How a Doctor Built an 8-Figure Healthcare Logistics Business With No Investors
Amit was a frontline physician working 80-hour weeks during COVID when he realized something most healthcare systems still hadn’t figured out:
Getting medication to patients is a logistics problem.
What started as a simple medication reminder app evolved into PHOX Health — an 8-figure healthcare logistics company helping hospitals and pharmacies deliver everything from chemotherapy drugs to specialty medications directly to patients.
In this episode, we break down how Amit bootstrapped the company with no investors, how they built a nationwide delivery network with an incredibly lean team, and why controlling the customer experience matters more than software alone.
We also dive deep into:
- Building “boring” businesses in healthcare
- Why logistics is harder than software
- The risks of scaling too many things at once
- AI, automation, and why physical businesses still matter
- Contractor vs employee delivery models
- The hidden economics of medical delivery
- How great customer experience becomes the moat
This is one of the best examples I’ve seen of combining real-world operations with technology to solve a massive problem.
If you want a front-row seat to how real operators build valuable businesses from scratch, this episode is for you.
Read full transcript
David
So, roughly how big was the business in 2025?
Amit
We're in eight figures in annual current revenue for 2025.
David
You make my head spin with all the different directions you're going at once. This is a myth. He was a doctor working 80-hour weeks with a dream of creating the DoorDash for drugs.
Amit
So in 2019, when we had our first customer, we had barely made 20,000 that first year. Then the pandemic hits. I was a frontline physician working 80 hours a week in the hospital, trying to help patients with the virus who barely understood. And through that, we were able to communicate to other health systems that delivery is important. This is one of the most fascinating businesses you'll ever see, not just because of what it does. Cancer drugs, chemotherapy, autoimmune drugs, these are like diamond rings that can melt. This isn't a story about a healthcare company or a tech company.
David
This is a story about trucks, logistics, and the fundamentals that grow any business. If you want a front row look at how real decisions get made at eight-figure companies, this is the best video on the internet for it. Amit, thank you. Thank you for joining me on Boring Money. Thank you, David. Thanks for having me. Why don't you tell me a bit about your business and when you got started and and and take we'll take it from there?
Amit
Great. We'll get into why it's spelled that way later. Fox PHOX. That's right. The animal is spelled PHOX. We are tech enabled logistics for healthcare. And uh as of this month, uh we're taping with the company was started 10 years ago in February 2016, initially as a way to help independent pharmacies find patients who are interested in having their meds delivered to them. And it's since evolved into working with major health systems around the country to enable their pharmacies, their specialty pharmacies, which we'll get into, I'm sure, as well as their supply chains live up to our motto and mission, which is to deliver better.
David
So you started this business 10 years ago. How did you like how did you come up with the idea of a tech-enabled logistics for medical supplies? Aaron Powell Sure.
Amit
So my background, I'm a physician, I'm an internal medicine-trained physician. When I was in med school, I started med school the year the iPhone was announced. And when I saw that device, I was I looked at it and said, wow, that'd be the perfect device to help people remember to take their medications. There could be an alert on the phone, we could show a picture of the pill, we could give extra instructions beyond just trying to read an awful label, and it'd be perfect. And this was when the iPhone first came out, there wasn't even an app store. So this idea of building an app for the iPhone wasn't didn't exist until about a year, year and a half later. So going through med school and even my physician training, I was obsessed with the idea of building this app to do just that. And by the time we did build this app, there were a dime a dozen. There was nothing special about building a pill reminder app. And as the idea was sunsetting, I started cold calling pharmacies I could drive to in the Southern California area. And there was this one pharmacy that, even though they consider mom and pop, they had a pretty large footprint in the county. And one of their value props was they would offer free same-day delivery to patients as a way to compete to compete against the chains. So I said, wow, as a physician, I didn't even know that existed. Patients need to know about this. So on February 4, 2016, I pitched to that pharmacy. I said, if we build you an app for patients-defined pharmacies like yours, would you pay us? And they were a pretty outgoing company. They said, sure, we would. So my co-founder moved back to California. We built that app in the summer of 2016, got some press, but to advertise in the world of pharmacy, say on social media and et cetera, you have to have special licenses because of the regulated space of pharmacy. And we couldn't afford those licenses. And the idea started fading away and
Amit
eventually failed when I we got a cold call from our first, who would end up being our first client, auctioner health system in New Orleans. And they said they needed help delivering to their patients from their retail pharmacies across New Orleans as a way to expand and improve upon their virtual care services. And this was two years before the pandemic. The idea of having virtual care and stuff come to you wasn't in healthcare, wasn't as uh popular. So 13 months later, we landed a contract. We were just two people. I was in still in California, my co-founder moved back to India, um, and we had landed a contract with a major health system in the U.S. and built this idea that with software, we could help coordinate and find the best delivery partner to actually do those deliveries, and we would be sort of the marketplace connecting health systems to existing courier companies. And that's the idea, the second idea behind Fox Health that took off.
David
So did you bootstrap this? Did you raise any money? Like what walked me through through that?
Amit
So I don't know if this is a real word, but the opposite of an investor is a divester. And um I can say this now. That was my wife. She refused to let me use any of our income on any of our my silly businesses because none of them had worked to date. So we had a true scarcity mindset from day one that I couldn't use any money that we had, and I no one no one wanted to invest in something that didn't work at the time. And we had to basically use school of hard knocks, figure things out, use our own revenue to power the business. And to date now, ten years later, as I said, uh we have not raised a single dollar.
David
So so you completely bootstrapped the whole thing. And it's you and it's you and a co-founder.
Amit
That's right. We're the 100% owners of this company to this time.
David
And so you started in you you kind of started in 2007, and then you really started in 2016. That's right. And then 2018 is when you've figured out your or you got your first actual customer.
Amit
It was uh 2019, yeah.
David
2019, you got you, you we got your actual first customer. So like what was it that you were even advertising that the New Orleans people called you?
Amit
Like what was the Well, we so as the original idea of working with mom and pop pharmacies was fading. I I spent about four months figuring out how to build a website just about the companies and to sell this idea that patients deserve a better experience. Pharmacy should offer that. So I had this beautiful website. I didn't even mention the word delivery that much, but the fact that that website existed was enough for that team at Auctioner Health to do some Googling and they found us. And they said, okay, you have you guys are operating in California. Uh can you help us in New Orleans? So the idea was, yeah, we could build a software that would help them. And then as we were talking to them, we found this sort of secret sauce was we could scan this QR code that their uh pharmacy software would generate. And upon scanning the QR code, our iPad app would set up a delivery within two seconds. You didn't have to type in the patient's name, you know, where they live, their email or phone number. So that became the secret secret sauce even to this day that we still have that you know Hallmark feature. And because of that you know, frictionless way of requesting a delivery compared to using some portal where you have to type in all the information, that's what sparked the whole thing.
David
So walk me through what the business looked like in 2019, like in terms of revenue, employees, what you actually did, and how does that evolve to where you are today?
Amit
Sure. In 2019, it was just the two of us. It was myself in California, my co-founder in India. He had a handful of developers that were just, you know, freelance developers that were building the app at the time. Uh we had no employees stateside. And um, the that first year we only made $20,000. That was the check we got uh to basically do this. Funny thing is, when we first sent our proposal to auctioner, they actually laughed at us. They said it was too low, had no idea how to price this thing because it didn't exist. And the the model of convincing a hospital or anybody to subscribe to a software and pay for deliveries still does not exist to this day. And that's the exact model that we we have our health systems pay a monthly subscription for the software and pay for the deliveries on top. So as a comparison, FedEx.com is free. You don't have to pay for their portal. So in 2019, when we had our first customer, we had barely made $20,000 that first year, then the pandemic hits. And so I was a frontline physician working 80 hours a week in the hospital, you know, trying to help patients with the virus we barely understood. And through that, we were able to communicate to other health systems that delivery is important. It may not be going anywhere, depending on how the world goes. This is something you need. And this is where Fox Health became sort of a silver lining business that through the horrors that was the pandemic, as I saw it frontline, there were companies that could be successful by supporting patients and bringing health care to them. When was that time? This was uh late 2020. Trevor Burrus, Jr.
David
Late 2020. So so basically the pandemic what brought a lot of incremental new business for you. That's right. Um and then you saw that, and that's when you decided to go all in. That's right, because you saw you saw that you were onto something.
Amit
That's right. Prescription delivery went from something nice to have to something you had to have. So that whole idea of going from a vitamin to a painkiller almost literally was uh was important.
David
Aaron Powell Can you walk me through like exact like are you is it purely a software business? Um so I could can you walk me through like actually what the business actually does?
Amit
So I'd love to have just been a pure software business because that was the next that was that thesis at that moment that we would do the software connecting hospital-based pharmacies to existing courier companies, medical courier companies to if we'd actually do the delivery. But what had happened in the fall of 2020, the courier partner that we had in the Seattle Tacoma area, and even our software at that time was failing completely. The software and the delivery were failing. And what got us through that moment was pure customer service. By then, I'd already resigned. My full-time job was this. And I was meeting with our that client weekly to ensure that everything was gonna be fixed, everything's gonna get better. And that got us through that moment, and the software started working, the delivery started working, and then about five years into that, we got to this point where we realized, hey, we can probably we need to in-source the delivery component. We're giving away millions of dollars to these third-party delivery companies. They're doing a decent job, but could we do better if we own the entire stack? So we went through a 15-month project that started in early 2024, it concluded last summer of 2025, of insourcing and basically rebooting multiple of our clients across the country. And as of July of last year, we now control the entire stack. So we are vertically integrated in that we've built the software that our drivers use, that the hospitals and pharmacies use, and that we use internally, and we manage to directly manage the logistics team. So that's what was different in the industry that we discovered. There's FedEx, which is not a software company or technology company, they're a delivery company.
Amit
And then there are software companies in the healthcare industry and even in the pharmacy industry that are happy to track FedEx, but they themselves are not going to start a delivery company for you. And that's where we were that overlapping Venn diagram and our mission to be the best of both, controlling the software, controlling the logistics, and realizing that was our customer's main ass. They just wanted a better, more dependable delivery service. If it's tech enabled, that makes it even better.
David
So what is it that you bring to the table that uh FedEx doesn't?
Amit
So let's do a simple example. Let me back up. So the majority of what we deliver today are called specialty drugs. These are dispensed from specialty pharmacies. These are like diamond rings that can melt, in that these are types of drugs that are extremely high value, and about half of them are all temperature sensitive. So these are drugs like cancer drugs, chemotherapy, autoimmune drugs, and even some of the new weight loss drugs sometimes fall into this category because of their cost and demand. So if FedEx were to misdeliver a $50,000 chemotherapy drug, you cannot go get a FedEx driver and go U-turn and go back to that house and go get it. It's lost, it's spoiled, and the pharmacy eats that cost. Not the patient's insurance company, not the pharma who sold you that drug, not even the patient. It's the pharmacy's fault. So by delivering a system where we can measure everything, improve, remeasure, improve by tech enabling this workflow, we can send the driver back to go recover something and cover ourselves, cover the patient's needs and reduce that financial risk on the pharmacy's end.
David
So when you're saying measuring something, like what is it that you're actually measuring?
Amit
Yeah, so there's this concept called fast feedback. And one of the biggest hallmark features of what we do today is every patient deserves the right to tell us how we did on the delivery. We can do that on a you know on a ride-sharing delivery, we can do that on a food delivery. You cannot do that with the major carriers today. They may ask for feedback, but they don't share it with the people who are actually paying for that delivery. So we built this system where patients tell us how we're doing, we share that feedback with our clients, the hospitals, the very next morning, all the feedback, good or bad, and then when we get a negative review, say we misdelivered something or a driver to X, Y, and Z, we act on that within a matter of seconds. We're calling the patient, how can we do better? That way, the second time we deliver, uh, we can earn that uh that five stars at that point. So this obsession with the patient experience uh has also been a big focus of our company and what sets us apart from, say, the major carriers like FedEx to a local courier company.
David
So let's walk through business structure today. Like you're making my head spin a little bit. This sounds quite complex. Sure. Um, and it sounds like you've gotten it even more complex in the last couple of years. So, like how big of a business is this? How many employees do you have? Like, how do you deal with contractors? Walk walk me through the whole thing.
Amit
Sure. So today we have 21 health systems around the country and soon to be 12 states. There's only 14 of us stateside that manage this entire company, and the majority of them are what we call our patient advocates. They're basically our call center or client support. So they're the group that the clients, like the pharmacies or patients call if they have a question or an issue. The other team are operations managers, X Amazon, XLyft, X Enterprise Rental Car Companies. People who've who we've worked with companies who are obsessed with the patient, or in their case, the customer experience, that's who we've hired. The tenth person we hired actually came from the Ritz-Carlton because of this obsession with the patient experience. So extremely lean team stateside. In India, where my co-founder co-founder resides, uh, we have a team of about 35 developers and a few logistics operators who monitor the deliveries nationally. Uh, they are by design are not allowed to engage with the pharmacies or patients because of patient privacy rules, but they can certainly track if something's been picked up or not, relay that to our US team and act upon it. So as I mentioned, that's keep us, that's kept us extremely lean in this model. And as I mentioned, we have 21 health systems around the country today.
David
So when you say you have 21 health systems, so that they they basically are like, okay, we need you to deliver from our pharmacy to our patients. Like that's what they're contracting you for, right? Um, and so and you have these 14 people that are managing that in the US, like how are you actually managing the logistics of the actual deliveries? Like, what are the yeah, like how does that work?
Amit
So I walk you through one of our largest clients where I also do my residency, uh, advocate health out of Milwaukee. So they have a central pharmacy location in northern Milwaukee, and we have three warehouses between them. We have one to the north in Green Bay, one in Milwaukee, and one in Chicago. We have one guy who's ex-Amazon who manages a team of about 35 contracted drivers, and we go and pick up all the prescriptions from their central location, distribute it to those warehouses overnight, and then the following morning our contracted drivers come to those, our warehouses, pick up their route, their lot, and then deliver to patients' homes over the course of the day.
David
So one person can manage those three warehouses? That's right. Wow.
Amit
Um, and you're doing that in all 21 of these markets, like where you have um some markets aren't as large as advocate health, so we don't have to have a warehousing or we don't have to have a what we call a W-2 operations employee. Some markets are small enough that we can just identify a lead driver just to kind of help us in that market. Some are getting to the brink where we do need to put warehousing in space, in place, or we do need to hire an operations manager. That's all based on a playbook of size and efficacy, or if we're growing the market because we have an existing footprint. Okay, now let's it's in source this lead driver as an employee, let him or her manage his market, and then we have one more layer of management above them, and that's it. We want to keep those layers as minimal as possible because the moment we lose touch or have lack of insight into what the patient experiences with these deliveries, that's where this could fall apart because these drivers represent Fox Health, and we represent the hospitals that we work for.
David
So how are you actually hiring these drivers? They're independent contractors, but um, like how are you f how are you actually finding them?
Amit
So just classic job boards, you know, we're and what's important about our model is we pay about 50 percent above market um when it comes to this line of work. And I know the numbers exactly what Amazon pays their drivers versus what we pay. We pay 50 percent more than what an Amazon driver would do, and they do one-tenth the amount of deliveries. And that's that's just the and with that model.
David
So you're gonna say you pay 50 percent more that's per delivery, or that's overall at one-tenth?
Amit
Oh both, yeah. But they do they make 50 percent more per day doing one-tenth the number of deliveries. And what happens with when you have when you pay drivers well, remember they these drivers represent us. We have to pay them well. We have to find great people. And we see this.
David
But you're paying them like five times as well by your math.
Amit
Uh almost. Almost. No, no, it's not five times as well.
David
Because you say you're paying fifty percent more for a tenth of the work.
Amit
So No, that's a tenth of Amazon's work. The general work, you know, most delivery drivers aren't delivering 300 stops a day. Most local career companies, most local courier drivers rather, are doing anywhere between 30 to 60 on a high on a busy day. Amazon's different because of density. You can drive into one neighborhood. Yeah. So that's why.
David
I understand. So apples to apples is not quite. Okay, I got you. I got you.
Amit
So by paying drivers extremely well, making it a root routine amount of available work that we're always going to have X number of packages, come to our warehouse, uh approve the route that are available, do the work, and then like I said, pay them well. And then they also take immense pride in what they're delivering. We're not delivering spice racks for Amazon, we're not delivering burritos, we're delivering patients' medications. And sometimes these drivers see the same patient every 30 days, and they know that Jane Doe at the house, you know, I mean, here's your delivery, or they know this patient's end of life. And I was just here three days ago delivering another patient's meds. So they see and they take immense pride in what they're delivering. So the power of pride, the power of paying them well, and then making them almost uh part of this group that we have. We take all driver feedback to improve the app that they use. We see them as owners and operators of what we do. Then that model of taking care of both sides of your marketplace is why we've been successful that compared to, say, a food delivery company or a gig worker where they're trying to rank or take more of their income and then you know to uh to appease their bottom line.
David
And these are generally like the contracts you're contracted on a per delivery kind of contract, or is it just an overall contract to do all of their deliveries? Or like how does that how does that part of the economics work? Aaron Powell with the hospitals?
Amit
Yeah. So we started off in the specialty pharmacy world where those meds have to be delivered, and then we've expanded to the retail pharmacy where your blood pressure medications, your antibiotics, your low margin drugs, but still having those delivered well has an important clinical outcome. You can prevent a patient from ending up in the emergency room if you get that their medications on time. So we've also now expanded to an entire supply chain. So one example is with Grady Health out of Atlanta. We anything that moves that organization, we deliver. So what we ended up doing accidentally is we deliver the we deliver the hardest items first. Something that requires a signature, going to a home in a random location every day. That's hard to do in the logistics world. And then to go upstream to that, you know, the business-to-business deliveries, that's straightforward. Not as exciting. There's no star ratings or anything like that, but it was an important need that we discovered that health systems also needed help with that, that distribution between clinics, getting a lab sample from a clinic, you know, in in Northeast Atlanta to their central lab downtown, that was still needed too. So we've now expanded our efforts to go beyond the home delivery pharmacy stuff, which I love the most, to basically delivering anything that gets patients better, which is still our core mission.
David
Yeah. So roughly how big was the business in 2025?
Amit
Aaron Powell We exceeded eight figures, uh we're in eight figures in annual current revenue for 2025.
David
And and you're profitable. We are profitable, yeah. We have a and and what um what does a typical day in Amit Amis Day look like? Like what like what are you spending your time doing? Like what what does it look like?
Amit
Yeah, so this concept from a uh great speaker as well, um Dan Martell, this concept of buying back your time. And I'm trying to buy back my time by finding the best people to do what I was doing before. So in late 2020, I was Grand Central Station to patients calling me about their deliveries, the pharmacies calling me about issues, and then you know doing tech support. So I was doing everything. But that's how I learned about the essence of this business because as a physician and engineer, I had no experience in logistics whatsoever. But I learned through the School of Hard Knocks by being Grand Central Station to all that. So over the years, we've hired a logistics operator, we've hired more customer support. Um, for the first time, June of two years ago, we hired our first salesperson. I did all the sales for the first 17 of our clients. And once again, I was able to speak to what their needs are. And not just because I was a doctor, but because we still had a compelling story that we were solving something for them. So my day in the life is you know, empowering folks to help support this business so I can tell this story to other health systems and try to save them from you know the other carriers and local career companies. So sales I'm trying to get back into because I do enjoy that. And then daydream, like uh build these uh pockets of time in my day where I can think about how do we grow this business? What else is there to do? How can we create a blue ocean where we're not swimming and you know, playing this cutthroat game of just offering delivery services? What else could we do differently in this industry? Uh, because I realized early on I couldn't I couldn't just build a piece of software that
Amit
tracks deliveries. That's a commodity piece of software. We had to do something different in this industry because the outcomes are much higher when it comes to a patient's care.
David
You say you're a tech enabled um logistics company. That's right. medical logistics company. I think that's that's how that's how you talk about it. Right. So like let's unpack what that really means. Like how much of this is how much of this is a software play? How much of it is a you know um logistics play? Like what is it that like what is the unique I guess advantage that you think that you bring you're bringing to the table.
Amit
So I think we're 50-50 because anyone can deliver. I think that's been proven the market. And on the software side, healthcare has a very high demand or high um importance on what they have. There's data security of course. When we're dealing with data which is low-tier, you know, secure information like a patient's name, their address and phone number, this is what we call patient identifiable information. Not too serious if it got leaked, but still it's someone's information. So the major carries of most courier companies don't use software that's data secure, something we call HIPAA compliance in the world of software. And even going beyond that, how do you even how are you building software that's even more secure than say an electronic medical record? So data compliance was one of our founding features that we had that the other people didn't. Next was how do you track and really understand say what your costs are with logistics that we made that front and center. Going back to patient feedback and the experience point we built a whole dashboard called Star Fox, well at least that'll be the name until Nintendo sues me, dedicated to like a patient feedback, almost like a Yelp-like dashboard that every day our clients could go and sign into and see exactly how happy their patients were. And we built a feature where as I mentioned earlier every morning we email the hospital leadership a list of happy patients saying thank you so and so thank you such and such pharmacy for making my day. And that feature alone, no one would turn that off if if you get an email every morning to your inbox saying how happy your patients are. So we had to build these features to meet the clients
Amit
needs. And importantly because I didn't have investors that I was beholden to and you know had to follow that mission, my only person or group I was beholden to are patients and our clients. And so which means I had complete bandwidth to build what they needed solved when it came to the patient experience, logistics experience and on the software side to how we integrate so how big like walk me through like your competitors I guess like like who do you view as your competitors like what is the competitive landscape for this? Aaron Ross Powell So on the you know older incumbent side competitors that are the major carriers FedEx, UPS, even the post office, those are who you we usually come in and replace. On the and even on local courage companies who've maybe been doing the work for the hospital for X number of years, there's that group. On the other end, there are pure software companies that are tracking the other guys. And then in the middle there there have been a few software based companies that uh what I found out they were actually doing our previous model. They would just outsource or integrate Uber or integrate some ride comp ride trading company and then they would just be the relay. But we did the hard part first two years ago and realized that we had to in-source logistics. We had to own that piece. And I just found out one of our closest competitors was bought by a publicly traded company for you know pennies on the dollar that they were valued for originally. And we played the long game. We we went into the specialty pharmacy space delivering these extremely high value goods that a ride sharing guy who also takes you at the airport couldn't handle. And that's what differentiated us.
David
So I guess you know you're obvious I think your your wife probably was smart and realized like you're very you're very much an optimist. And so everything I I hear all the positives. And I think to be a good entrepreneur you've you've got to you've got to believe that to be able to go on and do it. But what keeps you up at night?
Amit
Aaron Ross Powell Yeah I mean expanding you know the footprint you know whenever we meet a client we're not in their state and trying to convince them that you know we can handle their operations. We've been through this before and we we can you know launch in Iowa if we need to and then trying to get the word out on what our efforts are that we that there is a better way to deliver and you know the marketing but that's not really what keeps you up at night.
David
Like from an existential kind of business like what are the things that could make this not work?
Amit
Aaron Ross Powell Sure. So I mean the major carriers are now more focused on healthcare because healthcare's recession proved they could drive those costs.
David
Just as a funny kind of aside in July I was in a meeting with the U CEO of UPS because we're we're a big UPS customer and I know that they're very focused on on this on this exact problem. That's why I was kind of curious.
Amit
Yeah and I have I've got insights on the other side too. So yeah the major carriers are trying to focus more on healthcare um but then what what really it is their their brand of healthcare is just white labeled you know but but but what what actually what do you actually worry about?
David
Like like what like what does that mean? Like you're worried you're not going to be able to grow? What are the the mountains that you're gonna have to climb to like really dominate this?
Amit
Yeah the mountains so I mean this whole um you know contractors, you know trying to walk that line with drivers who are contractors and then drivers who are employees, you know, FedEx, even Amazon, they've walked that line they've designed models around that and we've done similar to what Amazon's done as far as separating businesses from our businesses and adding layers in between that from contracting. But the good news is in our space we're in a heavily regulated space. You can't tell a delivery driver how to deliver a burrito but you can definitely tell a delivery driver how to handle a you know a narcotic medication that has DEA regulation on it.
David
Without crossing that line that's right.
Amit
So we're in that space where we can walk that line and importantly our business we don't just sell deliveries we sell software too right and we have the invoices to prove that we also sell software other companies I understand what you're saying here but I think that the average person watching this probably wouldn't.
David
But what you're saying is that like in in the delivery space there's a little bit of a conflict where you have like a UPS that has their own drivers that are that are unions. And that's a that that's a very expensive that's very expensive for them. You have the Amazon or FedEx model where they've been able to um substantiate having contractors um doing the in delay delivery they say they don't actually control and as a matter of control they have to they can't control exactly what that person does to be able to maintain that contractor status, but it can be somewhat controversial. So I'm guessing one can one concern you have that you have to overcome is you want to you want to be able to continue to work in that contractor model and not because you were like it's it's if if you couldn't work in that contractor model, it would make your business harder to compete.
Amit
Yes I mean we could still convert to a you know an employee W-2 model because of the margins we have today. And then and we are actually entertaining that some of the drivers that do routine stuff for us like these large bulk pickups from that central pharmacy, we could we are looking to W-2 them so we can once again exert more control. But then you have a lot more liability a lot more insurance and your your cost structure would change pretty meaningfully and to your question about what keeps me up at night that linehall driver who picks up over a million dollars worth of drugs if he slips his the truck on the ice and ends up in the in the Chicago River, that worries me, right? That's a massive liability to the point that we couldn't even get cargo insurance for what we handled. The minute the underwriters heard about what we were delivering, they would mark up the price or say no thanks. And we had a policy for about 17 days and then we had a policy canceled on us even after the payment was made and everything. And to our unto our brokers they were surprised they had never seen that before.
David
So I I went out to the to our clients and this is a very big problem by the way and like it's like I've publicly talked about I was in the freight business for a while and I got out of the freight business of one of the big reasons is exactly this liability um and um we were having insurance problems and because we actually had um a couple of accidents that were not our fault that had nothing to do with us but um but we were still involved in them and because of that and so like then you end up it ends up um being very expensive and it ends up like becoming a huge insurance nightmare. And so that's part of the reason why like these businesses they sound like they're they they can be great, but there's a lot of there's a lot there's a lot of other pieces to it that it's a lot it's a lot harder than I think maybe you're articulating a little bit.
Amit
Yeah that's no I agree on the risk side that's why we're trying to get as many insurance policies as possible to cover ourselves if a contractor driver hits somebody or is hit by somebody, whatever scenario is that can you reduce our risk as much as possible, no matter what if there's an event, someone's going to name us, it's bound to happen. It's a product of success. But going back to the cargo insurance but because we couldn't get cargo insurance we started our own insurance company we're almost done with the paperwork to have it as a formal insurance company today we can only call it a cost guarantee. And of course it has a fun name too it's called Foxtail.
David
Sorry sorry car car you're talking about you're going to start insuring for your customers.
Amit
The medications that we deliver now we have it it exists today but it's called a cost guarantee we're not allowed to call it insurance yet but the idea is for an additional fee that's affordable unlike the declared value box on a UPS or FedEx portal, if you were to put $50,000 in their text box, it would cost an extra $700 to deliver something across the street. You cannot afford to do that for every drug that goes out. We know our outcomes, we know our methods we know what our loss rates have been what is it that you are focused on it's a two-part question.
David
Sure and I'll start with the bigger one. Ten years from now, what does success look like for you?
Amit
Aaron Ross Powell We want to have as many health systems around the country as possible.
David
We want to deliver what does success look like for Amit? The company and Amit are maybe maybe separate. Like what is what what is it that you're what what does success look like for you?
Amit
Aaron Ross Powell Well that already happened because you know we we all race to try to define happiness for ourselves and we go on this hedonistic treadmill of defining happiness but two years after I quit practicing medicine I got to be home more I got to be with my daughter more at that two year mark I was able to match my salary as a physician I was already successful. Anything after that day was pure icing on the cake and it's been fun right being able to just figure things out and not being stressed by finances, stress of growth we can grow at our own rate. So in that mind I'm already successful as the business owner of a growing business success for me is is a size that we can define you know whether we have the whole country we're looking at expanding into India in the next coming months. Same exact model. Every playbook we learned in the U.S. is actually they're in more pain over there. And we're learning in other countries that have aging populations Japan, South Korea, China, this model could work there too. So my hope is as lean as we're being today, we could expand globally as we're already in the air freight business too that's another product that we we got into as business are you not in? I don't know yet air freight insurance we're in the packaging business now. So what what actually has accidentally become is we've become this sort of Costco model of healthcare logistics. What I mean by that is our health systems pay a monthly fee or annual fee for that. And with that they get world class logistics one of our products we now offer packaging that um these drugs have to be temperature control when they're delivered. We have a model where our
Amit
clients never have to buy packaging again.
David
We can open the package like a pizza delivery and bring back that box that afternoon to reuse and like I said they never have to buy packaging again and then getting into the insurance business, the airfray business these are all the you know the thing that that listening to you like making my head spin uh like it is it's um I mean it's an amazing business and I totally see how this is a a niche with a ton of potential. I mean I can totally see how you have a ton of potential there's no doubt about it. The thing that will concern me um listening to all of this is you make my head spin with all the different directions you're going at once. And it's very difficult to be successful trying to do everything. Oh I agree and like when you like everything that you're telling me is not consistent with a 14 person company um like it's just like you you can't do all of those things. Like one one per like 14 people even super capable people can't go out and do all of those things um at once. So um walk me through how you think about that and like you know what this looks like one to two years down the road.
Amit
Yeah so it may seem like we're in all these disparate businesses and that we're in you know in this ecosystem logistics but the actual kernel the actual currency of what we're selling is still the delivery one delivery may happen to go via an airplane one delivery may happen to go by a contracted driver's toilet or corolla but the main currency of what we sell is a delivery. And the question we asked ourselves a few years ago is how can you make more money off of the same delivery? Because delivery is it's easily a commodity. Anyone could do the A to B delivery part. So how do you make more money off of the same delivery? Sell them an insurance like product sell them packaging sell them a higher end delivery with you know shipping via air freight. So we're still in the delivery component business.
David
Yeah but to do all of those things well takes infrastructure like like to do like the insurance thing well for instance um you know that that's a that ultimately takes infrastructure insurance is difficult because most of the underwriters don't have complete insight into the businesses they're underwriting and they don't really know their risk.
Amit
We do know our risk because we knew what our outcomes were the previous years when it came to our lost rates and the minute an error happened we could build the software to prevent a driver from ever misdelivering something again and have the staff in place to go initiate the driver to go recover something so we don't lose it. And that's how we've been able to sort of build these systems because of how much control we exert over the system that takes care of this process. And on the air freight business so I I kind of tongue in cheek say that if the late great Fred Smith, you know the founder of FedEx, were to start FedEx today, his first idea would not be to go buy three airplanes. He would have leveraged the commercial airlines. So when one of our clients in Seattle said I need to ship over a million dollars worth of drugs every week from Washington to Tennessee, can you deliver it? I didn't go buy an airplane I leveraged the commercial airlines we ship on American Airlines and Alaska Airlines through that process. Very cost effective to the point where that business reaches a boiling point where I do get to go lease an airplane one day and go paint our logo on the tail so in 2025 what would say what would you say the biggest problem you faced as a business was and how did you overcome it? Yeah so 2025 we wrapped up the insourcing of basically removing all the three PL companies that we had worked with and hiring the independent contractor drivers ourselves. So we basically had to move 10 health systems as they were still operating. So it was like moving a house while people were still living in it. That was a difficult process because we had to go back to all these health systems boots on ground again, hire these drivers
Amit
make sure they were aware of what was going on and um and make sure that they delivered the same way that we were filtering is better than the group we were taking over. So that was tough. Accounting became a tough one because I was doing all the invoicing for the company up until late 24. And so now we're dealing with drivers that need pay you know every two weeks, health systems that have seven figure um you know annual spends with us how do we do all that so we had to build an accounting department pretty quickly so I could handle inbound and outbound expenses pretty quickly. So that was a big project last year that we spent on so those are the two that in the US you do that in India how do you handle that?
David
It's split between both.
Amit
So we have some we have some operators who handle the driver payroll in the US and the majority the bookkeeping and client invoicing happens overseas.
David
And do you have a CFO or you do that yourself?
Amit
No my co-founder and I are at the CFO.
David
We're thinking about hiring one at some point yeah I would think that that would be a that would be potentially a big unlock for you. I mean this is like um especially when you're doing so many complex things even if they're all related to the same kernel as you say it there's still lots of complexity around that and um the devil is in the always in the details. And so my suspicion is there's a lot of um money being left on the table simply from kind of you know organizational structure in that there could be and then we have an audit process where we were actually underbilling one of our clients by hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Amit
It was caught fairly quickly you know tail in tail between my legs that went back to the clients that told them what was happening and you know we got the the money paid for but these are all you know sort of lessons of any business they're growing pains. They're going to realize they underbuild or overbuild someone in the customer service to fix that situation or you know how do you scale to another city where you don't have any presence and we've learned all this you know it all started with just two people and being as lean as possible and still growing in that lean mindset and then hiring based on need, not just want um that's how we've been you know successful with this model to date.
David
How are you thinking about AI in your business? Like what what does that what does that do for you? And um you know do you worry at all that you know a lot of these features that you know are you are unique or niche um become much easier for competitors to actually roll out because of AI.
Amit
Yeah so luckily we're in the product and services business just like in your business you know AI is never going to physically install a filter into a you know a major installation someone still has to physically move something from A to B. And on the customer support side with a lot of AI momentum, I have this philosophy that only humans will answer that phone. And the idea is no even if you were to call customer support now everyone's mashing the zero button trying to get a person then and there I believe there may be a backlash when it comes to AI and customer service. So there's this incredible um ad guy out of the UK named Roy Sutherland and he has this from Ogilvy U UK he has this concept called the doorman fallacy. Meaning if you hire consultants to go to the the Breakers hotel in West Palm Beach and if they saw that you know the doorman standing outside the hotel, they'd say, oh replace that guy with an with the infrared supermarket door that automatically opens. It's much cheaper than paying three guys you know three shifts. You could do that you could save the money but there's an amount of prestige and and impressiveness when you see that doorman because that doorman can open the door for you your taxi that doorman can hail a taxi for you can help you get luggage out. So by having a human involved and the the the emphasis on customer support, going back to that tenth person we hired from the Ritz Carlton that obsession will unlikely be replaced by you know AI and an AI bot answering the phone rather than a human. And just by happy accident the majority of our customer service people live in Tennessee and they all have a Southern
Amit
accent, their voice is the personification of Apple pie and no one will get mad at them and that's probably why I hired them. So I want customer service to stay human. The idea that you know if Walt Disney were to start a delivery company what would that look like today being obsessed with the customer experience. On the software side, the idea of AI coding and all that, at least my thesis now is you cannot vibe code a healthcare enterprise piece of software with the data security that's required to meet the now stricter needs in healthcare today. We do use AI internally just to help with batches of code, to help us learn about coding or even help with some documentation all that but it AI will never be the front of this company, meaning if a patient were to call us, they're not going to get AI on the phone. I'm not gonna have an AI respond to my client's emails or me respond. So like I said I I'm cautiously optimistic on AI. I love technology but like I said there still has to be some humanity when you're dealing in a services business business where drivers are going to patients doors and handing over a package.
David
Yeah. Yeah I mean I think that the the risk or also opportunity is just in that um you know it's like the customer service side I I agree ultimately that um you know you can't replace humans for you know a lot of that personal touch and and I do think that that that that is more valuable than ever or is going and is going to be more valuable than ever. That makes sense. But um I do think that AI ultimately allows um companies perhaps bigger companies and smaller companies to um you know produce features much quicker that are going to solve a lot of these kind of niche problems that perhaps there were more um niche solutions to before, right? And so I bring I do I do think that it ultimately brings competition for that. Like um I and I agree you being in a like I I actually love your business for this being the intersection of physical products and software. I think to me that's that is actually the um the the right place to be because I think that software I think software is going to get commoditized more than maybe even you think with when we when you articulate it. Like I think that software ultimately is becoming the commodity and there are a lot there are lots of software companies that sit at the middle layer um that are basically the the um middleman in between um you know a physical thing um that needs to happen um and the customer and so like I think that gets collapsed. And so I think the software no longer is the
David
competitive edge. I think that like replicating your your software even in a healthcare field is much cheaper certainly than it's ever been. And so like that that barrier to entry goes but what remains is ultimately the physical barrier to entry.
Amit
I tell my development team like don't be upset or be humbled by the fact that if you if we do our job well, the software should be invisible. No one should even think about the software because my definition of technology is anything that turns two steps into one, whether it be a popsicle stick or Or you know, an enterprise that's a healthcare software. And the best technology in the world is anything that turns one step into none. And that's our goal is to be that none. And if AI helps us our software become a zero-step process, that's the goal. Software should disappear. The delivery people should disappear in a sense that delivery, the people themselves and that face-to-face encounter is what's left. And going back to that services business concept and going back to that doorman outside of the hotel, it's people that are going to be left. Because once the software eats the world and AI is doing everything, what's left? I guess we have to talk to each other, right? We have to interact among amongst us. Yeah.
David
I actually think that the opposite of software eating the world is going to happen in that like I think software um is going to become um more of a more of a commodity than it's ever been. And so it's actually just cheaper than it's ever been. And so it's like it's the afterthought when what what is left is the physical and what is left is like the boring businesses. And part of the reason why I'm doing doing this is highlighting like I think that what remains in that economy is ultimately people that are providing um physical um goods and services that are, you know, that software can't. And I think that so many people have spent their time in that middle layer building software, which is really just a tax on the rest of the economy. And then ultimately tax gets lower and lower because the cost of replicating it is smaller.
Amit
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: Yeah, but the irony of that argument is we have to subscribe to AI, right? You're paying a monthly subscription to open AI. That's still a subscription for a piece of software that does a job.
David
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But you can get open source AI today. And a lot of people are there have actually been some recent papers that suggest that it can get 90 to 95 percent cheaper, which means ultimately you you should be able to have the same model in your phone, um running in your phone, right? And so like that is the promise is ultimately then you're not subscribing to anything. You know, you can um you even today you can get like with the whole Claud Bot, what people are doing are buying Mac Minis, putting open source AI into that, they're not paying any subscription for that. You you buy it once and you're done.
Amit
That only hurts the AI industry and as their race being commoditized. That doesn't hurt, say, a logistics company or a services company.
David
No, I agree with you, but what I'm saying is that the software by the software ultimately, so so say you have a um, you know, you're running a business and you have to buy a Net Suite subscription, a Salesforce subscription, um, you know, go down, go down the list. Well, all of a sudden, if if theoretically you could program your version of that, you know, um way cheaper because of AI, all of a sudden you don't need to pay the tax to all these software companies that are doing it. And you can actually solve the problem that your you as a business need to solve rather than the one that cut you can kind of make work because they've somebody solved it universally, right?
Amit
Well, this and that exactly happened in the mid-2010s when AWS came out. Before it was very expensive to buy server stacks, run it, hire sysadmins to run those servers, to then put your company on a on a as a web app. AWS made it a commodity where anyone can spin up a web app within minutes and a credit card. Today, yeah, to to AI and automate all those business services, I'm all for that. Yeah, let's let's automate as much as possible.
David
Yeah, but what I'm saying is then that unlocks it makes it a lot cheaper for for people that are in the physical businesses to be more productive, right? I mean, and that that's really where I think the productivity ultimately comes. And so the irony of AI, in my opinion, is I think AI may actually um crush the tech industry as we know it today, at least. Because that's the irony of it, is that because of that technology, it actually is going to commoditize what is so much of the current tech industrial complex because you don't have a need or so much like they're gonna have to lower their prices so much to be competitive for that. I think if if you take it to the training.
Amit
If software becomes a zero dollar revenue driver for us, that's only less than 20 percent of our revenue. There's a reason why our motto is deliver better, not click better, right? Yes, we happen to we happen to be selling software to get another job done, deliveries, but yeah, um and and if we have to disrupt that with AI, could we own that first before it disrupts us? You know, the common thing is.
David
I think that you know, if I if I were branding you today, um I would personally drop the tech enabled part of the business. I would say, hey, um, I'm in the you know, um high-end medical delivery business, or you know, I'm in the you know, expensive drug delivery business, or whatever you want to or critical drug delivery business, something like that. Because you know, that's really what you're doing. The tech is the commodity. Like anybody can do that, do that now. I'm not saying anybody can do what you do, right? But like you're at a huge competitive advantage because you built that software um solving that problem early on. Um but really the core but the problem you're actually solving is you're taking you know, you know, mission critical, expensive drugs and getting them to a user when they need them at a high degree of accuracy. I mean, that's really the business you're in.
Amit
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: But the trouble is any courier company can make that same statement. Any courier company that's also delivering the same goods, saying a city we're not in. So how do we differentiate ourselves? And that's that's why we added the tech enabled piece to it, because Joe Blow Courier Company in Iowa is not going to be tech enabled. They're gonna use something off the shelf. The whatever's off the shelf is not gonna start a Joe Blow Courier company. So that's why we had to thread that needle being the best of both.
David
What I'm saying is like 10 years ago, I would have very much agreed with you. And where the world is going, what I'm like, you've gotten the head start, which is critical for this. But what I'm saying is now my thesis and belief is that the the tech piece is um more commoditized than ever and only going to become like you're gonna get to the point where other people can replicate that part of you, but they're not gonna be able to replicate the connectivity that you have as well as the customer service and the one-time deliveries. Like you even articulated that to me, like that is your actual value proposition. Um and so like owning that, like if it were me, if I if it were me, that's what I would that that's what I would talk about. Because I think that's ultimately what but like you get they get the tech part, and you're the best, you can be the best at that. But like what people are buying ultimately, I think is that guarantee and that customer experience.
Amit
And that people that is that you know, the persona you define when you're marketing, our persona, our health our pharmacy leaders at major health systems, they can still buy into the concept of tech enabled because it is different from what they're being pitched currently from, say, FedEx on one end to your local career companies. So until that until that persona sees, well, tech is just a commodity, then we can continue to kind of market that angle because that's our only persona. We don't have to convince patients that we're tech enabled or not, because they're not the recipient of our outcomes, but they're not the payers of our outcomes.
David
So I just think that my point is that the customer service and the ability to I call it shrinkage, but low um spoil rates or whatever you want to call it. Like like those are the things that you're those are what you're really selling. The tech enables that. That's right. But like what you're really selling is that. I mean, and I think that is what people really care about.
Amit
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: To your point, I'd I'd be happy to pitch ourselves as the Walt Disney of healthcare logistics. That way people say, oh, what does that mean? That means they must care about the experience so much so tell me more. And that's probably we may rebuild ourselves somewhere in the past.
David
But I think it's that, but it's also like if you can actually if you have actual data to show that um you're gonna have um lower loss rates with you, like and and um you in like that to me, that and the customer experience and and whatnot are really the those are the the value assets you're offering. You just the technology is what allows that for you. That's what that that's your allower. But what you're really selling is that experience. That's really what they want, is that experience.
Amit
If you on our website, the first half-click scroll you do is the our outcomes, you know, our on-time rates, the net promoter scores will be captured for pharmacies, our our delivery star ratings, all those are front and center. But we have to what I'm careful about how we market our company is I can't just say what any other delivery company could say, and I can't just say what any other software company could say. Uh, we have to, like I said, be the best of both in how we present ourselves because it is a little different model for now. You know, we are that technical.
David
But ultimately, I think you do that through proving value like on your your value list, like like customer happiness score, and how do you track that? How do you show that? How do you prove it? Um time delivery rates, how do you track that? How do you show it? How do you prove it? Um, you know, loss rates, how do you track that? How do you deliver it? How do you prove it, right? Like, you know, those are the things that you know the people actually care about for sure.
Amit
I mean, it's like our clients are buying happy patients and dependable delivery. Yeah, so that's the company you want to be.
David
I mean, like, and then like every like whatever however you get there is your problem. But like that, that is what that's the business you're in. Like if you deliver that, then you can scale it.
Amit
Yeah, and then I didn't get into every software feature. Well, one other thing that's we do for our health systems is a complete bespoke uh custom tracking and you know delivery notification experience for every health system. So to the point where they even give us an email address with their domain name on it, where if Fox Health isn't even on any notification that goes to patient patients, that's okay. You know, our feelings aren't hurt. So how do we're giving our health systems like the Amazon logistics like experience before Amazon takes their patients anyway, that's their existential threat. And we're there to empower them.
David
But you're giving them you're you're letting them provide the best customer experience possible. That's right. Yeah, pay best patient experience, but patients for your customers. I mean that and that's really because that's the business trend. Right, I know. That's what that's what that's that's the business trend. I delivered. And I'm harping on it because I do think it's very important to have clarity around the business that you're in. That's right. Um and it's like I think that, you know, like when I was hearing the first part of your conversation here today, like I'm trying to figure out what business is this guy in. You know, because ultimately you need to distill it into something. And so like like and you know, you can take it for what it's worth, but like when I hear like all these adjectives that you use to describe your business, I get confused because I say, well, what business is this guy really in? Like what does that really mean? Like, how is he going to be successful in that? Um, but when you distill it into um, you know, the the simplest form, or you earlier, I believe you called it the kernel of your business. Like you even described it. Like at the end of the day, um, you're you know, a delivery business for these special D medical supplies, and you do that, you provide the best customer experience in that. That's right. That's the business you're in. Trevor Burrus, Jr.: No, I agree.
Amit
And that's how we built these feedback channels to catch up.
David
Everything else you've done is to serve that business. To serve that mind. And to serve that. And so I think that you know, once you have clarity of that, then everything else becomes becomes obvious. Like then when you describe all the other things you're doing, it makes a lot of sense because you're serv you're all service- you're doing everything to serve that. But but all those other things are just uh are activities that you're taking to serve your core mission.
Amit
Trevor Burrus, Jr.: And I agree because I I tell people we don't have KPIs at Foxheld, we only have one vital sign. You know, vital sign like our only vital sign is that patient feedback score, that five-star rating that we get. And that's the one thing that still alerts on my Apple Watch on you know, whenever a star rating comes through, because I want to read the comments, positive or negative. I want to know exactly what's going on. And our attention to that, our only focus on that, the experience piece, is probably your is what you're saying is right, is that that's what they that's why our clients are buying what we do, because they're on the same mission. You know, our clients may be selling medications in a secured way and into pill bottles, but they're also selling happier, healthier patients too. We're doing that too on the very last mile.
David
What do you think about your like income statement? I guess like where does the money go? Like what is the like like what does your cost breakdown look like?
Amit
The largest cost is paying our independent contractor drivers. The next largest cost is our US-based personnel, and half of which are these customer service team members. So um I never tell our customer service members that you can only spend three minutes on the phone, they got a hang up. I tell them the opposite, spend as much time as you want. That's the one department we've invested the most amount of personnel stateside on. And then the rest is the one other salesperson at the company, and then some operations managers around the country itself.
David
Yeah. Makes sense. I mean, I I I I gathered that the independent contractors are really going to be your that's going to be your big cost structure because like that's how you actually that's how you have such few actual employees is because you're like the the leg the you're outsourcing more or less the um you know the bulk of the delivery work. Um you know, I think where I would where I would leave this, and I just just as a bit of a of a um thought that I I think about a lot. But um and I actually saw, I think um Tony Robbins mentioned this in a recent interview that he did. He's been on an interview tour, but it's something I very much believe in that in business, ultimately um, you know, you can't go into it thinking about like how much you know money I'm gonna make. You got to think about how much value you're gonna provide. And if you if you think about how much value you're gonna provide, then ultimately the money takes care of itself because you guys um you know money is a reflection of the of the value. Um and that's why, you know, I do think it's just so important to, I mean, and I think you do understand the value do you provide. I think that you know, being very clear in how you articulate that and articulate to that that to the world is so important. It's like what is the actual value that I'm providing? Um, and because then like it's it's a way that your employee employees understand what the value providing, and then you know obviously that starts to trickle down. Um and because I think you offer a tremendous amount of of value, and I think that that is um but framing framing bus
David
business in in in terms of value, I think is the kind of lesson that I would I would get from this conversation.
Amit
I agree. It's a great lesson because it's how we position ourselves to your point to our customers, to patients who aren't our customers, but to the recipients of our efforts, to our own team internally. You know, said differently what Tony Robbins says, you know, money is a side effect of our success. I mean, we obviously we need money to run the business, payroll, et cetera. But if we only have one customer we're delivering for once a day, we will be the best for that customer, that best experience for that for that patient. And a side effect of that experience and great experience will be more patients will want deliveries through their health systems through us. So and going back to that model that we aren't beholden to investors, we don't have to just grow for the sake of growing. Growth will be a side effect of that experience. Income will be a side effect of that experience. And that's the mission we're on. And that's why I keep harping on this idea that we will deliver better. And part of that better is a better experience. Yeah.
David
Well, you have a tremendously um impressive story. I mean, to think about um in medical school in 2007, you had this idea um or this kernel of an idea that you didn't let go. And um, you know, by 2020, you actually were able to bring it to fruition and um had the guts to then quit your job as a as a doctor. Um, which, you know, I I think that you know, on one hand, you could say, oh, you can always go back to being in medicine, but my wife is actually a doctor. And like I know like if you just like leave for five years, you don't just go back to uh you don't just go back. Um it's not it's not quite so easy because um obviously, you know, it's uh it's it's a um it's something that you have to keep current and and practice and this kind of stuff. So um it's a tremendous amount of risk that you ultimately took to to do it with no investors and to bootstrap it with literally zero money um to what it is today. Um and one of the like almost all the people that we talked to or I talked to have basically bootstrapped and you know, um like you're the second first person today I talked to that went from zero to eight figures um and with with effectively no money. And you know, most of the time in my comments, people love to say, well, um it's it would be impossible to do that, to do this without any money. But like almost everybody that I talked to that actually has a successful boring business did it with no money, but they had a um they had a unique insight that they were able to then go and build
David
something on. And um, you know, I I really love the idea, like one of the themes that you really fit into to me is um the idea of taking a um boring business that is tech enabled, but then making the tech seamless. And that's why I keep harping on that is because I think that that that is the that is the thing that enables it. But like what it is, is really enabling your um your knowledge, that what you have in your head, you're able to put that in technology form to deliver the outcome that you want to deliver. We do the same thing in air filters. Like the reason why you know we built our own ERP system that builds that does everything. I did it with the team of outsourced developers, very similar. Um, and now I see AI as allowing us to move so much quicker and do so much faster. Um, you know, but it but it's really just because we're building our business intelligence and our unique insights into this industry, into that, which is what you're doing in yours. And I think that that is the lesson. Um, you know, I think that that intersection of kind of real-world physical businesses that you understand because of a unique insight, and then pairing that with um what technology allows is really um where the best business opportunities are today, in my opinion.
Amit
Said differently, there's there's money in the in the mundane. And the irony of my story is I had to hang up my white coat to change healthcare to a better delivery model because I had seen patients suffer with something as simple as logistics. And yeah, healthcare deserves, you know, better software, better outcomes, and better experience. And that's what we've been after, this idea that um my other philosophy is that there with limitations, that helps breed creativity. If someone had given me five million dollars four or five years ago, I would have blown it all off.
David
I completely agree with that.
Amit
Thinking that um money doesn't solve every problem. Learning about the problem and then figuring out, yeah, okay, 100 bucks will solve this problem instead of saying, oh, a thousand dollars to this guy will solve the problem instead. That was what was the insight to my wife, the divester of Fox Health, gave me in the early days. And now, you know, you know, almost 10 years later, um, she's actually retiring because of these efforts.
David
Yeah, well, congratulations, I mean it. And um Is there any anything you wanted to talk about that we didn't that we didn't talk about?
Amit
I got this advice to find mentors who've gone through what you've gone through or going through or been through as far as you know building a business, you know, ideally bootstrapped, and finding mentors who are more successful or further down the road than you are. And I came across you know your YouTube channel, I would listen to your videos and your insights, and that's the goal. It's just I'm looking for mentors. The fact they've got this great community on the YouTube and and on podcasts is uh is an icing on the cake to that. But I'm basically looking for mentorships. This conversation alone was a great uh insight into uh presenting the value of company, not the money value, but the value value that you provide your industry and and sculpting that message to make sure your your buyer, your persona is under understands that. So I was looking for that mentorship and just learning from those who who are further along the journey than I am.
David
Well, I appreciate that. I mean, and we're all learning, you know, as we go. And so like I certainly don't have all the answers as you know, and no nobody does. But um you know, the the I mean, I think we we hit on the one thing that I, you know, from afar would would would would look at is like the biggest mistakes that I've made in my career, no question, is trying to do too much and being unfocused. Um and every I I've made like my biggest financial mistakes um and and you know, mistakes of any kind have been around trying trying to do too much, but like then going into like you know, kind of different tangential ideas that sound good, like like going into the freight business. Um, you know, that kind of makes sense because like I am a logistics business, I should be in the freight business. But like obviously, but you know, I've talked a lot about why that was such a mistake. Um so like when I when I listen to you talking about everything where I just worry about it, it's like I want to know like where's the focus? And I think that, you know, I actually think that you're probably more focused than than it sounds like because you're such you're a sales guy and you want to sell like all how great, how great everything is. And and you have to be like when you're an entrepreneur, you have to believe in it. And and you obviously have been successful. Um, but I know that there are a lot more um hairy moments in building what you've built than you want to admit, maybe to yourself, or you maybe you want maybe you don't remember. Um and you know, I think that I would actually encourage you
David
to try to do less, not more, but to do it better. No, and I think that is the you know, that would be the I totally agree.
Amit
We were sort of figuring out all these business and other tangents we could go on. I think now we've hit this second half of our S curve where it is just growth on this playbook we've designed today. I don't want to suddenly go on way other tangents either. I mean, the the few products and services we have service our business and service our clients, and that's what I want to scale. Uh even going to other countries, yes, it's a new country, it's a new location, but it's the same model. Yeah, it will dilute our our focus. I get it.
David
I think it's hard. I mean, I'm a I mean, I don't know, but I think that's hard. I mean, it's like, you know, uh the thought exercise I would have is um could you have a you know billion dollar um you know medical delivery business in the US? Easily, yes. Easily. So then why are you going to um dilute your focus from that? I mean, it's like that that would be you know, you know, my advice would be to figure that out and then worry about it.
Amit
I agree. We have less than one percent in the US market today. Yeah. And that's just with prescription deliveries. Imagine the other supply chain like we discussed.
David
Yeah, so why are you gonna dilute your focus?
Amit
I mean, that that would be my I agree. We had a heart to heart with my co-founder. And because he l lives there, and because of a good percentage of our companies already there, is the only reason why we're pursuing that country. If it was any other country, I would have said, put on the back burner, we've got the US market to tackle.
David
Well, I don't know anything about this business in India, but I would imagine that it's different problems and probably more competitive. Maybe not, but probably. Ultimately you'll make your own decision. But I just think that um with everything you've told me, if I were in your shoes or if I was counseling you, I mean you kind of asked, um, I would um I would double, triple, quadruple down on what you know is working. Um and don't let up until you haven't squeezed any, there's no juice left to squeeze in that, and you have a lot of juice left to squeeze. I agree. So I mean, like, I just don't think that like why would you take the risk of like you have this thing that's like a proven model um that you know how to work, you know how to scale. Um, why are you gonna take any focus off of that?
Amit
No, I agree. And like I said, because we have a large footprint already in India, of these staff, why not find the mid gear of India? It's probably it has the same name too. In India to operate that Indian business, because I only want to focus on the U.S. I can't fly to India if there's a problem. I can't be on the phone if there's a problem because obviously the time zone. So my focus is still the U.S. As I mentioned, I think we're on that S curve of growth, the second half of that S curve. If India is successful, great, let someone manage it there. I'll review the invoices. If India isn't successful, that's not gonna hurt what's happening stateside. So I do agree. And that was that's what worries me about going even to an to another country. Another state is okay, because we've done that you know twelve eleven times, but another country, you're right, it's a whole mixed bag of issues.
David
Yeah, you just have so much you just have so much potential growth that you just want to make sure that you you know keep focused on being. I agree. But don't lose focus from from you know that the opportunity that you're sitting on, which is a huge opportunity. I mean, I think like when I first heard about your business um from your email or whatever, I was like, that's a really interesting business. And um, you know, it's not a business most people think about, or or most people would think you couldn't bootstrap that type of business, but you obviously have proven that you can, and you can do it in almost anything. And so um that's what I love about it. I mean, I think it's a great story. Um and you're sitting in a like, you know, a tremendous opportunity that, you know, it's un undeniable that it could be, you know, just a monster business. Um, you know, I just think that, you know, I would even think I mean, I would even think about building more, like, hey, I'm gonna go buy the find the mid-gear of India. Well, I would find a good number two in the US or find other people like I would start using some of the capital that you're probably generating now to build your team here to go after that billion dollar plus opportunity. That's where I would be investing. I'd be in I'd be investing heavy into that. And I think that you're probably under investing because you're still of that bootstrap mentality, which has gotten you this far. But if you really want to like compete with the big guys, you're gonna have to invest in, and that is gonna be good people and systems around all of this. And and it's like getting a good CFO would be one. Like um, but building a management team that's going to allow you
David
to, you know, attack that billion-dollar opportunity here. Um, you know, that that's where I would be spending all my excess time and money is in figuring that out if you if you you know really want to go big.
Amit
So medicine, they say you don't do medicine, you practice medicine. I think the same philosophy exists in entrepreneurship. You always practice being a business person because you have to be open and humble to advice like like this. So I totally agree. I I do need to, you know, split up my efforts, find better folks in various departments, let them manage the system that is the company. So yeah, I can't focus on growing more of the business.
David
But you're gonna have to do like if you're gonna go from you know where you are now to a billion-dollar business, for instance, but you're in an industry where you can, you need to build the repeatable systems that allow you to do that. Like, how do you acquire the customers? How are you going to actually service those customers? Like, what is the system that does each of those things? And it's gonna take other people to do that. It can't be you calling a guy and saying, hey, I'm gonna set this up and hire one person to manage three warehouses here. Like you're gonna have to build the system to do that, which is gonna take you know more people and infrastructure, but you know, that's where you need to be spending your time, is figuring that out.
Amit
And we have that playbook, that experience. And now, like, say what we'll be launching in North Carolina um shortly. Same everything we learned about okay. Do we need a person boots on ground there to hire? Yes. Do we need how are we gonna operationalize the client day one? How are we gonna expand to the other parts of North Carolina? So we have that playbook. It's just the personnel we had to fill in at that point.
David
But if you needed to do it in four places at once, do you have the capability to do it?
Amit
So that was the concern that kept me up last end of last year. And I told our ops team, there's only five of us, ops team-wise, around the country, we're gonna be busy. If we have even if we have a back-to-back go live, as we call it, you know, week one, week two, we're gonna be in trouble. So everything that the ops managers have learned on the go live on how that playbook works, they can now go do that on their own. I don't have to be there to be there for that go live. I'd love to be there, you know, for that first launch to shake hands with the leadership and everything. But there's gonna be a point to our benefit that I can't be there. That's a good thing, right? It's like letting your child off on the training. Yes. Yeah.
David
And I mean, and that's that's really the I mean, I I would that that's really where probably the next focus needs to be.
Amit
Definitely take that advice because I'm we've got the roles already listed out to do just that account manager, another salesperson.
David
But it's gonna take, like, I can just tell from like your personality, you're gonna have to be willing to let go a little bit. And it's gonna be like I only started to get decent at this. I still don't think I'm great at it in the last two to three years. Um and you know, I brought in a management team, um, you know, and I've you know given more and more responsibility, um, which has allowed me to do this content and step away, right? Um, and and um, you know, but I was much like you in like kind of micromanaging every everything. Um, and you know, it it's hard to then um step back. And also what it does is it forces you to build systems that are robust enough that they don't require your knowledge and intellect to do them. And you know, I think that you know, my guess from understanding your infrastructure is you haven't learned to do that yet because um you would have more infrastructure around you if you did. And and that's and that's going to be what keeps you from really being able to scale. Like if I said, okay, um, I can get you, I'm a sales guy, I can get you, I can double your systems, I can double your business next year and 20, 22 more hospital systems. Um, you know, like what are you gonna do? Like, do you have the team that can handle that? Yeah, I mean, like, I mean, it's that's I'm I'm using that as the thought exercise. Like, like if you really want to be able to
David
scale, you're gonna have to be able to learn to scale the systems that allow that.
Amit
No, I agree because you know, like I was out of the country or during the Christmas break, and the company luckily was fine. There was no fires to put out of. You know, I was able to do the benefit of the clock and actually sleep during the during the time. I didn't have to put out fires or answer calls or be on a client meeting. So the the exercise there was the company can run without me. The company cannot grow without me. That's a big difference. So going from micromanaging to micro-observing. Like I still want to keep my finger on the pulse of what's happening, but I don't have to manage. And that's what I'm trying to grow into and get them mentored.
David
That's why that then you say, oh, I'm going to go open to India and just it's as simple as hiring another operator. But I'm not doing anything. Yeah, but you say that, but then you're like, how can you believe that if you can't do that in the U.S. without you doing anything? How are you going to do that in another?
Amit
Well, the only thing that really hinders our growth is just the physicality of it. Like being boots on the ground, hiring X number of drivers to go do Y number of deliveries. That's really our rate limiting step in growth. Telling our story, like we talk to health systems around the country every day. There's always a time when on the sales cycle with enterprise deals. So we have the benefit of that to plan these goal lines. But to your previous point, yeah, if we were to have one at the same time because the client both clients demanded it, or if we had them back to back, that would be a you know a testing test point for the company. Like, how can we launch two?
David
Yeah, so you just have to decide like if you really want to grow, then you're gonna have to learn how to do that. I agree. So anyways, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much. I I really appreciate you joining me. And um, I can't wait to get an update to hear what the next 10 years looks like for you. Appreciate it, David. Thanks for the opportunity. Thank you so much.
