for a non-profit, doing some work over in Africa, because we were trying to get supplies to Africa. He worked for Vizient.
I was able to build these relationships with people, and when it came time to start CourMed, they were independently wealthy, and also had a wealth of knowledge in what they did. It was very strategic, based on a relationship many, many years before, about creating the right type of board to support you. I will mention, I am not prideful. There were very many dark days with CourMed. Those members of the board, once those dark days presented themselves, they continue to write checks to keep the doors open. They don't have to do that anymore, but in the dark days, many of them wrote checks for us to keep the doors open.
We meet on a monthly basis. It's been really tough, especially because these guys have big jobs. When COVID hit, we went months without meeting, because one guy was responsible for the COVID-19 tests for Abbott. He was just totally covered up. Vizient was having problems getting PPE to hospitals and clinics and stuff like that. Those people weren't available. Now we have a better handle on it, but now with the Delta variant going back up, we try our best to meet on a monthly basis.
[00:14:42] MH: I really like that question, Jeremy. I love the breadth that you are able to speak to in that, Derrick, from the figure who – is Peter on your board of advisors, or was he just content to give you that call and then watch you set it up?
[00:14:58] DM: No, he was just content to share that information. I use that, most of the time for entrepreneurs and startup founders, I like to share that information, just give it away freely, because he gave it to me freely. It was so natural for CourMed. It saved CourMed and allowed us to get where we are today, because we had the right people on the board at the beginning.
[00:15:18] MH: Absolutely. I'm curious, I think there's this concept here that you talked about, about the team up, which is the board of directors. I'm curious, especially some of the challenges in the dark days that you talked about. I'm sure you had to rely on your team down to get through those periods, which is probably the people who are working in the business with you, or on the business in a horizontal fashion. How have you gone about building that team, and how do you guys work together?
[00:15:48] DM: That's still a challenge. I think with most companies that are growing, getting the right team members is paramount. One of the words that I always use is “We need A\-players, we need A-players.” One of the things that we have done to bring A-players on our team and to keep our expenses down, we believe in hiring fractionals. fractional CFO, fractional CTO, fractional CMO. Those individuals come with a strong breadth of knowledge and they know how to execute. Then we don't get hit with the books, or someone like that with a high salary being on there for 40 hours a week. We bring them in when we need them.
When it came time for us to raise, or we're in the process of finalizing a 5 million seed now. Our Chief Financial Officer, man, he was working on a whole lot based on the feedback that we were getting for the due diligence. Now that that's done, he's behind the scenes, when we're making a lot of changes to our software for enterprise software, because we're actually going to be able to sell our enterprise software on the Microsoft marketplace. Our CTO is probably the busiest executive that we have right now, making sure that that software's prepared to go on to Microsoft marketplace.
The next thing that we're doing now was from a marketing perspective. We have so many opportunities coming our way, I think, before we hit record, someone has to be able to manage all that and make the decision, which is the right direction we need to go in, so that we can continue to keep the doors open.
So like, case in point, one of the opportunities that's in front of us today is a very large public hospital. Well, public hospitals can be a problem, of course, I know that they pay their bills late, right? It could be 60, 90 days before they pay their bill. That's a problem for CourMed, because we're a crowdsource delivery company. That means our drivers get paid every week. We would have to float all of that money for 60 to 90 days. That's not a good platform, initially. Someone would have to say, “Well, it could make sense for us from a marketing perspective, because they have such a big name, but it could cause a lot of problems from a cash standpoint for CourMed.” Someone has to be able to manage that and make that right decision.
Because I spend all my time – right now, I'm In Miami. Next week, I'll be in LA. I'm spending all my time raising money, doing partnerships. Someone has to be responsible for the day-to-day marketing. Just to be totally honest with you, when it comes to our team, we had to bring on a team initially to keep everything together. We just didn't have the money to recruit A players. Now, once we get this infusion of cash, we're going to use that money to make our team even better. What I'm saying here is that we have some opportunities for improvement on our team, and we're going to utilize the resources of the race to improve our team.
[00:18:47] MH: What I'm hearing in this is the conversation so far, or the bigger narrative is centered around innovation and things. What I appreciate and what I'm hearing is you guys are even taking an innovative approach to staffing. I want to dig in a little bit more on the fractional hires. How are you guys making that work for folks? What entices someone to say, “Yeah, I'll fulfill that role within this company.”
[00:19:17] DM: The leader. They want to be a part of something. It all starts with the leadership. I wouldn't say, sales. I believe, they see the vision, they see the opportunity for it to become big. Then when people see the opportunity for something to become big, and they believe in a leader, they join.
[00:19:38] JU: What does it look like, maybe to even to drill down further, what is a fractional relationship with the company look like? How do they assess the leader? How do they assess the growth opportunity and how do you align incentives, so that they participate in that?
[00:19:55] DM: Yeah. The number one incentive, and you know that Jeremy, man, in Silicon Valley has a stake in the business, right? As they produce – they get a shot at the beginning of shares, and based on their ability to execute, they get more shares. They're getting a really good deal, before the shares get more and more expensive. We've been tremendously blessed. I mean, the people who are in fractional roles for us, a bunch of Harvard MBAs who have 20 years plus experience, they’re in our team. It's like second nature for them. The way that compensation works, we pay them by the hour, right? The amount of hours that they put in for us is how we pay them.
[00:20:38] MH: I'm curious. One thing you talked about, or you hit on was the leadership. What are some of the leadership principles that you are intentional about putting at the forefront that you're seeing people respond to?
[00:20:53] DM: Yeah. Wonderful question. I always go back into the word, CourMed. Okay, so we were very intentional, before we delivered the first prescription. The word “Cour” at the beginning, some people think it means like courier. That's not what it means. The word encouragement, in the middle of the word encouragement is C-O-U-R. What we're delivering every day is encouragement to people.
Think about this. Prescription. Again, I'm a healthcare guy. If you're on a prescription, that is the last step before you get admitted to the hospital. You need encouragement. On every SMS message that we send out, let someone knowing, know that their prescriptions on the way or whatever, there's a little message at the bottom says, “Be encouraged,” on every delivery label. When it shows up at your house, with your name on it, doesn't show what you're receiving. At the bottom it says, “Be encouraged.”
Every Tuesday, when we pay our drivers, we pay our drivers through Zelle. At the bottom of their pay stub says, “Be encouraged.” The one thing that we know about life is people can put all they want to on Facebook, on Twitter, on TikTok and on Instagram. There's one area in your life where you need a word of encouragement, and that's our role. On a daily message, on a daily basis, we're sending out thousands of messages of encouragement. Who we are at the core, we're a company that allows people to become more and more encouraged in the healthcare space.
[00:22:28] MH: Which is a pretty full circle moment. I remember when we first started the call, and see how you were doing, you said, “I'm encouraged.”
[00:22:35] DM: That’s right.
[00:22:39] MH: I can see that. I can see that.
[00:22:42] JU: Derrick, I've often observed on LinkedIn, you say things about how encouragement is the core of CourMed, but I've never known until right now how that – what the last mile looks like, so to speak. How does that encouragement actually make it to patients and actually make it to your drivers? I'm very moved by that. How do you think about measuring that? If encouragement is a goal, how do you know whether you're accomplishing the goal? How have you iterated, or pivoted in achieving that goal?
[00:23:18] DM: 99.5 percent of the people who take the time to evaluate CourMed, rate us as a five-star service. At the bottom, you will see sometimes someone will say, “I'm encouraged. Thank you for the encouragement.” What we've been able to use now is we can go into a hospital, knowing that hospitals struggle with this term called patient satisfaction. Patient satisfaction is really based off the last experience that they recall. We can go into hospital and say, “Hey, we have 99.5 percent five-star deliver reviews.” Bring in on CourMed to get these prescriptions, or whatever to people's homes going to have a byproduct, was going to be a byproduct to it, improve your own patient satisfaction scores, because what they’re going to remember is the last piece of the delivery that they got through CourMed.
Now, we have large hospitals who sign up for CourMed, so they have a telehealth patient. They can be on telehealth at nine o'clock in the morning, get a prescription at their door by 12, they're encouraged. By the time they get their patient satisfaction survey, what they remember is that, “Hey, I did a Telehealth visit at 9 AM. I got my prescription at 12.” Guess what they're going to put on their patient satisfaction survey, “Wonderful job.” The beautiful thing that we've also been able to do with that is, we've been able to help community pharmacies. Most people don't even know what a community pharmacy is, because they don't really do a good job of marketing themselves.
Community pharmacies have the best customer service on all storefront pharmacies. Before when I mentioned Cardinal Health and McKesson and AmerisourceBergen, they're all the parent companies of over 23 to 25,000 community pharmacies. What we've learned to do is to bring those patients that go to those large hospitals, to those community pharmacy, so now CourMed is not just on the income statement as an expense, we actually help them build new revenue. When it comes down to making a decision, who you want to use for your service, “Well, I can use this courier who's just an expense, or I can bring in CourMed, which is this health care solutions company, and I got a brand new revenue.”
Say for instance, these community pharmacies didn't have the ability to be able to deliver the COVID-19 vaccine at home, now with CourMed they can. They can just go into our system, put it in a concierge vaccine delivery hard driver, pick it up, take it at person's home, nurse takes it from the driver, goes in and administers COVID-19 vaccine. We've been able to not only use our platform of encouragement from a feel good standpoint, but we've been able to use encouragement to build revenue for companies who have not been so encouraged by how much money they were making.
[00:26:08] JU: I would love to go back in time a little bit, if you don't mind to a little time travel with me. Because a lot of people I think, wonder, should I leave this career path? You mentioned you were an executive for 15 years. I'd love to better understand how you made the decision to leave the stable career path and to venture into the unknown world of entrepreneurship. Maybe what you were monitoring inside or outside, how you made the decision and how you how you would recommend others interact with that question.
[00:26:45] DM: Lovely question, Jeremy. To me, it's simple. If you have an idea that's about “you”, stay in corporate America, don't leave. But if you have an idea that's going to improve the lives of others, take the leap. That's what I did. When we looked at what we're doing with CourMed, it wasn't about Derrick Miles, it was about providing a better service to people. It was about encouraging people. Since we were looking to do something outside of myself, and you notice Jeremy, I'm a spiritual brother. Then when you look at Jesus, Jesus didn't do much for himself. Jesus did most things for others. Jesus didn't have people coming to him, he went to people.
I'll tell you the story. I had already had an inkling that it was something else for me to do, I was as afraid. Then one day, I was talking, it's amazing. I'm in Miami. I'm eating lunch yesterday at a restaurant, I’m going to bring this round full circle. There was a physician back in Raleigh, North Carolina, who I knew and he says, “You need to meet this guy named Joel Wiggins. He was a well-known entrepreneur.” I think he became a millionaire by the age of 31. He says, “There's something about you too, and you need to meet, so I'm going to put you guys together.”
He gave me Joel's phone number. Joel calls me a couple days later, and we exchanged pleasantries. I start talking a little bit about what I was doing. He stopped me right in the middle and said, “You're not going to be there much longer.” He says, “There’s something else for you to do.” I like, “Really?” I knew he was right, but because he said that, to me, gave me the courage to step out and do something else, but if he didn't say, there's something for us. Something else for you to do. You're not going to be that much longer. I would have stayed in the comfort of my luxury office and high six figure salary without thinking about coming up becoming an entrepreneur. I thought about it, but again, I was afraid.
The conversation with Joel gave me the courage to step out. Yesterday, I'm here in Miami at a swanky restaurant, Dr. Kirk Charles comes in the restaurant, the guy who put me and Joel together. We took a picture and send it back to Joel, because I had a chance to tell him, look what we've created after all these years of you introducing me to Joel, we become best friends.
[00:29:08] JU: That’s beautiful. That's incredible. What was it? I mean, I know a lot of people can relate to that fear. What was it about Joel's words that resonated with you? There's something else for you to do. Why did that, why was that what unleashed your courage?
[00:29:28] DM: Well, one thing I picked up on is even though I became CEO at 31, the further and further I went up the corporate ladder, when my sons, and I have two sons, when it was time for them to get a job, or when I retired, they were not going to give those jobs to my sons. I realized that my sons are an extension of me. I had to put them in a position that they can continue on the journey that God started for me. When I was in corporate America, they couldn't come to board meetings. They couldn't see me present and talking about Patient Satisfaction and pair mixes da-da-da. They didn't get to go to the fundraisers, etc. in the community.
Now with CourMed, my oldest son, he actually runs the business on Saturdays. My youngest son, he's 14, he did his first deliveries two weeks ago. While I'm at home, they can hear the conversations that I'm having. Then I take them with me, so at a very young age, they're actually learning to run one of the companies. CourMed may not be around, but I can create something else, and then we can just slide them in to a position. And last thing I want to talk about is generational wealth. The Bible says that a good man leaves an inheritance for his children's, children. What I can create, the offspring of my two sons can make a decision if they want to work or not, because we have created generational wealth. Typically, generational wealth doesn't come from working from someone. There's data out there that shows that I think almost 90 percent, 90 percent of individuals who are worth $5 million or more sold a company.
The data is out there, what you need to do to create generational wealth most people just go and get a job. I just decided to be the martyr in our family to take all the hits, to create a generational wealth and create the past for my seed.
[00:31:26] MH: Thank you for sharing that a little bit, a little bit personal motivation in there. I would like to ask how, I'd love to hear a story, at least of what that's been when we think about generational wealth that projects into the future a bit. Maybe if we take a step back, what does it look like, maybe a story of a deposit that you've been able to make into your family along the way.
[00:31:58] DM: Experiences. I'll tell you about an experience I have. There's a gentleman in Dallas, Texas, his name is Kneeland Youngblood. They call him the $800 million man. I was able to get a meeting with initially the $1.2 billion man, now because that's what he has under management. We met back in 2014 and soon as I walk in the room, and this happened before, he says, “Why are you sitting on that side of the table?” He says, “You should be on this side. What are you doing?” I thought I was going to impress him about my background and he says, “Derrick, I don't want you ever to work in a hospital again.” He says, “You need to own your own hospitals.” He says, “To have juice in America, you need $100 million. Go out and create a company for $100 million, and come back and talk to me.” Then everything just went silent.
Well, he gets in contact with me. Probably three or four months ago, he just watched, he invited me back, because he had been seeing the growth of CourMed. I'm not going to the numbers, but our valuation now is getting pretty high. But if it wasn't for someone who's able to sell it to me, first it was Peter Daniels, and then it was Kneeland Youngblood. Then what really solidified me about following Kneeland is, it wasn't a fact that he owned a bunch of private equity company, had a bunch of money. It was a fact that he was recognized as Father of the Year in Dallas. Not only was he kicking, but from a professional standpoint, he was named the Father of the Year. I was like, that's what I want. That's my story. I'm sticking to it.
[00:33:38] JU: I'm like wise blown away, similar to what Marcus was just saying. I wonder, to me, there's two seemingly opposite things that aren't opposite, but they feel opposite on the one hand $100,000,000, 800 or thrown out really big numbers, generational wealth, etc. Then on the other hand, you said, there's also a comment that you said, “I decided to be the martyr and take the hits for the sake of my family.” Can you talk about how those things aren't different? Because it's surprising to hear you say, “I'm the one who decided to be a martyr and go for the 100 million dollar company.” Talk about why that feels like a martyrs path, so to speak, and how you view it now, maybe versus how you did?
[00:34:21] DM: Yeah. Because most people don't recognize that it takes a lot of failures to get to any method of success. We celebrate success here in the United States, we do not celebrate failure, we do not recognize failure and so many downs, right? We've gotten way more no’s than we've gotten yeses for CourMed over the years. Now we think of starting to even out, to get to generational wealth is hard work. It is not easy to run a startup as I mentioned before, a lot of people post stuff on social media about their company, but in the background, even with CourMed, there's things that we struggle with mightily. May look good in red, white and blue, but inside the company, lots of struggle, there's struggle, running a startup. They'll struggle, creating generational wealth, they'll struggle building relationships.
I'm the one who decided that I would take on all those struggles over the years, because I grew up in Clearwater, Florida. We had two public housing complexes. We lived in both of them. I know exactly what it's to grow up very poor and to go back home and see that plight and say, “Well, I don't want that this anymore for my family.” Even when I was a little kid, I would go to a store and buy Robb Report. I'm 13, 14, I'm buying Robb Report, because I felt that if something else for me to do, instead of just being in Clearwater for us. One of the reason my brother and I left Clearwater, because what it was still in our mind how we grew up, and we wanted something different for our lives. In a nutshell, it's about when I, how I grew up, what I experienced, didn't want anymore, whatever it took to get out of that experience, running a startup, knowing that it's hard work, still pushing through thousands of no’s, to get to the point where we are today.
[00:36:19] JU: It's incredible. It's incredible. Thank you for sharing. Marcus, I don't know if you have any final thoughts or you, just Derrick while you were getting your charger, Marcus said, “I got to process some of the content here.” I don't know, Marcus, if there's anything you want to wrap with. Otherwise, I want to be respectful of your time, Derrick and let you get on with your busy day in Miami.
[00:36:38] DM: Wanted to go back to Dallas. Now I always try to be home with the family on the weekend. I travel in the middle of the week. Then I fly home. I'll fly home on Thursday, I fly home on Friday.
[00:36:47] MH: Wow. I think that's remarkable. There always seems to be this dichotomy between what you can do professionally and that somehow that will cost you at home. I'm really inspired by the way you hold that, the way you hold those two intentions.
[00:37:07] DM: Yeah. Because that will really matters. The last thing I'll leave you, I read this book, What Got You Here Won't Get You There. It talks about this executive who was on his dying bed, and the only people who showed up in the hospital were his family. A lot of people get it mixed up when they're in corporate America trying to make all the money, those of, I don't want to use that word, I'm going to say lite relationships. There's not a lot of love there, but when you're on your deathbed, those people who are going to be around you are the people that love you. Those are the people you need to spend your most time with, your cherished time with. Within CourMed, I want to make sure that my family – because here's what I recognize, I'm almost 50 years old, which means the likelihood of me living to 100 is pretty low. So I've probably lived the majority of my life already, right? For the end of my life, I want to make sure that my family has access to me.
[00:38:01] JU: I think that's something that we can all relate too, in this creative life. I think, I hope these conversations is to not just talk to entrepreneurs, but artists and folks who are creating things of value in the world and remembering the right priority and ordering of relationships is critical for anybody seeking to make a dent in the world with their creative talents and their the time in their vocation. It's a great reminder for the end of the conversation.
I'm humbled and privileged that we got a chance to talk to you, Derrick. It's been fun to watch from the sidelines, and to get a little bit of a peek behind the curtain today is incredibly invigorating, and it makes me want to root for you even more and support you even more. I can't wait to see you flip the script on our friend Kneeland and you tell him he's been sitting on the other side of the table from you, so I'm looking for forward to that.
[00:38:56] DM: Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time and giving me an opportunity to share my heart.
[00:39:03] JU: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Derrick. All the best and we'll talk soon, all right.
[00:39:06] DM: Sounds good. Thank you. Bye.
[00:39:08] JU: Bye.
[END]
The fine folks over at Section recently interviewed me about some common mistakes I’m seeing folks make when they use AI. One of the biggest ones? The tendency to expect too little, and get just that.