How Are 400,000 People Saving $500 Per Month on Their Health Care? Michael Gardner, the Senior Director of Marketing and Communications for Medishare Shares the Story

Audio Transcription

How are over 400,000 people just like you, saving $500 per month on their healthcare. On today’s show, we sit down with Michael Gardner, the senior director of marketing and communications for Medishare to learn how you can save up to $500 per month off of your healthcare.

Some shows don’t need a celebrity and a writer to introduce the show. This show tomorrow, eight kids, Koch, created by two different women. $13,000,000 businesses. Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the thrive time show.

Yes, yes, yes and yes. Thrive nation. Welcome back to another the light thing conversation

and an exciting addition to the thrive time show on your radio and podcast download. Now, on today’s show, I seek to answer one question and the question would be this. How in the world are 320,000 people? How 320,000 people plus people able to say, how are they able to save $500 per month or more on their healthcare? So on today’s show we are interviewing Michael Gardner, the senior director of marketing and communications for a group called medishare. Michael, how are you sir?

I’m great, how are you today?

I am excited to have you on the show because we have, you know, hundreds of thousands of small business owners that listen to each and every show. Many of us grew up poor, you know, the average small business owner is, grew up with minimum means, a lot of people working hard mechanics, small business owners, Baker, dentists, and you’re bringing the message of good news today. So I want to start off. I just kinda asking you this for anybody out there that’s not familiar with Metta share, could you share with our listeners what Medishare is all about and what big problems you guys solve?

Absolutely. Um, it’s interesting that you mentioned how many small business listeners you have to because about half of our members are self employed as well. So it’s, it’s interesting and I think we do have a good message for them to share is basically a healthcare sharing ministry. So we are a faith based organization and we provide an alternative way for people to address their healthcare bills. So we are not health insurance, we don’t feel like health insurance for a lot of people. It’s really a community of people who’ve decided to band together, uh, all across the country. We have a 400,000 members now all across the country to share in each other’s medical burdens.

You said 400,000. We do, which is actually significantly larger than $320,000. 10. Okay. So you guys are growing. I mean, even since the last time that I looked into this, I looked into you guys originally, I would say nine months ago, eight months ago. So you guys are growing quickly.

It is growing quickly and you know, it’s, I think it’s a function of the fact that people are really becoming wise healthcare consumers. They’re trying to find options. They’re looking at options and, and kind of the days of a one stop shop of a solution for your healthcare. Uh, we’re kind of past that now. So people were getting creative in the ways that they’re appeasing solutions together and healthcare sharing programs or one of those pieces.

Satan needs, uh, needs an advocate. But I want to ask you this question because I know there’s somebody out there. Can I ask you to route questions on behalf of our listeners that have. Please do one of our listeners. I’m sure we have a lot of listeners in Boston right now. Just a lot in Boston. I Love Boston. A big patriots fan. You know, and one guy’s thinking he’s going, I swear this sounds like escape. This is absolutely. Sounds like a complete scam. How could he possibly, how could this possibly have. So can you answer the questions for our [inaudible], our Bostonian listeners out there who are skeptical of everything except for bill.

It’s interesting you say that because I, you know, I lived in the area where a miniature is headquartered for a number of years before I ever joined the ministry. And I remember thinking the exact same thing when I heard the radio commercials on the radio. It’s like this sounds too good to be true. And so, um, it is interesting. It’s been around since 1993. Our members in that time have shared more than one point 9 billion with a b billion dollars of one another’s health care bills. And so, um, you know, my family members, my wife, myself, uh, two children were all medicare members. We’ve had shareable needs as well. Now, you know, in the, in the time that we’ve been with the ministry. And so in our case it has worked exactly the way that it’s been designed to work, which is really great. And we can talk about some of those specifics too.

In 1914 are great. United States started this thing called the federal trade commission and the idea was to make sure that, you know, there’s not monopolies, people aren’t being shady with their advertising. They had, I’m sure, deeper sounding documents that said more things than just we’re going to keep shady people out out of the game. But you can’t run radio commercials to broadcast scams anymore. Really. I mean, it’s harder to, you know. So if you guys were in fact a scam, you probably would have been outed by now. So I would like for the listeners out there who are curious about the mechanics of how medishare works, could you break down some of the specifics of how this, how the, how the mechanics work, how does, how does Medishare actually work?

Yeah. Let’s talk about in two different ways. First we can kind of talk about this whole idea of sharing and what that’s all about and then we can also maybe talk about the experience of like what’s it like to go to a doctor’s appointment with this kind of thing? Yeah. So to address the first one, the way that we work on, we’re basically like a crowd funding solution for healthcare, but the interesting thing is we don’t collect the money and pull it right. We’re not an insurance company, so it’s not like people pay us money every month and we pulled that money and then pay claims on behalf of members. That’s why we’re not insurance. We’re quite different from that. In fact, every single person who’s a member has a sharing account at a financial institution and every month I deposit my monthly share into that account and it’s important to understand that that monthly share amount is never used for my own healthcare bills.

Okay. That’s what I’m going to share with other members in need. So the other piece of this is is called your annual household portion. So there are two numbers you need to understand to understand. Medishare. One is this monthly share amount. I put that in my sharing account. It gets shared with other people. The other number is called my annual household portion and that’s a dollar amount that I choose. We have, I think seven different options now that you can choose from. Have a a level of financial commitment that your family makes based upon your own particular situation. So in my family situation, we’ve chosen a $10,500 option and we know that means that we’re going to pay every penny of our medical bills up to that amount before other members are going to share with us. Once we’ve reached that amount, then our bills get presented to the rest of the membership and members sharing those bills, those eligible bills at 100 percent. So we don’t do co-insurance, no 80 slash 20, 70, 30 splits or those kinds of things. Your bills or that are eligible for sharing gets shared at 100 percent by the other members. So those are the two important numbers you need to understand.

So as a self employed guy and in my case where we actually have brick and mortar companies that employ hundreds of people, my wife and I, we’ve come to the conclusion, you know, years ago, and maybe you don’t agree with this, but we thought, you know, we need to buy insurance to cover what we can’t afford, you know, so up to 10,000. Yeah, let’s pay it ourselves, you know, we’ve been blessed. Let’s do that. But you know, when you get into like $2,000,000 things, I mean huge things. Uh, we had our, our, uh, unfortunately where wife had a late term miscarriage, are twins, Whitney the icu when they were born. I mean these things. My Dad passed away two years ago, have Lou Gehrig’s disease. I mean we’ve gone through a lot in recent years. So for somebody out there who says, okay, this sounds reasonable, but you know, what if I go, you know, end up having something like Lou Gehrig’s disease that happens five years from now, does, does Medicare still helped me, then

it’s actually intended to help bear major medical burden. So this gets into a really interesting topic area, which is, how are we different from insurance? Right? Functionally and, and we can talk about that a little bit, but the program was really intended to help people bear their burdens. It’s really not intended to take care of everyday types of illnesses, but we can talk a little bit about how we do those things as well. So we’ve had members with major health issues, you know, stage four cancer and an awful lot of people who have been diagnosed as cancer free or deemed cancer free. We’ve had people, you know, people who’ve had organ transplants, major surgeries, accidents, those types of things. Um, some individual needs exceeding a million dollars each. So our members have had a, you, you name it, in terms of the healthcare spectrum, our members have had, um, all kinds of needs from large to small.

So, um, we can talk a little bit more about the specifics. So that gets us into this territory of, well, okay, how is it different from insurance? Most people are used to insurance plans now that cover preexisting conditions, routine wellness, care, prescriptions, you name it. And for a lot of people, those kinds of things make sense. Our programs a little bit different in that I just named really the three ways that we’re primarily different. So routine in wellness care are generally not going to be shared by other members. They’re going to be the member’s out of pocket responsibility. So I know that every year I should go get a checkup and my doctor, I should get my blood work checked. Uh, those, those sorts of things. That type of routine in wellness and preventive care is, is generally not going to be shareable. The idea being that I’m saving an awful lot on the cost of my healthcare by being a member.

It’s just good financial stewardship for me to set some of that savings aside so that I can then pay for those things that I can plan for. Well,  Medishare is there to really help address those, those burdensome things or surprises that, you know, nasty surprises that you have. So that’s one way that we’re a little bit different prescriptions or another way that we’re a little bit different to, um, prescriptions are generally for, for new conditions are going to generally be shareable for up to six months, but you’re not gonna have your prescription shared in after six months. So that means that for someone with a really high recurring prescription expense measure is probably not going to be the most cost effective solution. And so we try to make sure that people understand these things, you know, as they’re making an informed decision about their healthcare.

And the third major way that we’re different has to do with preexisting conditions. So we never turn people away for health related reasons, um, but there are preexisting condition limitations, right? So you have to be a member for a certain amount of time before bills related to preexisting conditions will be shared. So those are three of the major things that are different and that’s why we do a folks here all the time who were available to talk to people, help them understand exactly what this is so they can make an informed decision because like I said, we’re not a health insurance organization and we feel and work quite differently from insurance. So it takes a little bit of time for people to understand this and I think that’s why you know, your, your Boston listeners are probably a little skeptical is because you know, this does, it does sound quite different because it is quite different.

Anybody out there from Boston, you know what I’m talking about. We’re all, we’re all scheduled everything except for bill bellacheck and Brad Stevens with those guys were not skeptical anymore. You were, just to recap though, there’s three primary ways. I’m sure I’m learning that there are three primary ways that Medishare is different from typical insurance. One is the routine in wellness cares is typically not shared. Is that correct? That’s correct. Prescriptions are generally shareable up to six months. Is that right? Now an administrator and never turns down people away for previous health related issues?

That’s correct, but there are limitations on how long you have to be a member before those types of things are shared in.

I have, I have an issue. I have an issue like to bring up here, maybe a preexisting issue. Here we go. My wife and I, we’ve been married now almost 18 years. Okay. And we got married very young, very young. I’m 38 now. Still still still feeling young but not so young. So I was not a Christian. When we first got married I went to Oral Roberts University and I went there because pragmatically I thought it was a safer campus than in the college I was going to add Minnesota seriously. I know I was not a Christian, so I went there a trick her into marrying me. She knew I wasn’t a real Christian. She was um, my son was born blind in 2007 and he can now see that’s a whole separate story, but that’s, that’s Kinda what switched me to a different team. Okay. But Medicare is a ministry, so if I’m, if I am a Christian or not a Christian, can I team up with you or, or what, what was the restriction on that or what are your rules?

Yeah, there, there are a couple. There are two primary areas, right? There are, there’s a statement of faith, but we do ask members to review and make sure that they’re in agreement with that. It is a faith based organization and so our, you know, it’s a community of faith. So it’s not uncommon. In fact, we hope that every time somebody calls in, our folks here on the phones are going to offer to pray with somebody at the end of the call. And so that happens quite often. Um, and so it is this community based upon faith. When you’re notified each month of who shared with you or who you’re sharing with a, you also have the ability to reach out using our mobile app to those folks in prayer and you’ll probably receive prayers if you have a shareable need. So we want people to understand the type of community it is that they’re joining. So that is one thing that, that’s definitely a consideration. There’s a statement of faith. Um, the other thing has to do with some behavioral conduct issues, right? We do ask our members to be tobacco free. We also ask people to abstain from using illegal drugs and to not abuse alcohol or prescription drugs. And so that’s another one of the kind of membership guidelines as well.

Okay. So you asked the members to avoid, or I guess it’d be abstain, tobacco of abstaining from tobacco, tobacco free. Yep. Uh, no illegal drugs? No illegal drugs. Okay. And then don’t abuse alcohol or prescription drugs? Yep. Okay. So don’t abuse, I’m just getting this on the show notes. Don’t abuse prescription drugs or alcohol. Okay. What about shooting?

You know, what do we know about something like that when someone joins. Well it, you know, it’s based upon their, you know, their membership application. So, you know, we may not find out about a situation like that and until someone is a member, say somebody has a medical bill related to that, you know, they’re in a car crash and they’re driving truck that kind of, any medical bills related to that wouldn’t be shareable. So it’s important for people to understand that too, that it’s, you know, it’s a more, more than kind of a token. Yes, I agree with this kind of thing. There’s a practical reality this as well, which is, you know, if, if you, if you’re involved in those kinds of things, um, and you have a medical need or medical bill that’s related to those, your need will probably not be shared in. And so we just want to make sure that people understand, you know, the community that they’re joining.

I would have to say then if I had to guess, I would probably say that Wiz Khalifa’s probably not a member of Medicare.

Hipaa. Hipaa precludes me from saying anything about specific members.

Okay. I would just say post them alone is probably not a member of Medicare. And I would also say that Josh Gordon made now be a member of Medishare probably cause he’s sobered up since joining the Patriots. So now we move on. So the Patriots Medicare to great things. The Patriots make money, right? As a result of filling up an arena, filling up the stadium, selling advertisements. This is how we make money in licensing equipment, licensing gear that southern New England patriots make money. Medicare, how does Medicare make money or does it measure even make money?

So we’re a nonprofit organization. I mean obviously we have to operate the organization and a lot of what we do has to do with investing in making the program better. We do invest a lot in technology because it’s one of the things that we’ve automated this process of bill sharing on behalf of our members and we try to make it as convenient as possible for them. So there are certainly an investment in technology can make this sharing work. Uh, we also invest in things like telemedicine, so for example, all of our members now have access to a telemedicine program, so I can see a doctor, I need to talk to a doctor on my phone or I can see a doctor through a video call at no additional charge. I get that as part of my medishare membership and you know, as somebody with two young kids, we’ve probably used it 10 times in the last year and a half. Um, so, you know, at no cost, that saves us a great amount of money out of pocket. So we do invest in things like that to help keep the cost down for people. But every month my monthly share amount is going to have a portion of it that goes to sharing with other people and there’s a small portion to that goes to administrative expenses to help run the organization. So certainly there’s that consideration.

Absolutely. How long have you been with medishare, Michael?

I’ve been here for about three and a half years.

And what drew you to medicine? There was, it was the name you’d like to name, you said the name, was it, did he know somebody? Did you like the mission? What attracted you to join Medicare?

I didn’t know much about it other than what I had heard on the radio spots, which were, you know, these great testimonials from people who said it, you know, it saved them money and it helped them out when they were in need. But I was at a point in my career where I had worked on the healthcare provider side and was looking for something a little bit different, kind of felt a calling. I thought maybe I was going to go to seminary or be a pastor or something like that and just started to explore some opportunities and this, this opportunity popped up. Um, and I, I, you know, tracked it down and didn’t even really know what it was. Just saw this position advertised and thought, Huh, it looks kind of interesting. I’ll see what that is. And it happened to be this one and it’s worked out wonderfully for me.

So I just kinda felt like I was, I was at that point in life where I wanted to do more, you know, it was about more than just a job. I was looking for a career, I wanted to make a difference and so this has allowed me to do that and it’s, it’s great to be able to, you know, hear from members to hear their stories and to hear the way that this is impacting people. You know, one of the things that people don’t often understand the why behind what we do, you know, they, I think we get talked about as a cheap alternative to health insurance and you know, it’s certainly an affordable program, but the reason we really exists is hopefully to allow people to take that savings and do more with it. You know, that’s, that’s the intent behind this program. So we do hear from members, certainly stories that, you know, I had this particular healthcare need and you know, what my bill actually was shared by other people.

This thing actually worked. But you know, what we’re trying to find now, what we hear more often from members now are these stories about what did you do with your beer savings, right? I mean, you get prayer support from people you get savings. What did you do with that? How are you impacting the world around you? And we’re starting to hear from people that they’re doing that right there that are doing things like adopting children or they’re fostering children or homeschooling kids when they, you know, they wanted to do that and didn’t know how they could do that before, um, or they’re starting ministries or small businesses of their own or they’re going back to college or helping their aging parents or, or you know, um, children who are just getting out of college and getting started. So, you know, the stories we hear now are about how people are, um, are using that savings to do more in their community and their family and in their, um, in their church. And so, you know, those are the kinds of stories that are really impactful and that we hope to hear more about the time.

I have a story that I had to one up you, but I have a story that I think you may want to hear. Um, how many kids do you have? You said too, is that right?

I have to, Yep.

Okay. I have five kids. I don’t know. How old are your kids?

I heard, I heard that you had five kids. Just minor and on. My son is nine and my daughter’s 11 years.

Okay. Do you ever, when your kids were like a three, four or five, that whole age thing you’re taking to the community pool and I’m sure your kids never did this, you know how you see the one kid who’s definitely peeing in the pool and he has no shame in the game because he’s like to, you know, he’s just going for it. I view insurance is kind of like a. If you have an insurance pool, let’s say, filled with people that are using alcohol that are over, that are abusing prescription drugs right there. Kind of peeing in the pool. You don’t contaminate. Right? Because I would think if you had a group of members that are at least saying they abstained from tobacco and and illegal drugs and prescription drugs and that kind of thing, I would assume they probably are have less risk. Again, these are just, these are just math and just thought statistics. You know, there’s tends to be less duis from people who aren’t under the influence, you know, less dwi for people who are less. Do you feel like that the risk level goes down, that the costs of medical care goes down when you have people? Is there any statistics out there that you’ve seen that show that medishare members on average maybe cost less for everybody out there that because they’re not contaminating the pool with bad habits?

I’ve not seen statistics about that. It’s a really interesting question as well. And so for us it kind of goes back to just this sense of community that, you know, the folks that join medishare are coming into it, you know, because of, of what it is. A lot of people I think call us because they hear the fact that it’s affordable and then I think they understand the community once they, they get involved with the program, but it’s certainly once have a shareable need and really see what this is all about. So it’s a, it’s really a function of the community as well. And you know, we’re one option. We don’t try to be everything to all people. We can’t be everything to all people and there is a place for health insurance as well. Certainly in the mix of, of what people have. I mean, I’ve, you know, I, before I came here, I spent most of my working life working for, um, for larger employers where I had group health insurance and that was a good solution for me then, um, and so were yet another part of this spectrum of healthcare and I think it’s changing quite a lot right now and people are getting used to this idea of going out and shopping for different alternatives, you know, and piecing it together.

I know that it felt so strange to me the first time I was in a job when I looked at the costs for healthcare and thought, well, I can either put my wife and kids on my, my plan through my employer where I can go get something separate for them and that’s going to help me keep the cost down. But just like that at the time was this for an idea, like not putting my entire family all in one in one place. And so, you know, I think, you know, we’re seeing leaps and bounds of changes, you know, even beyond that now where people are really getting creative and looking at this and saying, well, how can I put together something that works for me that frees up money that I can put into my business or into my ministry? And what’s that gonna look like? So it’s, um, it’s a much different world than it was 10 years ago when I had to make a decision like that. But, uh, I think people were looking at all those options. And we’re just one of many.

If I’m out there listening today, who is an ideal fit for Medicare? Who’s not? I mean, what, what kind of action steps I take? It’s I said, okay, you know, I’m curious. I would like to earn, I like to save an extra $500 per month. I could, I could see how I could use that, you know, I want to maybe look into this not, not necessarily committed, but just to see if it’s a good fit. What’s the, what’s the first step? What action step do you want our listeners to take here today?

Yeah, I mean definitely what we would want people to do is to check us out online or to certainly call in and talk to someone as well. We always have people here who are happy to talk to folks about that. And so, uh, that, that’s the first thing is kind of understand what this would look like for your family because like I said, we want people to make an informed decision. We do have a website where people can go. It’s actually [inaudible] dot com slash clay. And if they go there, they can certainly request some more information and if they want we can have someone reach out to them and, and explain this or they’re, they’re happy to explore it online as well on either of those options are fine, but that’s really the best thing, you know. And, and I did that with my own family when I signed up, like, okay, exactly what is this thing because it’s not health insurance.

So help me understand how it works, help me understand what my cost is going to be if I have a, um, a good year where I don’t need to consume much healthcare, but also help me understand what this is going to look like if I have a really challenging year where one of the kids falls out of a tree and breaks their arm or you know, or, or, or, or somebody needs surgery or you know, I’m in an accident, you know, heaven forbid. Um, and so we have folks here all the time who could help people understand what that looks like. And so that’s the best thing. It take a little while to understand this. And so it’s a much different kind of thing than, than what people are used to. So we’re happy to take time with people and help them understand what it will look like for their particular situation.

Url, I don’t really know. It’s a medicine for their ministry dot Com. Forward slash clay. There’s just something. So I don’t know what it is. I’ll to think about it for a few hours. But Medicare.com forward slash color. I just love the sound of that url. It’s a eight, five, five, two five. Is that right? It’s eight. Five, five, two, five. Share knows that. Share like if I could turn back time like that kind of share or what do you mean

the other kind of share? Yep.

Okay. Thanks for clarifying. Okay. So now we continue. Michael, I think the question that probably everybody has out there as if they do decide to use Medicare as their healthcare provider of choice. Uh, how does it work when you actually go to the doctor?

Right. It’s simple, really. You contact your provider, make an appointment, you go to the office and you show your Medicare card. Once you’re there, you pay a small provider fee, it’s usually $35 and then you get the care you need and your provider sends the bills to us and we do the rest. So it’s important for people to understand that they can see any provider that they’d like to see. We do give our members access to a network of about 700,000 providers all across the country that, you know, primary care physician, specialists, labs, diagnostic centers, hospitals, uh, so your, your out of pocket cost is generally going to be less if you do use one of the providers from that network, but you are welcome to see any provider that you would like to.

So just so I’m making sure that I understand this. I can go to any provider that I want to, but you have approximately 700,000 approved care providers that I can go see that are, that are part of your maybe recommendation list or how would you refer to that internally?

It’s really a provider network. So we do have arrangements with, with, uh, uh, with that network of providers. And so, you know, there are discounts available from those providers on the care that’s received, so it really does help minimize your out of pocket costs. We also have some partnerships with diagnostic centers, with some lab centers as well where you can, um, you can get discounted costs on lab tests as well because that kind of care can be quite expensive as well. So we’re always trying to help people be good stewards of their finances and minimize those out of pocket costs to the extent that we can.

And I’m taking notes as you were talking there to make sure I don’t miss it, miss anything there. You’re also saying that when I go to my local healthcare provider, I show them the Medicare card and I’m going to be out approximately $35. Is that, is that correct?

That’s right. So yeah, that’s what you pay at the time of service to the provider. And then you get your care. The bills come to measure. And what we really do behind the scenes, and this is kind of the convenience that we offer our members, is we’ll look at that bill when it comes in from a provider and say, okay, you know, we’re their discounts applied to this. That should have been, um, have you met your annual household portion yet? So that right there is really one. That’s the main question is if you’ve met your annual household portion, which we talked about, you know, you were financial commitment of your bills that you pay before members sharing them. If you’ve met that amount, then your bill gets presented to your fellow members for sharing. If you’ve not, you will pay the full balance of that bill right up up to that annual household portion amount

as a faith based organization and an American organization. And even bigger discounts instead of the $35 a, they pay like $5 if they are a and New England patriots fan.

We don’t have any of those partnerships lined up.

Oh, okay. I just was curious. I didn’t know that was the high road you could have taken. Okay. But now people want to learn more about Medicare. Is there a certain domain or certain web address you would direct all of our listeners to check out where they could really read the fine print or learn more about medicare or what’s, what’s the action step that you’d recommend everybody takes if they want to know a little bit more about how this works?

Absolutely. So the best thing to do is to go to medicare.com. You can see all kinds of information about how the program works. There’s pricing information there. So if you put in the number of people in your household and, and other data, it’ll show you what your monthly share amount would be for different scenarios. So you can really tailor it to your specific family situation. Um, you can also get a phone number there to call in and talk to someone if you’d like to. You know, we, we talked about how different this is from, uh, from health insurance and other kinds of solutions. And we want to make people under, make sure people understand how this works and that they can make the best, most informed decision for them and their family and their particular situation. So we would always encourage people if they have any questions at all to contact us by phone and we’re happy to spend time going through the details of what that would look like.

That makes sense. Even if my very small mind. So we have this whole show is about helping people to achieve success in business. Right? Help them. So look into your personal life a little bit. You sound like a very intentional guy. You’ve had a lot of success. Very purposeful man. How do you spend the first four hours of your typical day?

The first four hours. The first hour is like on a caffeine drip to make sure that I can wake up appropriately. So I spent some time in the morning, I’m with my kids and my son is an early riser so it’s cool to be able to spend time with them to kick off the day. So that’s a good thing. Um, I also spent some time doing a daily devotional every day, you know, and that’s, that’s something that kind of fills me up for the day and make sure that, you know, I started off at the right place. Um, I’m lucky that I have about a 40 minute drive to work and so I get some time in the car to listen to the podcasts and those kinds of things. And then once I get to the office, it’s just a matter of sitting down and saying, okay, everybody on the team knows the plan of work for today.

So what’s, you know, what’s that gonna look like and how are we going to move forward with it? I’m a, I’m a big planner, so my, you know, everybody on my team probably gets get sick of me saying what’s the goal? Because we all kind of start with the, with the end in mind. I’m kind of notorious for that. I guess that’s the first thing I’m going to ask is what’s the goal? And I’m a little methodical, probably too methodical sometimes. So, you know, I, I kind of followed this whole, you know, research plan, implement, evaluate process on things as well and so for me, uh, you know, I need that kind of structure and so that’s how I spend most of my days as a, you know, if I’m going to develop a plan, I kind of follow that framework and for me that works, you know, I, I kind of need that structure and then I can be creative within it. Um, so, you know, a little bit different approach. Um, I, I think sometimes but that’s what works best for me.

So you said your, your rhythm is to research. I’m just taking notes here because our listeners always go to the show notes and like to check this out. So you’d like to research, right? And then you like to plan.

Yeah, research plan and then implement things and then evaluate it, you know, so we always start by developing goals for what we’re trying to do, you know, in any, in any given project or campaign or a year, you know. And then what are the things that are going to impact that, you know, what do we know about, um, what do we know about the situation internally? What do we know about, you know, impacts that it might have on our members, um, you know, and then put together a plan. We probably spend 75 percent of our time working on the planning and actually only 25 percent on the implementation. And I think that’s a little bit different. You know, my, I’m, I’m kind of wired that way where I tend to not go right to tactics. I tend to spend as much time as I can on strategy, which I know is maddening for a lot of, for a lot of people. But I tend to spend a lot more time on a project and in the planning and goal setting and making sure I’m going to be able to get data to evaluate things and you know, and that really only leaves about 25 percent of the effort left and actually doing the implementation. And um, and that works for me. I know it doesn’t work for everybody, but that’s kind of my, uh, my approach.

Nice to have a notable quotable that allegedly was a spoken once by Mr Abraham Lincoln, but again, every, every quote in the world now is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, but Abraham Lincoln allegedly once said, he says, give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four sharpening the ax.

That’s pretty much it.

No. Another notable quotable coming in, hot from, um, Mr Michael a gardener. This is a hot a co that I feel like it’s going to be brewing. He feel free to take this quote in. To use this quote in the future is give me six hours to chop down a tree and I’ll spend the first four hours sharpening the ax. Michael Gardener. Either way it works. It’s the same thing. Okay.

I’m going to order a tee shirts right now with that on it.

What time do you wake up every day?

Oh, usually between 5:30 and six.

Okay. But now thrive nation, take note of this. Every time we’ve asked every New York Times best selling author, the head of Disney world, the pastor of the largest church in America, Craig Rochelle, the number one pr consultant in the world, Michael Levine, thrive nation. What do they all say? And when I asked him, what time do you wake up? What time do they say it’s always 5:00 AM. It’s always five, 5:30. Nobody says seven. Nobody says, Hey, no one says nine. So if you’re out there saying, I’m running out of time, life hack here for ya. According to USA Today, the average American spends five point two hours per day watching TV. Two point three hours per day on social media stopped doing that. They’ll give you seven hours a day, wake up earlier. Bam. Next question I have for our listeners, love books. They love reading books. They love reading books, and they love going to medicare.com, forward slash clay. So for the listeners out there who aren’t going to [inaudible] dot com forward slash clear right now, but they’re looking, they’re going, we’re looking to go to Amazon and to buy a book for a loved one. This year or a book for themselves to improve, um, what’s, uh, what’s one book recommendation that you’d have for all the listeners out there and you can’t say the Bible because we know you recommend the Bible, but in addition to the Bible, what’s a book you’d recommend?

Right. Okay. Well, if I can’t say that I guess there’s a book I’m working my way through right now. It’s called inbound per and it’s by the Riva and uh, I believe she’s with hubspot. Um, and a lot of your, a lot of your listeners may know of them and so it’s really a great book that talks about a different way of doing pr. You know, and I think some people here pr and think that it’s, you know, pitching stories to people with news releases and it’s, it. The environment has changed quite a lot as I’m sure all of your listeners know. I’m not saying anything new. I know, but this is a really kind of an interesting. It’s an interesting book about an inbound model that kind of combines pr, content, marketing, influencer relations, and kind of takes a look at all of that stuff together. So that’s the one that I’m enjoying right now,

inbound per and putting a link to it on the show notes. My final question I have for you out there and Allison Saturday if I’m listening to the show today and I go, you know what Michael, I’ve got a lot going on. I’m probably going to go to a convenience store. I’m looking to buy maybe a burrito. Okay. I’ve got a lot going on. I might watch a TV show tonight. I might. There’s a lot of things that might be doing okay and I can tell you I have very limited time to waste my time, so if I’m going to go up to medicare.com, forward slash clay or just to medicare.com. If I’m going to check you guys out, why is it worth my time? I’m very busy.

Absolutely. Well, if you’re looking for a solution for your healthcare, you know, I think everybody owes it to themselves to check out their options and Medicare is a great option for a lot of people. It’s not the best solution for everybody, but it’s a really great option for a lot of people. It can definitely help you save on your healthcare costs and it can free up that money so you can do more with it for your family, for your community, for your business, and you get the support of a community to come along with it. People who are going to come alongside you when you, when you have those needs. And so if that sounds interesting to people in that paints an interesting picture that they’d like to explore, we would love to talk to them.

Are the testimonials or the reviews? There are people out there that just aren’t familiar with your website yet. I’ve checked it out, but if people out there say, gosh, they’re testimonials can read some reviews, how can I verify that you’re even real before I call?

Absolutely. Um, I would say definitely go to our website. There are testimonials there, check out our better business bureau review. Um, you know, everybody shouldn’t, should do their homework and look at their options is they’re exploring them. And so we’re happy to answer any questions. I’m asked a friend, you know, if you know, of anybody who’s participated in, in Medicare or any other kind of a healthcare sharing program asked around and, you know, people will tell you exactly what they think and what their experiences are like. And so, um, we’re happy to answer questions as well, but definitely, you know, ask around, ask questions and then people share their honest opinions. And then we welcome that. We think it’s great.

Michael, I appreciate your time more than, you know, we’d like to end every show with the boom, which around here stands for big, overwhelming, optimistic momentum. And now is that any further.