I started working at St. Gregory Retreat Center in 2011 and quickly moved into a central role at the main office working directly with the Vice President of Operations, the Founders, and other leading roles (e.g. CFO, CEO) on special projects. What I quickly found out was that the company was basically a startup incubator in the healthcare space.
In addition to successfully running two residential substance abuse treatment facilities they also ran a separate healthcare laboratory in another state while simultaneously preparing to start up:
- A stem cell-focused, regenerative orthopedic clinic (alternative to surgery)
- An in-jail treatment program in collaboration with a non-profit
- A data company that would parse medical claims for overuse of substances in the workforce.
It was a busy place and I ended up working on all of these projects in one way or another simultaneously. One of the most successful was the stem cell-focused orthopedic clinic. Originally this was called Harbor View Medical and was simply a clinic licensing the Regenexx procedures but selling them differently―directly to employers.
I was a key member of a very small team of three (3) that primarily focused on outperforming the main Regenexx clinic in every metric with respect to client acquisition through direct and indirect marketing channels and secondarily crafted a completely unique and compelling story for clients, businesses, staff, and Regenexx itself with an ending that said one word: Merger.
We accomplished this through a variety of mechanisms and I’m going to share some of the high-level activities and accomplishments.
Testimonial Videos
Storytelling is a powerful. In order to fully understand why we made the decisions we made I need to show you the type of videos that were being produced by the procedure creators at Regenexx.
Now I’m not sure how wealthy you are, but I’m definitely not in the same social class as those folks. In order to expand the client base we started marketing to regular folks with regular jobs who had real pain. The marketing worked.
Our website outperformed the main Regenexx website in conversions by double. And once we had a steady stream of clients we started reaching out to them for some humble, down-to-earth testimonial video production. No mansions in this one, just Dave the handyman and Richard the farmer.
The budget was the cost of a camera and our staff’s time, but the results were real people telling real stories driving real business. We set up an interviewing framework that allowed for no pre-scripted words so that the result was natural and deeply personal testimonials. There are others that you can see all on the since-renamed Regenexx Des Moines YouTube page.
Live Seminars
Simultaneously we were marketing and hosting in-person seminars for anyone in the community (especially employees of self-funded employers) to learn about the procedure directly from the Doctor who may very well perform the procedure for them.
Below is a video highlighting Dr. Michael Jackson who went on to be the highest performing Doctor in the nation (by procedures performed) for Regenexx procedures as a result of our efforts. Additionally, this features a graphical presentation I created to market directly to companies and their employees in collaboration with the elements Dr. Jackson wished to include.
Self-Funded Employers
All of this eventually led to self-funded employers adding the experimental Regenexx procedure to their healthcare plans. Below are two videos from Meredith Corporation (Chairman and CEO and the Director of Employee Benefits and Wellness respectively) touting their decision to partner with then Harbor View Medical in service to cost-savings and better outcomes.
The Investor Pitch Deck
All of this started with a good idea, a growing team, and a great story. I don’t have the original pitch deck any longer as my work in that healthcare company incubator was very fast-moving, but I do have something from a later rounds of capitalization that I created. It’s in the older iteration of the Prezi software, so it may take a bit longer to load as I pushed it to its limits back then. Desktop and Fullscreen-mode highly recommended. [Note: at this point this version of the prezi software is quite old so no guarantees. Also, on mobile the transitions are truncated].
tl;dr
I worked on―and in many cases conceived of and created―materials enabling business success leading to a merger and some firsts in the United States (i.e. self-funded employers adding our experimental stem cell procedures to their healthcare plans).
We did this (in part) in the following ways:
- Creation/Design of Startup Pitch & Investment Pitch Decks
- Developed and refined pitch and associated materials
- Story development and research
- Copywriting pitch materials
- Web Design and pay-per-click (PPC) Management
Major Outcomes
- Generated 1st Employer in America to add experimental Regenexx procedure to their self-funded healthcare plan through Harbor View Medical.
- Lead to a successful merger.