CEO MADE $120 MILLION FROM HEALTHCARE

Summary

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Earn Your Leisure Podcast: “CEO Made $120 Million From Healthcare”

Hosted by Rashad Bilal & Troy Millings | Guest: Tommy Duncan
Release Date: January 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this deep-dive episode, hosts Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings sit down with Tommy Duncan, serial healthcare entrepreneur and founder of JetDoc. Tommy shares his extraordinary journey: from growing up in a Black-owned healthcare family in Detroit, through dramatic wins and losses, to building and selling businesses for over $120 million. The conversation gives behind-the-scenes financial views, breaks down healthcare business models, and offers actionable advice for entrepreneurs. They also discuss the critical political and community dynamics shaping the healthcare industry.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The True Scale and Nature of the Healthcare Business

• Healthcare is the “biggest business in the world” (08:51), comprising 24% of the American budget—larger than even the military.
• The industry is recession-proof and “everything proof,” because healthcare needs persist regardless of economic cycles.

“People don’t necessarily think of healthcare as a business. It is a business. The biggest business.”
— Rashad Bilal (08:51)

• Tommy highlights that significant wealth in seemingly unrelated scenes, like Paris Fashion Week, often traces back to healthcare earnings.

“The folks with the money that's actually spending, they in healthcare.”
— Tommy Duncan (11:50)

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2. Early Exposure: Family in Black-Owned Healthcare

• Tommy’s mother (academic) and stepfather (entrepreneurial) bought United Community Hospital in Detroit, making it one of the last Black for-profit hospitals (13:01).
• As a child, Tommy was on the “sales team,” knocking on doors to sign people up for Medicaid, learning business by osmosis.
• At its peak, the family business had $40M/year revenue but lost it all due to over-investment and lack of separation between personal and business assets (15:49).

“They had the biggest house in Detroit; they literally put it up trying to save the hospital...they lost everything.”
— Tommy Duncan (15:48)

• Key lesson: Don’t get emotionally attached to the business; don’t risk everything for one venture.

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3. Early Ventures and Entrepreneurial Trials

• Tommy tries ice cream trucks and sandwich shops as a student but finds he doesn’t love the business, ultimately failing and returning to healthcare.
• Importance of aligning business with personal passion and unique expertise.

“Even though I could grow the business because I could sell, I didn’t like...the business itself. So ultimately, all failed.”
— Tommy Duncan (19:13)

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4. Game-Changing Healthcare Model: Medicaid Managed Care

• Tommy explains the government pays a set fee per Medicaid member to insurance companies (“managed care”), who assume risk for all member healthcare costs.
• He describes winning a contract for 30,000 members, generating $12 million/month in revenue (26:27).
• The industry average profit margin is ~2%, but Tommy achieved over 10% by deeply studying data and targeting highest-cost members (29:57).

“Big companies are built with mediocre people...I own 40% of my company. So if I make 20 million, eight million is coming to Tommy Duncan’s pocket.”
— Tommy Duncan (28:23)

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5. Data-Driven Community Impact: Reducing Costs by Addressing Homelessness

• Tommy discovers that homeless members’ healthcare costs are 5x higher than the average. By building outreach programs and housing initiatives, he reduced homelessness by 50% and massively increased profitability (30:22).
• Example of “doing well by doing good": Improving community health directly improves the bottom line.

“The only metric we needed to focus on was getting folks that were homeless into housing...Cost came down at 50% and our profitability went up.”
— Tommy Duncan (29:57)

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6. Scaling, Exits, and Major Deals

• Tommy details buying and selling a health plan from Tenet (for $13M, sold for $22.5M), then building and later selling another Medicaid insurance company for $120M (44:59, 54:01).
• Discusses how to value companies: healthcare services (~8x EBITDA), tech companies (up to 20x+ revenue).
• Stresses the necessity of understanding political dynamics in governmental contracting—contracts often hinge on relationships at the governor level (33:25 – 36:11).

“Go to where the opportunity is...the environment has a big impact on your opportunity.”
— Tommy Duncan (33:25)

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7. The Harsh Realities of “Wolf of Healthcare”

• Tommy recounts business battles, investor power struggles, and surviving losing $1M+/month after a deal gone wrong—but ultimately negotiating, restructuring, and selling for major profit anyway (50:01 – 53:22).
• Reveals the emotional/financial hazards of attaching personal identity to business, advocating for rational deal-making and exit strategy.

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8. Entering Health Tech: JetDoc & the Future

• After exiting, Tommy quickly founded JetDoc, a telehealth platform, but struggled with direct-to-consumer traction. He pivots to a B2B and government licensing model, using relationships and recurring tech contracts for scalable growth (63:12, 67:05).

“If you’re in tech, it’s like...you get a couple contracts, now you’re 40 million—and you’re just doing tech.”
— Tommy Duncan (69:05)

• JetDoc’s innovation: Integrates remote patient monitoring devices, aiming to disrupt managed care by targeting the highest-cost problems (e.g., chronic illness, homelessness).

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9. System Flaws and Solutions: Fixing Medicaid and Medicare

• Tommy’s book, “The Trillion Dollar Medicaid Monster,” argues that mandatory “medical loss ratio” (requiring 85% of funds go to care costs) disincentivizes innovation and cost control (78:03).
• He proposes that removing such requirements and incentivizing cost reduction would foster real healthcare efficiency and improved outcomes.

“The only way to really get cost down in healthcare is to get people healthier...If I can get my costs lower, I should get more business.”
— Tommy Duncan (78:56, 84:33)

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10. Advice for Entrepreneurs

• Emphasizes doing deep industry research, calculating risk before jumping into business, understanding failure rates, and knowing what “upside” you’re pursuing: lifestyle income vs. value creation and big exits (87:37).
• Celebrate the era of entrepreneurial disruption: social media has removed traditional resource barriers—“every industry is up for disruption” (91:28).

“I just really advise people, do their homework, calculate risk—but take risk...If you want more, you gotta do more.”
— Tommy Duncan (90:14)

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Notable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• On the size of healthcare as a business:
  “Healthcare is the biggest business in the world... Recession proof, everything proof.”
  — Rashad Bilal (08:51)

• On growing up in Black-owned healthcare:
  “I grew up selling people on health insurance for low income. By osmosis, I learned the business.”
  — Tommy Duncan (13:13)

• On learning from setbacks:
  “What happens for us...is we are met with failure. But that’s where the wisdom is.”
  — Tommy Duncan (14:39)

• On the power of government contracting:
  “Go to where the opportunity is...the environment has a big impact on your opportunity.”
  — Tommy Duncan (33:25)

• On maximizing profit through community impact:
  “Out of all the metrics and data in healthcare, the only metric we needed to focus on was getting folks that were homeless into housing... Our profitability went up directly.”
  — Tommy Duncan (29:57)

• On when it’s time to be rational about selling:
  “There’s no emotional attachment to business. You have to look at it from a very rational standpoint.”
  — Rashad Bilal (60:59)

• On company valuation (tech vs. services):
  “If you’re in tech, it’s like...you get 10, 15x [top-line revenue]; you get a couple contracts, now you’re 40 million.”
  — Tommy Duncan (68:56 – 69:05)

• On the future of entrepreneurial opportunity:
  “Because of social media, every industry is up for disruption...it’s the first time in history that’s the case.”
  — Tommy Duncan (91:28)

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Key Segments & Timestamps

• Why Healthcare is Big Business: 08:51 – 11:10
• Duncan’s Family History in Healthcare: 12:01 – 15:48
• Early Entrepreneurial Failures & Lessons: 18:40 – 21:12
• Getting Into Medicaid Managed Care: 25:04 – 27:02
• How Data & Focus on Homelessness Boosted Profits: 29:57 – 31:50
• Government Contracts and Political Realities: 33:25 – 38:27
• Winning, Losing, and Selling Health Plans: 44:59 – 53:47
• Valuing and Selling a Company, Private Equity: 54:01 – 57:57
• Founding JetDoc, Telehealth Innovation: 63:12 – 67:47
• Solving Health System Flaws, Medicaid Book: 77:43 – 85:17
• Advice for Entrepreneurs and Final Reflections: 87:37 – 90:58
• The Age of Disruption: 91:28 – 93:12

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Memorable Moments

• The Balmain Paris story: How most true “ballers” at Paris Fashion Week weren’t celebrities or entertainers—they were healthcare executives (11:10).
• “Wolf of Healthcare”: Dame Dash calls Tommy Duncan “the Wolf of Healthcare”, equivalent to the Wolf of Wall Street but for the medical business (93:33).
• Surviving a million-a-month loss: Tommy’s story of clawing his company back from the brink after unexpected financial disaster (50:01 – 53:22).
• Mentorship and Black entrepreneurship: A recurring theme—how mentorship and relationships are essential but often lacking in Black business communities (14:39, 38:27, 87:37).

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Closing Advice & Contact

• Calculated risk, deep homework, leveraging disruption:
  “Do your research on your business... Calculate your risk... take risk.”
• Tommy’s social handles:
  • IG: @Tommy2Duncan
  • JetDoc: @myJetDoc | JetDoc.com
  • Movie: Prince of Detroit Film

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Summary

This episode is a must-listen (or read) for anyone interested in how big money really moves in healthcare, the intersections of community impact and business, and the realities of entrepreneurship at the highest level. Tommy Duncan’s story is one of resilience, data-driven innovation, calculated risk, and social disruption. Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur, a healthcare professional, or just someone fascinated by the business of America, his lessons and candor are invaluable.

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Transcript

[Tommy Duncan]

This is an iHeart podcast.

[Commercial Announcer 1]

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[Tommy Duncan]

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[Tommy Duncan]

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[Rashad Bilal]

Literally.

[Tommy Duncan]

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[Troy Millings]

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[Troy Millings]

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[Rashad Bilal]

Episode is sponsored by Greenwood. My graduates from my school being Forbes. Bag drop. Bag drop.

[Tommy Duncan]

Mic drop.

[Rashad Bilal]

Bag drop.

[Tommy Duncan]

Bag drop.

[Rashad Bilal]

All right, guys, welcome back. Eyl. We are in LA sunny Los Angeles and this is something that we've been looking forward to for a while. It's gonna be a dope conversation. So healthcare, it's actually fitting because we just spoke about this on Market Mondays. Healthcare is the biggest business in the world. It makes up 24 of the American budget, which is the biggest by far. Second to that is the military. I think of like 15%. So when you think of businesses, a lot of time we think of, you know, a lot of different industries. But people don't necessarily think of healthcare as a business. It is a business. The biggest business is recession proof, everything proof. Big business people always die, people always go to the hospital, people always, you know, get sick. So it's one of these things that has been around since the beginning of.

[Troy Millings]

Time, so isn't going anywhere.

[Rashad Bilal]

So today we have the privilege of speaking with not just any entrepreneur entrepreneur that has been in the business for a very long period of time and has been extremely successful. Tommy Duncan. So you might have heard him when we met, when we mentioned his name in the Rick Ross interview. He has a company called jetdoc and Rick Ross is an investor. I think he invested like a million dollars into the company, right?

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

And so we, we mentioned him during that interview and we spoke about it briefly. But he has a vast career in the health industry. He actually sold his first company a while back, netted about a million, million and a half. And then he sold his other company and then a whole bunch more money. Yeah, over 100 million.

[Troy Millings]

It's called nine figures.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, and now you started Jet Doc.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So it's a very interesting conversation, I'm sure. Very educational conversation. And we'll be remiss if we didn't acknowledge our brother Dame Dash, who we have a mutual relationship with. So game Actually just wrapped up a movie on Tommy's life called the Prince of Detroit.

[Troy Millings]

What up though?

[Tommy Duncan]

What up though?

[Rashad Bilal]

So shout out to my brother, Dame Dash. We was at his house yesterday and he showed us the trailer to the movie and he was very excited about it. He's very excited about you as an entrepreneur, you know, gave us some background information. So shout out to Dame. Yeah, shout out to Dame. So first and foremost, thank you for joining us. Appreciate it.

[Tommy Duncan]

Hey, nah, it's good to be here, man. And it's printed Detroit film on ig.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, you gotta check it out. But. But here's some. Something that's funny. You talk about healthcare. It is by far the largest economic engine in this country, but it's ugly money so no one really pays attention to it. Pays attention to it. You know, it's not entertainment, anything sexy like that. But I just got back from Paris for fashion week at the hottest show, Balmain, and I was there with a group of 10 couples which were the VIP clients for the country. And out of those 10 couples, at least five of the dudes were in healthcare. Oh, so you think about fashion, all this sexy shit, you know, Cardi's there, offset and all that stuff. Yeah, that's a part of it too. But the folks with the money is actually spending, they're in healthcare.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

So like Rashad, I live 10 minutes from where we are and my neighbors, most of them are in healthcare.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's interesting.

[Tommy Duncan]

We in Hollywood. They ain't in Hollywood, they in healthcare.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. So how did you get started? You're a black man from Detroit, Michigan. So how did you get started in healthcare? Because the interesting thing that Dane was telling us, he was like, make sure you ask him about this. His family is already in the business. He actually already had the information and the knowledge and he grew up in the industry and that's something that's very rare, especially in our community. We don't even go to the doctor majority of the time and we have a bad relationship with medicine unfortunately and doctors, so let alone actually being in the business.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So how did that go about as far as your family and then you growing up in that.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, so I did, you know, my mother was always been in healthcare and she got with my stepfather in about 1990. So the time I was 10 years old. And he was entrepreneurial, she was academic, they came together and ended up buying a hospital. It's one of the last black for profit black owned hospitals.

[Rashad Bilal]

What's the name of it?

[Tommy Duncan]

It was called Southwest Detroit Hospital, but they renamed it United Community Hospital. They bought it from HUD. It was a $75 million hospital when it was built, but they bought it for $2 million because it was in receivership, bankruptcy. So they bought that, and then they coupled it with a HMO health maintenance organization, essentially an insurance company for low income people, people on Medicaid. So they operated that through the 90s and then. So when they operated, I grew up in it. So literally, When I was 12, 13, 14 years old, I was on the sales team and I would go door to door in the projects in different communities where there was a large population of people and go door to door and ask people to sign up for Medicaid. My parents company was called ultimed. So I grew up selling people on health insurance for low income. And then the other time I spent, I was actually at the hospital painting the basement, being a janitor and all that kind of stuff. But through that, by osmosis, I learned the business. And through the 90s, they had a business. I think at their apex, they're doing about $40 million a year in revenue, which at the time was a whole lot of money. You know, now things are different. There's a lot more money out here. But then that was a lot of money. They employed the most black people for any black business. And that's how I grew up, you know, then I went to Ford A and M, got my NBA in five years.

[Troy Millings]

Famu.

[Rashad Bilal]

Famu.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, Rattlers.

[Rashad Bilal]

The Rattlers. He went there for a year. Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

Okay, who did?

[Rashad Bilal]

My brother.

[Tommy Duncan]

All right, what happened?

[Rashad Bilal]

He got homesick. He went to St. John's went back to New York.

[Tommy Duncan]

He got homesick from fam. I ain't never heard that.

[Troy Millings]

Y' all probably was there around the same time.

[Tommy Duncan]

Nah, that's his story. That ain't what really? That's what he told y'. All. Nah. You probably got some babies running around. The fan was amazing. But I came back with my MBA and I thought I was going to take my family's business to the next level. And unfortunately, around the same time, they end up losing everything. So, you know what most black businesses do, particularly then without mentorship, which is what you all are providing, which is what is missing in our community is mentorship. So what happens for us is those that are entrepreneurial gumption go out. And then usually, like anybody else, we are met with failure. Right. It doesn't go right. And then a lot of times, unfortunately, we don't try again because we're scarred financially, emotionally, and all that kind of shit. Excuse me, all that kind of stuff. But that's where the wisdom is when you have the challenge. And so the right thing to do is come back into it and try again, do it smarter and be successful. But most people, for whatever reason don't do that. But my parents ended up investing everything in the hospital hmo. So much so that when it all went under, they had no money in the bank. Like they put up the house, all.

[Rashad Bilal]

The assets was in the business.

[Tommy Duncan]

They put all in there. So we had the biggest house in Detroit. They literally put it up trying to save the hospital when they started going under, versus realizing your business is important, but it's not you. It's separate. It's a separate entity. So treat it as such. But of course they didn't. And then it was just like, you know, American Gangster when he sees the house.

[Troy Millings]

Huh, which part?

[Rashad Bilal]

When he lost the house.

[Tommy Duncan]

They lost the house. They lost the furs.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

And everything. The diamond. My mother had a 12 karat diamond ring, probably worth a million dollars now. Had to hawk it, you know what I'm saying?

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

Lost everything. But for me, then I decided, you know, I'm gonna take it and just build my own company and live on a legacy. So I did it. So I did that. 26. I started my own healthcare company. My first one.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

And then sold it about a year later.

[Rashad Bilal]

That was ccs.

[Tommy Duncan]

Ccs? Care Compensation Specialist.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. So what was that? What kind of company was that?

[Tommy Duncan]

So there was this dude who used to work for my parents selling insurance. Like I remember mentioned going door to door. Medicaid. Well, he was a real smooth guy. Kind of look like a Debarge brother. He name? I can't name his name. But anyway, he, he. I heard that he had started his own company doing Medicaid enrollment for hospitals. So he had got this partnership with the CEO of a hospital in Detroit. And the whole business was someone's uninsured. By law, the hospital has to take care of them no matter what the case is, if they have no ability to pay. But then if you could do the paperwork to get that person enrolled in Medicaid, so the ID, you know, Dr. Bills, birth certificate, things approved to the state, who they are. Medicaid within, retroactively reimbursed the hospital for services. And he would charge like 20% of the reimbursement, which you could have a NICU baby, cost a million dollar bill. Be a million dollar bill. Right. So if you're getting 20% of that, you made $200,000 just doing paperwork. Yeah. He was making so much money, it was crazy. Like, he literally was married and bought a big house and moved his girlfriend to the house with his wife and his kids.

[Rashad Bilal]

She let the girlfriend live with the.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's kind of money.

[Rashad Bilal]

He was making everything you could. Anything with enough money in Detroit.

[Troy Millings]

True Detroit player.

[Tommy Duncan]

I'm saying, when you're in Detroit, you make money like that. Yeah. And now my household, they ain't gonna ride. But I'm saying, like, in Detroit, at the time, he literally moved his girlfriend in with his wife, he had palm trees flown in. He was making money. But my whole thing in the D, where it's cold, I wasn't sure. Ten months out of here. But the whole thing was he had lost it because they found out that CEO was in his pocket, or vice versa. And so he lost the contract. And so me here to the street, okay, boom. I'm gonna go figure out how I'm gonna get the contract. So I went and met with his chief operating officer and persuaded her to come work with me. And then I did some other things, get a contract, and that's how I started my first company.

[Troy Millings]

Can we go back just for a second? Because you were obviously born into the healthcare industry, but you. Your entrepreneurial journey had a lot of stops.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

Right. So I know that you had the ice cream truck at famu. Did you did the fish and sandwich. What did you learn from those businesses that said, you know what? This isn't going to work? Because you admittedly said it didn't work, but you learned. Let me go back to my passion.

[Tommy Duncan]

Nah, for sure. So ice cream truck, like you said, you know, I was doing that because, to my surprise, I mean, how are you in Florida? Don't have ice cream trucks in Detroit. It's cold two months out here. You have ice cream trucks during the summertime. So I had my Tahoe converted to ice cream truck. I was playing Masterpiece Ice Cream man, which was, you know what I mean, the biggest song on the radio at the time.

[Troy Millings]

Fitting.

[Tommy Duncan]

But you got to have, like, with ice. You had to have hot ice. And anyway, then my ice cream was melting, and I really didn't like it. Like, I was. I enjoyed being the dude who pulled up in the Tahoe with the ice cream man playing. But I didn't like the process of working on the ice cream itself. Yeah. Then I end up starting these rest, these sandwich shops, the fries, Palm Fritz fries in the cones. I was in Amsterdam in the coffee shops, drinking a lot of Coffee came out and I was hungry for whatever reason. And at these fries and the cones, I'm like, I'm about to be the next Ronald McDonald. I'm about to bring this stuff to the United States. I'm about to kill McDonald's. But I came back and I did it. And I quickly realized, even though I could grow the business because I could sell, I didn't like coming in, you know, having a machine where it had to cut and peel the fries. It's too much work. And then you have people complain, then the grease gets dirty. It's just I didn't like the business itself. So even though I had built them, I didn't like it. So they ultimately all failed. Even though I got in the airport. I was 22, I had a restaurant in the airport. I was in the malls, on the street side next to Florida State. I didn't love the business, so it wasn't working. And then I got lost in the business too, right. So what can happen if it's not working the way I plan? Which be the next Ronald McDonald. I started doing different things. I lost my way. So then I added shrimp to the menu, right? So, you know, black folks love shrimp. I'm up late, I'm open late, I need to have fried shrimp. Well, then I started, I was in Florida, so let me do some Caribbean things. And I had some Caribbean food, some rice and beans. Before you know it, I lost my way with the company or the business. So ultimately failed. But then I went back, came back to Detroit and I came into healthcare because I knew healthcare. I knew it without even knowing that I knew it, you know, like. So the biggest decisions I made in my last company that I sold to Blue Cross, I knew just through osmosis living, I mean, just living my life as a kid, remembering decisions that my parents made in their healthcare business.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah, so you ended up selling the first business.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah. Right.

[Troy Millings]

But you didn't just take cash. Right. So it was like a stock option.

[Tommy Duncan]

And my first healthcare business, yeah, I got stock options. So it's a funny story. I don't know if you want the whole story, but long story short, this company, I was doing back end work because I didn't get a primary contract. I was doing back end. So basically their primary vendor, if they couldn't get folks enrolled in Medicaid, they gave me the second shot. I was a garbage man. But for me, of course I got them all approved because that was my opportunity. And through doing so, this big company who just was on this Pathway to go public had decided they wanted to come visit me and either do one or two things, do a strategic partnership with me. Instead of me charging 20% of reimbursement, I charge 8 to 10%. But I would get a bigger volume of work, or they would buy my company. And so they came to visit me. I was in a shared office space. Like we work.

[Troy Millings]

Yep.

[Tommy Duncan]

I just had one office. Well, I had like two offices in there. In there. And they had a shared conference room. And I paid people to act like they work for me. You know, paid like 40 bucks a day. I gave them a one pager with, you know, three bullet points. Just name the company, you know, saying this is one page, you know, one line of what we do. And anyway, so I sold those folks and they didn't want to act like work for me, but I sold the people on buying my company and got stock options. So they made me a senior director. They gave me, which at the time I was paying myself 40 grand a year. My own company, they paid me 200,000 a year. I was 27 and they gave me a million. $7 in stock.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, that's what Dean was telling us. He was like, make sure you ask him about that. He started a company with a virtual Regis office and sold the company. Da da da da.

[Tommy Duncan]

I did it twice though, Rashad. That was my first time. Second time I won a half billion dollar contract. Cause I was at work, you know what I'm saying? By the dumpsters, on the phone, like sneakers. Yeah. And I did that.

[Rashad Bilal]

So how did you.

[Tommy Duncan]

I had to read this office space.

[Rashad Bilal]

So I see. So all right, let's. Let's get into that situation. So you, you started the company, but in order for the company to be sold, it had to have looked like more than what it actually was.

[Tommy Duncan]

Right.

[Rashad Bilal]

So that's why you got the Regis office space, which anybody doesn't know. Regis office space. Regis is like a shared office.

[Troy Millings]

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[Tommy Duncan]

Well, Max, I try to do some business in Georgia and to be like a subcontractor, but I learned quick learn there's no real money. Well, here's one thing I'll clarify is my lane has been health care. That's really the niche of government contracting because really that's what I was doing once I got on the side in my last company, I was contracting with the government. So there was this company who I was gonna be their sub who was trying to do some work in Georgia. And I quickly realized there was no big money in that. So I wanted to get into Medicaid managed care because Obamacare just passed, which meant more people on Medicaid, which because of the way I grew up, I knew more folks on Medicaid meant more people in Medicaid managed care.

[Rashad Bilal]

So let's just break this down. Medicaid is the government program health insurance. Yes. For people, low income people?

[Tommy Duncan]

Yes.

[Rashad Bilal]

So you get commissions if you sign people up for Medicaid?

[Tommy Duncan]

Well, no, the way it works is if you actually own the insurance company, which is what my parents had, that's providing the Medicaid. Right. And then I got it. So here's what happens. The government has the money and they're responsible for paying all the bills for people on Medicaid. All right, well, what's happened is you had the providers, the hospitals and doctors and service providers would just build a government over bill them two or three times for the same service build. You know, somebody could be ER level 5, but they ER, level 2, which means not that sick, but they'll bill ER level 5 mean super sick. They'll get more money for it. So they would double bill, triple bill, do too much. And so the government decided in order to manage the spending, they need to put a police mechanism in the middle to police the providers. And those are the Medicaid managed care insurance companies. So they contract with us and they pay us a health insurance premium per member per month they assign to us. So in dc, my first contract, my first month I got, they assigned me 30,000 people they're paying me roughly, you know, $5,000 a year. They paid me 100. So I was getting like $12 million a month.

[Rashad Bilal]

$5,000 per year a person per year.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

And I had. And they assigned me 30,000 people. So you do the math. That's 150 million a year divided by 12. Like 12 million a month. First contract. Before that. I have to pay all the hospital bills though. So anytime my member goes to the hospital, the doctor, the dentist gets prescriptions, emergency transportation, not emergency transportation. I'm paying for everything. And if those bills are greater and they have my costs, my administrative costs to provide the service, marketing, et cetera. If my costs are greater than what I got paid from the government, I lose money.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

So I'm at risk. But if they're lower than I make money.

[Troy Millings]

Okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

So.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

No.

[Troy Millings]

So are there things that you can do, obviously, to prevent.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Troy Millings]

So what, like, what are some of the things.

[Tommy Duncan]

I was out cold. I was the coldest with it. So the average company in my industry was doing 1.7 profit margin. So you've round up to 2%. It's 2% on 150 million. It's like $3 million a year.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, that's the profit.

[Tommy Duncan]

Profit.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

And. And there's some advanced accountants that look at all the past utilization patterns. How many times go to emergency room, how many times you go inpatient, means they spend night hospitalities one night. How many folks are homeless and they have. How many folks have diabetes, how many folks, you know, need a transplant. And they make all these assumptions to say, okay, well, we expect your cost to be X. So therefore your profit can be 2%. But of course, me, because Troy, you the same way. I believe if somebody gave you. And I got my coming up at 200 million revenue. So if somebody gave you $200 million in revenue.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

By the way, a lot of companies lose money. Like United was losing money.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

Are you gonna make money? Lose money?

[Troy Millings]

I'm gonna make money, right? Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

For sure.

[Troy Millings]

It just hit me.

[Tommy Duncan]

It just hit me. Give me $200 million. I'm about to make some money.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

And I'm gonna make a whole lot of money.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

So they was making 2%. I was making 10, and my 10 was rounding down. So I was making like 20 million a year, and I should have made 4 million a year.

[Rashad Bilal]

How come you was able to make way more higher profit margins than them?

[Tommy Duncan]

Because big companies are built with mediocre people.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

So Blue Cross, Blue Shield and These big companies, UnitedHealthcare, Centene, they're big. And like every big company, they're just mediocre, right? Cause no one really gives a shit. Cause they don't own it. But me, I own 40% of my company. So if I make 20 million, 8 million is coming to Tommy Duncan's pocket. You feel me? If I make 4 million, I'm only getting 800,000. So what I'm gonna do, I'm about to make the 20. How do I do it? I'm going through the data. So I became an actuary in my own mind. It's like I said before, about like the food business. I didn't like it. I like the process of it. Yeah. So I wasn't gonna become a cook or a chef. I didn't like it. But in this business, I love this shit. So I became an accountant to a degree in advanced accounting called actuaries. I looked at all of my data, identified, okay, well, who's cost me the most money by individual and by by category. So I give an example. I identified that anyone who was in my membership had any condition. They could be a type 2 diabetic, they could be on dialysis, whatever case may be. But if they were also homeless, they cost me 5x more expensive. So no matter what the condition they had, if they were also homeless, I cost 500% more. So what I decided to do is identify all of my members that were homeless and put together programs to get them into housing. Simple thing. So I had this meeting, I had 40 people there because it was an open meeting and I kind of leave from the front. I'm a ground up guy, so let's all talk, everybody gets respect in the floor. And what I quickly realized is because of that safe environment, two women, raised hands, said I had actually been homeless in D.C. and homeless with a kid. So they gave me the real. So I thought I had the bright idea was wrong. They gave me the real lay of the land. We put together plans in place, we reduced our homelessness by 50%. So out of all the metrics and data in our industry of healthcare, the only metric that we needed to focus on was getting folks that were homeless into housing. It seems simple, right? We did it. Cost came down at 50% and our profitability went up directly.

[Rashad Bilal]

So that's dope. Let's just go into that for a minute. So just by actually looking at the numbers, you realize that the homeless people was actually costing you a lot more money. So you, you got to keep them on. So the way to Solve it is housing. There are housing programs.

[Tommy Duncan]

Right.

[Rashad Bilal]

But it's just a matter of most CEOs aren't really interested in community outreach and trying. So you actually going hand in hand and getting these people and saying like, look, we can get you a house, we can put you in a shelter. And that way not only are you getting them off the street, but you actually increasing your profit revenue as well.

[Troy Millings]

That's what I was, I was like, I get it. Once you said it, I'm like, I get it. You do the programs for the homeless.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right.

[Troy Millings]

You create exercise classes.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right.

[Troy Millings]

You create nutrition programs. More entry people, less people have to go to get any type of treatment or have to go increase the expenses.

[Tommy Duncan]

Troy, 100%. Right. So we actually built these community centers called outreach centers in the hood. So in the toughest neighborhood in D.C. we have four of them all throughout the district. And most of these companies call them corporate, call them whatever you want to call them. They ain't stepping foot in the hood and employees aren't. So we end up attracting people that were comfortable being the hood, and I call it the hood. But when you're around the people that you're serving, you can affect them because you're actually communicating with them and you get them, you build a trust where they actually pay attention to what you are putting forth. They know the resources and their behaviors changed for the positive. So.

[Rashad Bilal]

So that's how you was able to increase just looking at stuff like that, studying the analytics.

[Troy Millings]

So you went from 1%. Well, the average was 1%, 1.7. And so that's how you got to the 10%.

[Tommy Duncan]

I was over 10. Killing it, killing them. But the problem is, and I actually wrote a book trying to change the policy for Medicaid in the country. I'll send it to you. It's called the trillion dollar Medicaid Monster. It addresses single payer. Everything you've heard about politically that no one fully understands addresses all of it simplifies it. I took it to the person that runs RAN centers of Medicare and Medicaid for the country to change policy. I gave him three policies to change and he told me there's no way he could do it because one of the policies is affected into law through Obamacare and it'd be too hard to change policy. But what that policy is a mandatory medical loss ratio requirement. What that means is, remember the government pays us a health insurance premium per member per month, 5,000 per year, break it down per month, 400 bucks per month per person tracking. Well, let's use a five grand for per year number. The requirement is that 85% of that money has to be spent on direct cost of care. So hospital, doctor, pharmacy, then I get whatever 12% left, 13% left to cover my administrative expense and the 2% profit margin. But the mandatory medical loss ratio is the 85%. Well, if you do the things that I was doing, get people who are homeless in the housing, reduce cost of care, then you're going to be less than 85%.

[Troy Millings]

Because I'm thinking like if you did it in DC, this model seems like it could be scalable, right? Like, why can't we do it Detroit, New York City?

[Tommy Duncan]

Well, because it's political. It's hard to win the contracts you want to. It's a big game. So let me tell you how. Let me tell you something else about to the entrepreneurs out here, Go to where the opportunity is. I feel like a lot of times what we do as individuals, not just black, but just in general, is we believe whether whoever our God is or our universe is, you know, it's all on us, right? So God blesses us and it's just wherever we are. But the truth is the environment has a big impact on your opportunity.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's a fact.

[Tommy Duncan]

And I was in Detroit, in the money. Detroit, D.C. is a special place and a lot of black folks who have been successful come through D.C. a lot of them, you look them up. Most of them guys started bet you go through really look at black folks that made it big. Most of them spent time in D.C. and the reason is because D.C. is the only place that has a governor's budget but is black ran. So you look at any other state in this country, you go look at New York City, who knows what's going to happen? And to a degree, it may not really matter. You look at Atlanta, Georgia, you go to Detroit, Michigan, you got all these, you know, big cities which have a black mayor. But the mayor budgets are small because the governor, the government got the money. Governor's got more money they can actually move than the president, United States. Because they are like the biggest CEOs in this country, but no one talks about it. So how many black governors do you know?

[Rashad Bilal]

None.

[Tommy Duncan]

Come on, why is that? They control the money. Sorry? They control the money. Governors control the money. Let me tell you, out of the city of Atlanta, because I spent time there, but any city, a big contract would be a million dollars, right? You get a contract with the airport, you got a concession. You said maybe Make a half a million dollars a year. It's big. Any contract over 3 million. So 3, 4, 5 million. It'd be construction. But the problem with construction for an entrepreneur is that there's a lot of expenses in construction. You gotta have equipment, you gotta have a million people. You can't make any profit. But the governor's control. Let me watch this. Watch this. The second largest procurement in history, United States, was Georgia. Medicaid. I'm sorry, was Florida Medicaid three years ago. It was $120 billion contract. Right now, over the next three months, California's putting out their Medicaid contract. Medicaid. What I was doing, it's gonna be a $200 billion contract. 200 billion over five years. $200 billion over five years. Medicaid. What I was doing. Who controls that? The governor. I mean, you don't have to get a big piece to get a lot of money. But D.C. is special because D.C. governor's budget. It's the governor's budget. And the mayor is the governor. And she's a black woman because that's. Before her it was a black man.

[Rashad Bilal]

So it's a District of Columbia. So it's not a state.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So it's a territory.

[Tommy Duncan]

So we got the budget.

[Rashad Bilal]

The mayor is technically the governor in.

[Tommy Duncan]

A sense, and they got the budget. Is the budget power?

[Troy Millings]

Budget based on population. How do they determine the budget based on population?

[Tommy Duncan]

In tax base.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah. Okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

But D.C. is a beautiful place. It's small, with a big tech base, and they got the power. And then the other thing D.C. did, through former Mayor for Life Marion Berry, is. Was the first place to institute a real program. And maybe Georgia did it, but DC did it powerfully, where every contract that comes out of D.C. has to have 30% minority participation. Now they. What happens there is a lot of times the black companies will come in and try to do small. Do small things. Right. Unintentionally, but they'll do janitorial service, they'll do marketing contracts, stuff like that. H Vac, they do printing, but they ain't no money. I mean, relatively speaking.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

What I was doing, I came in as a prime, and I got the prime contract. So I was getting $200 million a year out of D.C. government. Well, the problem with the companies that. That, like, I had is I couldn't find a, A, a smaller black business to give a contract to that was worth 30%. They couldn't do the work. They didn't have the infrastructure. They weren't trying to do anything worth the bigger spin. But dc, Let me tell you right now, the Medicaid contracts, because they did an expansion. DC right now is probably $3 billion a year. Just a little old DC. $3 billion. Well, of that 30%. How much is that? Almost a billion dollars has to be spent with minorities. How much you really think is being spent with the minority companies in dc? I could tell you because we had to do hearings, because there was enough to spend probably 10. No more than 10 million. Not even 10. 5.

[Troy Millings]

5 million from a billion.

[Tommy Duncan]

Not even that much. I'm saying it's like.

[Rashad Bilal]

It's just not. The companies aren't there.

[Tommy Duncan]

Companies aren't there to do the work. And look, I mean, we put game in the system by putting money in a black bank, but that's not really spending money. That's just money sitting. And even that's, like, small. But anyway, my points are that there's opportunity all over the place, particularly in D.C. yeah. And this way, to navigate it the way that I did it, you know, but as an entrepreneur, you should look at your environment, see where you at, the skill.

[Troy Millings]

I mean, navigating through government contracts is obviously a skill. Where did you develop this? Was it watching your parents go through the hospital, or was it something that you learned when you were at a VP at your first company?

[Tommy Duncan]

On one side, my experience with my parents, you know, having all these employees, you know, all the politicians coming through every day, taught me government contracting, because that's a lot of. It is a sense of. I don't call it quid pro quo, but some pro quo, right? There's a. There is a fundamental human principle called reciprocity, Right? You do for me, I do for you. But you ain't doing for me. I ain't doing much for you. And the reason you need to get my attention is because you want me to prioritize your priority. I got my own priorities. So in order to do that, you got to incentivize me. My experience at Accretive taught me, trained me, and that's the skill set I deployed when I looked at all of my data and identified which one moved the needle as. I gave the example with the homeless program and executed and put together operating rhythm to push every day to improve our performance.

[Troy Millings]

Ernest, what's going on? Traditional universities are outdated and don't teach you how to become an entrepreneur. They just teach you how to become an employee.

[Rashad Bilal]

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[Troy Millings]

Our university teaches you real world skills that you can use to gain financial freedom right away. In traditional universities, you learn from professors that have never did what they teach and they teach you how to become an employee. At our university, we use instructors that are currently successful in specific field that they teach and they teach you how to how to become an entrepreneur.

[Rashad Bilal]

For a limited time only, you can join Eyl University for 25% off of the annual membership. Learn about stocks, credit, real estate, crypto and more. Go to eyluniversity.com right now and sign up to become an earner.

[Tommy Duncan]

Don't wait, don't hesitate.

[Troy Millings]

Head over there now.

[Tommy Duncan]

We had a conversation earlier, Troy, about you asking me if someone wins the office. It was Rashad. The question was, well, why would they keep raising money? Yeah, yeah, they keep raising money because they may be borrowing to pay for the TV commercials and they need to pay that money back. The other thing that happens too is they always want to have more money because they can then king make or queen make. So now let's say the person's mayor or governor and now they want to hand pick city council, right? So they want to give that city council member that they want so they know that they'll vote for whatever they their initiatives are. They need to raise money for them. So take the money that they raise for their campaign and then donate it to kingmate to kind of build a powerful position in government so they can make decision decisions they want to make and help folks that they want to help. The other reason is if they lose, they got debt. See, if you win, you can always raise money because now folks want to participate with you, right? The business people. But when you lose, then you may have $100,000 in debt, a million dollars in debt, and no one's going to give you any money really because you lost. So they always raise money just in case you lose to. But anyway, so you. So the understanding government relationships and understanding what people want, the other side is training. And Troy, I got my training on, you know, how to operate my business at the highest level through my company at Accretive. When I sold my company to Accretive, they taught me how to analyze data, how to synthesize it, how to analyze and identify out of all of the data points and metrics what actually moves the needle the most and then create an operational rigor to push every day to improve performance.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah, I think that's incredible, right? A lot of times people hear someone sold their company and they took the cash and they walked away and tried to create a new company. Whereas you sold the company, stayed on and learned.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yes.

[Troy Millings]

Skills to help you before you created a new company.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right.

[Troy Millings]

That's incredible.

[Tommy Duncan]

And that's why we killed them.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

My last company, we killed them and it benefited me financially. So my last company, based upon the size. So if you just look at the metric of number of members, which is usually how they value managed care companies, we would have sold our company for $40 million. But because we were so profitable, we sold a company for $120 million. And that profitability was a. Was directly driven by really the training I received at Accretive to understand the data and then pushing it.

[Rashad Bilal]

So what was the last company that you sold like? What was it? Same type of services provide insurance. That was insurance.

[Tommy Duncan]

That was a Medicaid help plan. That was a Medicaid insurance company.

[Troy Millings]

Trusted, right?

[Tommy Duncan]

Trusted, yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So you was providing the insurance for the Medicaid.

[Tommy Duncan]

So people who have Medicaid, they have an insurance company and I was one of the providers.

[Troy Millings]

This is interesting. It's something that I've never even heard of. Speaking of Medicare, you actually bought a health care plan for Michigan tenant in 2016.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, tenants largest for profit health care system in the country. So here's how it goes. It's kind of a mix of both, right? So one, there was a person who used to be a Supreme Court justice in Michigan and were very close with my parents when I started my entrepreneurial journey. Remember my parents? The other thing about government business is when you're on the positive side, where people like you, it's extraordinarily beneficial. But then something can happen. We get on the wrong side of politics. And so my parents got on the wrong side and lost everything. But then I was building my own. This purse became a good friend of mine, kind of like a mentor to a degree. And it just so happened he ended up becoming the CEO of one of the tenant hospitals in Detroit. And he told me that from corporate they had made a decision to sell their Medicaid health plan assets. And because of that relationship, he told me about it. And then I contacted a guy who I made chairman of my board. He's a very good friend of mine I contacted. So my guy who was running the hospital told me, I contacted my guy who is in that world of high powered executives in healthcare, none of them are black. He talked to them and they confirmed, yes, we are looking to sell the asset. And so within a few months they sold it to us.

[Troy Millings]

What's the type of tag on that? Because I know you later sold it to Henry Ford.

[Rashad Bilal]

We.

[Tommy Duncan]

We bought it for what we had to put in. It's called risk based capital. I think. All in. We probably put in like 13 million.

[Troy Millings]

Okay. You know, and then three years later.

[Tommy Duncan]

We sold it for 22 and a half. Yeah, but that was a crazy story. But here's the real story. That ain't the story how much money we made. The real story, Troy, is that we bought it and they gave us these financials which showed it was making $6 million a year in profit, half million a month, half million earners.

[Troy Millings]

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[Rob Gronkowski]

This is Rob Gronkowski from Dudes on Dudes With Gronk and Jewels. Sunday mornings are sacred. I've got my game day routine, coffee jersey laid out and my lucky playlist. But the real game changer, new morning uncrustables sandwiches.

[Julian Edelman]

I've always loved uncrustable sandwiches and now I'm all about the new flavors with 12 grams of protein. Bright eyed berry or up an apple. Bright eyed berries got that flashy, finesse vibe like your favorite slot receiver.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Up an apple. Tough and reliable like a do it all tight end.

[Julian Edelman]

And players love them. Did you know teams crush over 80, 000 uncrustable sandwiches a year? They know it's good.

[Rob Gronkowski]

It's a snack that can go with you anywhere from the couch to the tailgate or even in the locker room. Soft bread, yummy fillings, Protein packed. Once it's part of your ritual, you.

[Julian Edelman]

Don'T skip it easy enough for Gronk to grab straight from the freezer.

[Rob Gronkowski]

Your new Sunday kickoff ritual starts here with the new morning Uncrustable sandwiches packed with 12 grams of protein.

[Julian Edelman]

This is Julian Edelman from Games with Names. This message is brought to you by Pizza Hut because if you're yelling Hut on Sundays, why not? Yo, Pizza first.

[Tommy Duncan]

So Pizza Hut just put out one of the coolest, like funniest challenges maybe ever.

[Julian Edelman]

Pizza Hut.

[Rashad Bilal]

What is it?

[Tommy Duncan]

Basically, if a quarterback says pizza before they say hut, Pizza Hut will give that quarterback city a pizza party.

[Julian Edelman]

Is this real?

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah. Isn't that crazy?

[Julian Edelman]

You think coaches are bringing this up in team meetings?

[Tommy Duncan]

You think a pizza party is worth a false start?

[Julian Edelman]

Or what if they got the other team to jump off sides with a Pizza Hut?

[Tommy Duncan]

Hey, whatever it takes this time of year.

[Julian Edelman]

100% this weekend. Let us know if you hear Pizza Hut. I know. I'll be listening.

[Tommy Duncan]

Half million a month. The first month I owned it, we lost a million dollars.

[Troy Millings]

Oh, you did?

[Tommy Duncan]

So he sent me an asset with all the financials is a big publicly traded company, right? One that you would trust. Half million dollars a month. They make it. But somehow, my first month, I lose a million. Second month, I lose another million. Third month, I lose another million. So now what's happening? My private equity partners are coming to take my company over from me. I got stories for days. They come to take it from me because they said, now we got to put more money in the company. Of course, Tom, you can't put the money up. So we got to put the money up. We're going to dilute you down and take your equity. Put the money up. And it's becoming hostile because we have our investors whose money in this thing. We gotta do what we have to do to retain as much value as we can. So now he starts showing up in my office every day, taking over my finance. So put my CFO out the way. Took over his office. They come in every day. So I'm like, all right, now I got to fix the problem. So fix problem. How do I do it? Make all my vendors renegotiate their rates with me? Cut everything in half, or I'm suing y', all and I'm claiming fraud and everything. So now I call the state of Michigan. So here's one thing. No matter how big the companies are, company is in health care. There's one thing that can destroy a company. It's called compliance. So if government believes that a company is not being compliant, they could tank the whole company. And so I proactively called the state of Michigan's insurance bureau. Even though I presented as if they called me, they didn't. I called them, and I was threatening. Well, listen, if the insurance bureau approved them. So what happens is when you're an insurance company, you make a profit. You can't really take your profits out every year. You just retain them. And then when you sell your company, then you get all your money. So when they sold the company, we gave them 13 million. They took like 10 million out the company that they had to retain earnings. So then I contacted the insurance bureau, and I threatened. I'll tell you a funny story, too, you know. Let me tell you the story. So I called the insurance bureau, say, no, I'm on record calling to have a meeting. Been in healthcare forever. So we go there, and I got my private equity partners, right? And they talking all this shit to me. They try to take my company from me. Dudes resigned from the board so they can sue me. So I knew that. Dude resigned from the board. That means they're about to sue me. So they can't sue me being on the board because it's conflict of interest. So I'm like, all right, this is a Jewish guy. They about to sue me, and I got all these problems. They take it over my company anyways, we go and I gotta get my money back. I don't forget my money back. And I renegotiate my vendor contracts. I can save everything. So we get to Dallas, and all these guys, people come talk to me, talk all this stuff to me. We get there, and they quiet, scared to talk. But here's the thing. So I threatened the dude. I said, yeah, you know, y' all took that money out when you sold the company to me. And, you know, I got to meet with the insurance bureau. They want to meet with me about what happened, because they see our financials have deteriorated. So I don't know. But that's the problem. So the dude, he's, ah. They had his team talking. And I come back, I said, you know, I'm in the insurance bureau, and y' all took that money out. I don't know what they want to talk about. He kind of ignored again. I said, a third time, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. He said, God damn it, Duncan, if you threaten me one more time. And I looked at him, I look out the window. I said, all right, I won't say it again. I just want to make sure you heard me. Came back, I promise you, a day later, and they agreed to give us some money back. Got my money back and still renegotiated my contracts with my providers who had to pay my vendors.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

So then. Now not only I get my money back, now, my costs were lower going forward. Instead of making money, I probably made another 20 million on my. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. So then I got my PE partners off of me and saved my company. End up being more profitable. And then Henry. But then the company still wasn't making money, and it was. It wasn't working. So I was able to get Henry Ford Health System, which is Health System in Detroit.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

To buy my company, and I made a profit, so. On something that was losing a million dollars a month. That could have tanked everything. D.C. could have tanked everything. Yeah. I ended up selling $420 million and made profits all over the place.

[Troy Millings]

And then the very.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, you want.

[Troy Millings]

Go ahead.

[Rashad Bilal]

So, yeah, I don't want to just breeze over the 120 million you sold the company for. So. All right, so what is the. What was the process of you selling that? Like, when would you saying, okay, this is the time to Start actively looking for somebody to buy it or did they approach you and talk about that, like how you actually value the Ebida and all of that stuff, like how you value the selling of a company. Because a lot of times people just hear like, I sold the company, but they don't actually know like the details that go into selling a company.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, Rashad. So, okay, first, In our industry, because I got so many stories I could tell you, which would be fun. But. But in our industry, there is a framework for how you value our companies, right? And it's EBITDA's roughly eight times EBITDA.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

So you can value it that way or as I told you before, you value it on the total number of membership. So call it like a million dollars of members. Yeah, 40. 40, 000 members. Not a million dollars. But it'd be like $40 million.

[Troy Millings]

Right?

[Tommy Duncan]

Or you could do it by EBITDA. So. But what happened with us is I didn't want to sell my company. I wanted to keep it and keep growing it. The problem I ran into is even though we're the highest performer on every metric, we're the most profitable. You know, every metric about getting people healthier, we were the best at it. I couldn't win other states because what I tell you, we had no black governors. You know, it just. And you had to have black governor to push to win a contract. And we didn't have it. And my PE partners, I didn't want to be diluted, so I don't want them putting up too much money and then I get diluted down. So I'm owning, you know, 5, 10 of the company where I built it from scratch. At the time I was owning 40. I want to keep my 40. So all these different factors.

[Rashad Bilal]

So.

[Tommy Duncan]

But then what happened as I share with you, Rashad. So anyway, so my P firm, when they bought in, so I started a company without private equity. I had a private. A partner of mine who I met out here in LA to a good friend of mine who arranged to put up the first couple million dollars. And then I end up having him bought out because relationship dynamics got difficult to manage through, so got him bought out and we got bought out. The company was worth $25 million total. So P came in at 25 million, but remember, I sold was 120 million. But when they came in three years earlier, you know, their whole thing is you make a profit, you create value, then you sell it and you have this, you know, this game. So they had been looking to Sell the company. But I kept wanting to stay in the game because to me, shit, if I'm worth a hundred some million dollars now and we're small, if I get bigger, we're worth more. A billion, two billion. I mean, I can keep going, but one thing that I think was a mistake that I made is I started making so much money that I got. Got loose and I was just starting to spend too much. So I was sharing with Rashad earlier, you know, I did, amongst many things, I had this big party in New York City where. And I. But I told him I also had tretch. I had Naughty by nature. I had.

[Rashad Bilal]

At your Christmas. At your Christmas party.

[Tommy Duncan]

Christmas party had genuine. I danced with genuine, doing the moves and shit. I mean, I was. We had Freddie Jackson, you call it. I had everybody showing up. I was like reinvigorating careers. Real talk, the first verses. Yeah, real talk. But. But I'm tell you what happened. So when you're in healthcare, in government, there's always these fundraisers, small, not profits, trying to raise money. And it's like this important thing and all the politicians show up. So I'm at this Christmas dinner and this one woman who's like CEO of some small, not for profit organization, healthcare, she comes up to me, she said, yeah, time to hear you making all this money. You know, you're doing real well, huh? And when she made that comment, I knew I was in trouble. It was just like, remember?

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, put the mink on.

[Tommy Duncan]

Put the mink on and threw it in the, in the, in the fireplace. And I'm like, damn. The wording got out. I'm in trouble.

[Troy Millings]

It's the pink Cadillac and Goodfellas.

[Tommy Duncan]

Pink Alley Goodfellas.

[Troy Millings]

Oh, take that back.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, it was. I bought a Bentley when I got to DC. I had a red 911 because of my first company, but I never drove it and I sold it because I had to be low key. But then you start making so much money, you just can't help yourself. I bought a Bentley and I'm kind of. I'm driving. Look, I'm driving. Look, I'm driving like this and shit. Like real talk, my hat down, sunglasses on, driving through the city. And D.C. is small. I couldn't. You can't control yourself. You cannot control yourself. It wasn't me, the situation, it was a situation itself. Yeah, it's impossible. That's why every movie, the same should happen. No matter how much advice you get, you can't do it. So. But, but here's a. Here's a. But here's a real life story. So, right. The pink Cadillac, you know, the chinchilla. When I was growing up, it's about the time we lost everything. And I came back home to try to save it. My stepfather had just sold a piece of property which was attached to the hospital for two million dollars. And he was running around with his two million dollar check, and he was showing it off. It was one moment he was in a casino in Detroit, and he. And it was this dude. I don't mention his name, who my stepfather was bragging to. Oh, you know, y' all think y' all hurting me because he was gonna. Bad side of politics. I said, I just got 2 million. He's showing us $2 million check. And I truly believe. And he'll tell you that was the start of the full collapse, right? He was. He could maybe fix it. But after that, it just. It was a wrap because this dude controlled the hospital. He was general counsel for a hospital. And they just started suing the hmo. So long story short, I knew at that moment it was a rap for me. So therefore, I needed to sell the company to extract as much value as I can before I end up losing everything. And the thing about government contracts in any contract business is it has its positives, it's pros, it has its cons. Now, the positives, contract business is that once you have a contract, you got revenue flowing, right? Boom. Revenue flowing. The downside is when you lose your contract, any more revenue flowing, right? So I went from getting $200 million a year coming through to now, if I don't have nothing, I lose my contract. I have zero. So I'm not in a situation where I could go from very risky. It's all risk. It's all or nothing. It's literally all or nothing right now, if you're in retail business with our cause, like a restaurant, are you selling something, whatever you're doing, and you have customers buying your product and service, they don't just cut you off. You know, you have a real business, right? But in contract, you can lose everything. The problem with the retail is you got to build this big business. I start off, I got $20 million in revenue, damn near.

[Troy Millings]

I mean, it's big difference.

[Tommy Duncan]

Big difference. Yeah, you gotta. Y', all, you know, you gotta build, but then when you get it, you're not as much at risk. Contract, you're at full risk. My partners were putting pressure on me to sell it, and I'm like, all right, I need to sell this company before I end up with nothing.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah. So you sold January 2020.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

And then you announced three weeks later, Jet Doc, which is where you're at.

[Tommy Duncan]

Now, one week later.

[Rashad Bilal]

I want to just go back to this quicker. So this is very important for people, especially black entrepreneurs, because a lot of times I feel like black. We have. It's a gift and a curse, but we have a deep emotional attachment to our business. And people always criticize. Not always by a lot of times they criticize people. It's like, well, we can never really grow as a community if we keep selling our businesses. But you have to understand that there's no emotional attachment to business. You have to look at it from a very rational standpoint. And it's like you can sell a business and then scale to another business as well. So once you saw that A, they was gonna come at you because your lifestyle and then B, just the risk, you just realized you did a calculation in your head. Yep. And said, it's time to go.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right. Exactly right. And because the way I grew up and you know, again, my mother had a 12 karat diamond ring that she gave away for practically nothing. And all the furs and the cars and the house and everything because they were trying to keep that business open that clearly was closing. Gave away everything trying to keep it open. I realized that emotional attachment was more of a curse than a blessing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Did you reach out to, to Blue Cross Blue Shell or did they reach out to you to sell it? Like when it was time to sell?

[Tommy Duncan]

So they reached out to me. They reached out and then they were trying to get rid of me. So. So, you know, so then the District did this thing where they did another procurement, a new contract. So I just won a five year contract. Like eight months later, they say, no, we're gonna do it again. We're gonna do another contract. See, now you have to go through the process of winning a contract again. I just won. So I thought, I said for five years, I mean, you know, I can try to grow or whatever. But then eight months later they put, we're gonna do another procurement. After they cut my rates twice. Remember I was making so much money, they cut my rates twice, only me. And then they did this new procurement, which to me was a message. They kicking me out, it's a wrap.

[Rashad Bilal]

So.

[Tommy Duncan]

But all love out of D.C. i, you know, Blue Cross Connect connected with me, said they wanted to be in the Medicaid space. And the company they bought didn't win the contract, but instead they were encouraged and not negotiate a good deal anyway.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah, yeah. So.

[Rashad Bilal]

So you sell that and then. And then that's where you're going.

[Troy Millings]

Yes. I was saying. And as you see the walls closing in.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

You're already drawn up to vision for the next thing. So talk about that process. I know it's closing in, but here, here comes the next thing. Which is jetdoc, which you announced a week after you sell.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah. So I didn't like, you know, I didn't want to sell my company. And I felt like I was being forced out. And not just in dc, but I felt like I'm the smartest person in healthcare. And I wrote a book to prove it. I really am. No one knows it better than I do because no one's been a founder CEO like I have. So it's one thing, you know something because you work for somebody. Nothing like what y' all doing. You know that. You know what I'm saying? It's different. So I knew it. I'm smart, I grew up in it. So I'm fifth, I'm second generation. I mean. And when my mother and my stepfather started in the business, they were guinea pigging this concept of Medicaid managed care. And of course they started in the black communities. Cause that's where they guinea pig. But because of that, my parents had the first experience with it. So, like, no one knows game better than I do. So I felt like I was being put on the sideline of the industry.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

And I was mad about it. And so even though I knew I was about to make this money, I was pissed. And so I started another company. And my plan was to launch this next company a week later and then, you know, shock the world with that. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. I launched it. You know, I launched JetDoc February 1st of 2020 with this concept of telehealth. Cause I knew that's where the game was going pre pandemic. Cause I was looking through all my. Again, I'm looking through all my claims. Oh, I got a lot of claims, which are little claims which can be done over telephone versus somebody having to park the car, going to the office, see a doctor for a Zithromax, a Z pack. They do it on the phone. Boom, boom, boom. The doctor's not a big risk because it's a Z pack. It's easy, right? So I knew that's where, when I looked at my claims, I paid over a million claims, you know, boom. This is where healthcare is going. I launched February 1st on my own technology building myself. But then pandemic hits like March 15, and I go from being early to late because now my tech, I'm. I just, I'm a month in the building. My tech, my tech one ready until. Until September.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

And I was late. And then I thought, okay, well I'm still good. So I'm a self financing exam. What? Partners. Because I had PE partners last time.

[Troy Millings]

Private equity, self finance. I want that. Don't let that go over your head.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, well, sometimes a good idea, sometimes not. The great idea, it depends. But I wanted full control of this. I thought it's gonna be like a grand slam. Yeah. I self financed it. And then I go out here to market like, boom, about to kill him. It was right before Labor Day last year. I'm about to kill him. I'm about to give away, you know, free doctor visits. But because I had stripe on the app, I had to charge at least a dollar. So I'm doing dollars dollar doctor visit and the next morning I wake up, I didn't have that many, you know what I'm saying, people on my app, why not spending money on advertising? And I look at all the comments, they think they're, you know, not real doctors. They're Dr. Pepper, you know, voodoo doctors, Dr. Dre, whatever, you know, Dr. Day, Dr. Dre. It wasn't real. And so people didn't assess value to what I was trying to sell. And really, it's amazing. Value proposition actually included discount pharmacy where anyone can go to any pharmacy in the country, get 85% of the cost of medication. It's unheard of. But because I wasn't getting attraction I expected to get, I decided to do celebrity route like everybody else and go influencer. I got with Rick Ross and then we launched this big thing earlier this year. And again, I actually kind of got it working. You know, My number is 100 people per day. If I get 100 people a day sign up for Jetdoc, it was booming subscription model. The problem is I got like 50 people a day. Actually, that wasn't a problem. 50 people, they would have been okay. The problem is that I spent $400,000 that month in advertising. I ain't spend $4,000 a month for the 50 people a day. I just can't, you know what I'm saying?

[Rashad Bilal]

Can't justify it.

[Tommy Duncan]

Nah, I ain't doing that. So. But that was my problem, you know what I'm saying? So then I had to make another pivot business people do if you're Gonna be in business. So I pivoted. My pivot was. Let me go back. Remember the guy I told you who I made chairman of my board, who's at the highest level of healthcare in this country? Most probably top 10 most profitable people healthcare in this country by far. Used to run cms. He's a friend of mine, I hit him about what I'm doing. They gave me a recurring license contract which is valuable when you're in a tech business. So back to valuation, service business and healthcare 8 to 10x EBITDA, which is pre tax profit.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know what the EBITDA stands for?

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization.

[Rashad Bilal]

Okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

EBITDA. So pre tax profit 8 to 10x is roughly where you're going to end up. Services. But if you're on tech, it's like.

[Troy Millings]

22 or something like that.

[Tommy Duncan]

Oh baby, yeah.

[Troy Millings]

John Harry was talking about that baby.

[Tommy Duncan]

And that's why I want to get attacked. That's why I did the tech. So they're gonna give me a million dollars a year in recurrent revenue. So called times when that's 22 million dollar, I'm worth 22 million. Off top. I actually got a valuation 17 million.

[Rashad Bilal]

And that is. I'm glad you said that. So that is how you value a company. It's like the money that you're making, I'm trying to break this down as easy for people to understand as possible. The money that you make after all the expenses and all of that is done every single year. And then you have multiple. So depending on what industry you're in, that will determine your multiples. So you were saying in healthcare it's multiple of eight but in tech it's like in 20 plus.

[Tommy Duncan]

20 plus. And here's another thing about tech. Tech will give you a multiplier of top line revenue. Remember, EBITDA is after, after expenses and taxes. I mean it's after expenses.

[Rashad Bilal]

Net.

[Tommy Duncan]

It's net.

[Rashad Bilal]

Tech is gross.

[Tommy Duncan]

Gross. So you're doing a million dollars a year, you're getting 10, 15. That's 15 million.

[Troy Millings]

15. Yeah.

[Tommy Duncan]

You get a couple contracts, now you're 40 million. I mean and you're just doing tech.

[Rashad Bilal]

So why is that? Because tech is just so explosive. And it's just the. Because it's so scalable.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, because if we're here, you'll work anywhere. It's not. Once you build a tech and it has an application, what it costs to scale it is minimal. But services, you get in more people, you have more infrastructure, more Blah, blah, blah. So tech is a sexy place to be. So the dude connects me with the company and then they end up investing, give me an anchor contract. And, and so now we're actually at the closed stage of winning. Appears to be winning a statewide contract to provide telehealth services. And, and, and we have another company that's. We're looking to do business with a few more.

[Rashad Bilal]

And so Teladoc. So what's the revenue since this? You said you started with like a dollar. How much is it now? I mean.

[Tommy Duncan]

Well, we still got to say Jet Dot.

[Troy Millings]

Yeah, that's the competition.

[Rashad Bilal]

Well, yeah, yeah, I was gonna ask about that.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

So Jet Doc, you started with a dollar. How much is it now?

[Tommy Duncan]

So it doesn't matter really, because now it's $20 a month, but with $10 a month for unlimited. But it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, but it's not my priority. That's direct to consumer. So people in Georgia and Florida can still call Jet Doc, see a doctor, get a discount medication, boom. It's all easy. Pay her 20 bucks a visit. But what I've transitioned into is business to business. So that's when I was sharing with Troy earlier. There's opportunity where, you know, I'm going to address homelessness because it's a major problem, which means a major opportunity. What we found again through my math when I did it in DC is average person spends 5x more expensive if they're also homeless. The average expense per year is about 20 grand a year. So somebody's homeless. On average, they cost us $20,000 a year. That's entire Medicaid managed care industry. Well, some folks that are homeless, they cost 20 grand a year. Remember, you only get paid 5,000 years. So each person is losing 15 grand. But then you have other people who don't see the doctor at all. You shouldn't pay five grand a year. So, you know, you get, you got paying out zero, but you're getting 5,000. So kind of to a degree, not always average way out, but you know, it gets close to it, and that's where the 2% profit margin comes from. And you shake all that out. But homelessness is a big problem. It's the biggest impactor on the healthcare industry no one really talks about. So. And we've had homeless people that were using the emergency room 15, 20, 30 times a month.

[Troy Millings]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

Knowing what to say to be admitted inpatient, meaning inpatient means they spend nine hospital at least one night. So somebody wants to get a meal they want to just stay in the hospital or for whatever reason, they want to get some more medications. Maybe because they need them, maybe because they want to sell them. Who knows they know what to say to get it. And then the insurance companies are paying.

[Rashad Bilal]

The bill or it's just cold down. They just.

[Tommy Duncan]

It's cold ever. Whatever. Right. But it costs money. Somebody goes inpatient, baby, it costs $15,000.

[Rashad Bilal]

And you can't turn somebody down.

[Troy Millings]

No.

[Tommy Duncan]

So it costs 15,000. Right. Well, if they stay on average, which is five nights, I'm paying $3,000 a night back. They could be staying with me at the Plaza Hotel in penthouse suite. That's what I'm paying. So the opportunity is getting folks that are homeless into housing. And there's a big opportunity. I was giving you some quick math, Troy. In Oakland, California, we're talking to a big company. Let's say they have 10,000 members, $20,000 a year. That means they're spending $200 million a year on homeless members, on healthcare for their homeless. $200 million a year. I proved it in DC. I cut my homeless members in half by 50. In half, which is 50%. And the cost came down accordingly. So If I took $200 million baseline and I cut it in half, that means a hundred million dollars in savings. If I got half of that, I made $50 million. And they made 50, they say 50 for giving me the contract. It's a lot of money.

[Rashad Bilal]

So that's, that's the revenue model. It's not really the consumer, it's more business and government. Government contracts too.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's government or business to business. So another company like the one that I had, I can go contract with them and say, I know how to save money. I was doing, I was doing 10%, 12% profit margins. You're doing, you're trying to do two. I can help you.

[Troy Millings]

So that, that, that is a formula for Oakland. We know homelessness is a huge problem in LA as well.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

Can that also be replicated here?

[Tommy Duncan]

100%. The thing is, I'm friends with the CEO of a big help plan in Oakland.

[Troy Millings]

In Oakland. Okay.

[Tommy Duncan]

Relationships. Right, relationships. But once you pilot anything anywhere that's successful, then yeah, you can do anything. 100%.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah. So the whole idea of virtual doctor visits. Teladoc is a well known company who's a publicly traded company, but people are still a little leery about this. So you have a virtual doctor visit. Because I've never done this before. Can you kind of explain to me what is a Virtual doctor visit. Because I'm assuming that is some it's limitations involved. Like you can only see somebody. You can't like hit the elbow and bang the knee, check the cough and all that. So like how does that work and do you think that this is something that will be the normal moving forward?

[Tommy Duncan]

I do. In the current state of technology and its limitations, most telehealth visits are, you know, you have flu symptoms or maybe you think you may have Covid symptoms or you got a headache, you need some strong Advil or something that you don't need to see a doctor. You know it and the doctors knows it. You don't need to see them in person. And so you download the app and you basically are like a Zoom call a FaceTime with the doctor and you talk to them about your symptoms and they're going to prescribe your medication. And then in jetdoc, then the doctor will automatically send the script to wherever pharmacy you feel is most convenient for you. You go pick it up, you get 85 cent off cost of medication. The discount card is embedded in the app. Where healthcare is going is more sophisticated technology, which we're on the forefront of that with this contract we have. I was just sharing with you where we're including with our app, integrated remote patient monitoring. So folks at diabetic need glucometers to measure the sugar, the sugar in their blood. And so we're integrating like a pulse oximeter to see what their, you know, their heartbeat is. But we're, we're integrating these into our app so it's fully integrated. So now you can have, you know, devices that have advanced, what's the word, photography capabilities. They can actually see more clear than your iPhone what's going on. So you can actually use devices or smart scales to get more information. So you're actually replicating an in person visit without being in person. So that technology is on the way and we're in the forefront of it. We're building this integrated application with JetDoc to have 20 remote patient monitoring devices fully integrated to the system.

[Troy Millings]

So pre Covid in the telehealth space there was an average of about Projected average about 800,000 visits. 800,000 visits a month. Obviously post Covid, that number has run to over a billion. A billion. So that means there's a lot of people in the space. So what's JetDoc's plan to separate it? Because I know Shadi mentioned the company as competition. How do you separate yourselves from the rest of the competition?

[Tommy Duncan]

The Reality is I gotta figure out what I wanna do. So, you know, there's so much room. First of all, to answer your question, there's a lot of room. There's room galore and there's room galore. Direct to consumer. There's so many different pockets of opportunity. So whether you focus on mental health, you focus on this niche over here, there's a telecompany that's been very successful doing trans transgender care, oxy, transgender or transgender friendly or what have you. And all the members are transgender because they have their own healthcare issues, right? And so it's very focused. So what's happening now is the telecompanies are trying to figure out what the niche is, right? STDs is a big niche, so figure out what the niche there's a lot of opportunity for, for niching direct to consumer. But also when you do direct to business, I mean, how many business hours? A trillion of them. So there's always things you can try do something new and different, which means opportunity to grow. B2B is pretty massive as well. But when I said I got to figure out what I want to do is, you know, how far do I want to take it? You know, if you asked me a year ago, two years ago, I'll tell you, I'm going to take it all the way. You know, publicly trade it, own it, control it, make it a legacy business. Am I there right now? You know, I don't know. I'm still thinking about that. So do I just want to create it, create value and then sell it and have another hit and maybe getting a TV prince of Detroit hanging out with Dame Dash, baby. Stay tuned, stay tuned. But that's the decision, you know, entrepreneurs had to make is, you know, where the passion lies and is it still burning?

[Rashad Bilal]

Let me ask you this before we wrap some general questions. You say you wrote the book, Medicare, Medicaid, we always had these issues that you know, is so flawed. And you said, can you give us one of the solutions that you have in the book or something that why is it so flawed and what are some like at least one thing you'll understand can be done to fix it.

[Tommy Duncan]

You'll understand it. It's get rid of mandatory medical loss ratio requirements. So I shared with you earlier, out of $100 we receive in revenue, we are required by law to spend $85 out of 100. So 85% on the direct cost of care, hospital, doctor, pharmacy, dental, transportation, etc. Well, if you spend 85% of your dollar every year, medical cost inflation is 2%. It's been 2% forever, which means next year you're going to be spending your total cost. So the government's going to pay in the total cost. The taxpayers are paying it. So 85, it's like compound interest. 80, what was 85 is not 85.2%. Right. And then the next year is 85.2 plus another 2%. It's not 85.2 because 2% of 85 is graynet.

[Troy Millings]

Right?

[Tommy Duncan]

It's like 1.7. So now it goes up to 87. So every year the cost, healthcare keeps going up because of inflation and you're requiring folks to spend that money. You dig what I'm saying? So every year the cost of healthcare goes up. That's why it's crazy. What you want to do is get rid of mandatory medical loss ratio requirements and then incentivize companies to reduce the total cost of care for their membership. And by doing that, they would. What should be the case is if they reduce their cost to actually get more contracts with governments to do more business. That's usually how it works, like Walmart, lower the cost, the more business you get. But the way government has said it is they have these mandatory medical loss ratio requirements, which means you have to spend 85% of your money. And if you spend less than that, it's not legal. Well, the reason they do that, the government has done that, is what they have been afraid of are insurance companies skimping on care for the purposes of retaining it as profit. So let's say Troy needs to go, you know, get some imaging done. He has some heart palpitation or something he wants to get checked out. They're worried that me as an insurance company, let's say I'm Blue Cross Blue Shield and he's my remember, I say, no, Troy, you can't go get this image, this imaging service, because it's not a covered benefit or I just don't want you to do it because you know it's gonna cost me a thousand dollars. You're insurer. So to protect against that, to protect the people, they make these mandatory medical loss ratio requirements. But the truth is, in healthcare, because if somebody goes to emergency room, by law the hospital has to see the person, and by law I gotta pay the bill. Then the percent of spending that can really be affected by me trying to skip on services is like less than 10, 10. So it's really like 7%. So if I can only affect 7%, why are you forcing the system to overspend on the other 93%. You dig what I'm saying? What should be the case, like anything in capitalism, is if I can get my costs lower, I should be able to get more business. I should be incentivized to get my cost down. And the only way to really get cost down in healthcare is get people healthier, is what I explained to you on the homeless issue. I cut my costs in half because I got half my people housing. So I was sitting down at 65% medical loss ratio, which the government thought was a bad thing, which is why they forced me to get out of the, out of the industry where 65% is a good thing. Because guess what happens If I'm at 65 and the system is set to where I get more business because I'm a lower cost provider than my other competitors, then guess what? The big companies that are in health insurance will now actually compete to get their costs lower. So if I had an impact doing things with homelessness and all this other stuff I did, reducing, you know, man, I had people, man, I had thousands of people who I stopped from, from being hooked to dialysis for the rest of their life. I call it dialysis row. If Somebody has a, a 1C which basically measuring the blood, the sugar in someone's blood, if, if they're, if it's five and a half or greater, that means they're diabetic. So it's less than five and a half. They're pre diabetic? No, actually less than seven. Yeah, less than seven. You know, less than seven. But I had people. But then you, let's say they want to see 8, 9, 10, 11, 12. That means any day they could be in a, they could require dialysis. And that's a, that's a bad thing because now the dialysis every day for the rest of their life until they get a transplant, they die. I had some thousands of people, thousands of people because I looked at my data, who had A1Cs that were over 7 who have A1C's that were growing over a period of time, right? They had a, they had 7.5, now they had a 9. Oh, I better focus on these people. Get them in the care, get them a glucometer, give me real time notification when it spikes. And then my staff, you want to reach out to them. What'd you have for lunch? Oh, you think it's healthy to eat, eat fruit all the time. Guess what? Not so much. You know, what are you doing in changing behaviors, right?

[Rashad Bilal]

Fruit, fruit Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah. A lot of times food. People think food is.

[Rashad Bilal]

It breaks down your body as sugar.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's right.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

Cocos.

[Tommy Duncan]

Oh, no question. So people think they're doing something healthy, but it's killing. But listen, listen. People watch this. Thousands of people. Thousands of people, my aunt included and, and many people y' all know, included. But my aunt was on rheumatoid arthritis since like last 30, 40 years. Well, to treat rheumatoid arthritis is medications. And most of them attack the kidney. Right. So over time it'll deteriorate the kidney and before you know it, they need dialysis. But not because of lifestyle or eating habits. It's just because they're on a medication to treat something and instead it burns the kidney up. And now she's on dialysis. We had thousands of people that we identified through medication. They were on how long they were on it, that A1C's that were rising, that we move A1C from being in the hotbed, the hot land of any day now you could be on Dallas's, Dallas's row to being pre diabetic. Lifestyle, behavior changes, thousands of people. Because I care.

[Rashad Bilal]

Diet.

[Tommy Duncan]

Diet. Next diet. Most of his diet and medication compliance. A lot of people don't take the medication. Why? Sometimes it makes some. Or dialysis, not dialysis. Diarrhea. Right. So you have side effects. Man. So much healthcare can be fixed. But here's my real point. My point is we identified all these triggers and we did something about it. And through doing something about it, we gave people longer life, healthier life folks. We avoided folks on dialysis and, and all those impacts. But not only that, we save a lot of money in the process. Because when somebody is on dialysis, guess what it costs us every year? Year. 85,000. When you include dialysis and going to emergency room a couple times to be an inpatient. $85,000 a year. But I'm only getting paid 5,000, which means I'm losing $80,000 per person on dialysis. So what did I do? I'm getting out in front.

[Troy Millings]

Preventive measures.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, but what happens there? I save money and people have better, healthier lives. Right. But that's little old Tommy Duncan, because Tommy Duncan was also. I care about people and the profit goes to my own pocketbook. So I'm doing these things which are making a big difference. The big companies aren't doing them, but if they actually incentivize, if you get your cost lower, which you can only do it doing things I just shared with you. Then the big companies would actually do what I'm doing and they would do it way better because they have all the resources in the world. But right now they have no incentive. Incentive to do it instead. The incentive is just keep things status quo, which is why healthcare outcomes are status quo. And the cost of system keeps going up every year here. And the governor and the governments don't do.

[Rashad Bilal]

So how do we, how do we change it? Political action, political act, man, you just.

[Tommy Duncan]

Got to get political action, man. You got to get black governor. That's my, that's my, that's my headline.

[Troy Millings]

Get.

[Tommy Duncan]

Get a black governor. That's what you need to do.

[Rashad Bilal]

When's the last black governor in America?

[Tommy Duncan]

In Virginia, New York.

[Troy Millings]

Oh, the last guy.

[Rashad Bilal]

But that was, that wasn't real though. Yeah, he was the governor. No, no disrespect to Patterson, but he wasn't elected.

[Troy Millings]

No, he wasn't elected, but he served as.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, and then he got two years.

[Troy Millings]

Got him out of there.

[Tommy Duncan]

But you gotta have somebody coming in like this, eyes wide open. You gotta, you know what they're doing.

[Rashad Bilal]

Virginia, that was the last elected black governor.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, this guy named, I can't remember his name. But you need somebody really coming in, you know, with a plan. They know what they're doing. They got a squad, you know, they have relationships now, you know, but even.

[Rashad Bilal]

But even with the governor, like, even if it's a black governor, it's like I feel like, you know, better than me, obviously, but this billions of dollars that's made in people being sick, like you might have been losing money, but there's other companies and other people that's actually making money from people being sick. Treatment, hospitals, hospitals, companies.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah, it's okay.

[Rashad Bilal]

So the lobby, it might be, you know, too strong to push it, no matter who's the president or the governor or.

[Tommy Duncan]

I agree with that. But somebody has to have audacity. And eliminating medical loss ratio actually can be viewed as a positive thing, even for the biotech companies, because then they would start to design things and market to the provider groups, insurance companies, we can actually keep people healthier and not the hospital. This medication is better or different. For this reason, the government has taken the stance, because what I shared earlier, that if you do not police the insurance companies from skimping on care, they will skimp on care and they'll be to the detriment of the public. And what I'm sharing with you is the way the system is designed from the inside. The only skipping you could do is no more than 7% of total spending. So you're sacrificing 93% because of the 7%, which happens all the time.

[Rashad Bilal]

There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

[Troy Millings]

Prince of Detroit has spoken.

[Rashad Bilal]

Another classic. I appreciate you, brother. So what, what, what do the people need to tap in? What can you say? Your information, all the information that you have about jetdoc, Instagram, website, all of that stuff.

[Tommy Duncan]

I'll do it all. But before I do, I just want to make the comment, any entrepreneurs out there, do your research on your business. You know, research the industry. What are the success rates? What are the failure rates? And failure rates are okay, but why do they fail? You know, calculate your risk. Don't just jump out there. Calculated, you know, particularly if you're an adult, meaning you have, you know, responsibilities, and you just can't just quit your job. I know so many people quit their job, think they're going to open the business, then that business doesn't work, then they don't have a job or a business. You know, all of my businesses I started, I had something already going, right? I had this going, I started mine. So I calculated my risk. Yeah, I could lose it all, I could lose a lot, but I ain't gonna lose it all. At the time I started my DC business, I had a son. I was married with a son and my wife was pregnant, right? So I did these things again. I calculated my risk. So do your research, understand your industry, understand what is the best upside? Are you going into a lifestyle business, meaning you just want to be profitable and you make a million dollars a year, and you, you know, if that's the highest upside, that's a great lifestyle. But no, that's what you get into. Or you trying to do a value creation business. Do what I did, you create something that may take a little more time, maybe it goes faster because of technology, but guess what? Now you sell it for $100 million, a billion dollars, and then you actually get a lump sum of money. And I'm gonna tell you this. When you lump some money, it's a beautiful thing. You can make $5 million a year. That sounds good, right? You can make 10 million a year, but then you got half the taxes, and then you got lifestyle. You got a big house, you're living out here, you got a thousand cars. You know, you spending your money, but you get that lump sum, that big check, and that might be working for you. You ain't got to work that money working. You dig what I'm saying? Like, my money works. I Gotta do S H I T my money be working in the stock market in this. It's just working on its own. And that's where I decided I wanted to be. And that's where I'm at. But really know what you're trying to get into and what you're trying to get out of it. You know, do your research, do your homework. When I won a contract in D.C. is because I did in addition to all things I talked about, right. You know, I did a political stuff, a government contracts to people and all that kind of smooth stuff. But also I put together the best plan for the District. Right. Understood where the power was. It was in D.C. i understood the program for CBE for the minority business of D.C. i understood all the healthcare. All the. I read every article about health care in DC. DC is broken up by war to 8 wards. Like Borough is probably New York. I understood the health issues at each borough in New York. And I put together a plan for it. And so anyway, I just really advise people, do their homework, you know, calculate risk. Do your homework, but take risk.

[Rashad Bilal]

Right.

[Tommy Duncan]

My shirt says, what? High risk. I'm a high risk, high reward guy, you know, but, you know, if you want more, you got to do more. That being said, Tommy2Duncan on IG at Tommy2Duncan JetDoch my JetDoc on IG JetDot.com the Prince of Detroit film. Go check that out. Prince of Detroit film. That's what I'm doing. I'm having fun with that and I got other things popping. But what I love to do more than anything, Rashad and Troy, is talk about entrepreneurship to help people be successful. I feel like that's what's missing in our community is real mentorship on kind of ropes to skip the ropes to know. And I feel like y' all are doing it. And so I appreciate you having me on the show to do my little part.

[Rashad Bilal]

Thank you.

[Troy Millings]

Appreciate you, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

I'm glad we was able to connect. Definitely look forward to, you know, establishing a stronger relationship. Tons and tons of information. And it's one of these things where we don't know a lot about, you know. Yeah. Type of informational topics when it comes to healthcare. And just to have somebody, you know, that we can relate to, that's kind of been a formula for our success, is just bring people on that people can relate to and break down very complex situations and make them understandable. And that's what you did. So thank you for joining us, brother.

[Tommy Duncan]

Can I do one more thing? For sure, one more thing. All right. Right now, because of social media, every industry is up for disruption. It's the first time in history. So before, you know, most black people, folks who come from where we come from, had barriers. Right? Resources. Know how I talked about that? Like, real mentorship. But even access to resources, how do you get to clients? It costs money to market now through social media. I promise you, everything is up for disruption. You could start a hot sauce company, market that hot sauce, and before you know it, you'll be bigger than Red Hot. You look around at pillows, anything you can see it's all up for disruption. And it's the first time in history that's the case where people can go from whatever they're doing to become a billionaire overnight because they can talk directly to consumers.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's like us. We disrupted the whole industry when it comes to finance. And we have a show called Market Monday. Shout out to Ian, our partner on that, and it's like, massively successful show. Every single Monday, we talk about stocks and investing. So shout out to Josh Brown. Josh Brown is on C. CNBC, and he's been on Wall street for, like, 30 years. Good guy. So he was talking and he was like, yeah, earn your leisure. They got the show. And he was like, damn, they're influencing financial markets. He's like, there's like, 7, 000 people watching the show live. Like, they're influencing financial markets more than anybody on the street.

[Tommy Duncan]

Jeez.

[Rashad Bilal]

Like, he said that, and that was crazy, but it's true.

[Tommy Duncan]

Crazy.

[Rashad Bilal]

And it's like, you know what I'm saying? Just says, like, it's.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's game changing, man.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, yeah.

[Troy Millings]

Disruption at its finest.

[Tommy Duncan]

So I'll leave you with this. Make sure you know, as you're doing what you're doing, have somebody legal doing your research. Keep y' all in compliance, because the more powerful you get, they'll be coming at you.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, that's what Dame said that.

[Troy Millings]

Just said that. He just said that to us last night.

[Rashad Bilal]

That's what Dame said yesterday. That's a fact. That's a fact. No, I appreciate that, brother. Definitely. Definitely. Troy. Housekeeping items.

[Troy Millings]

Oh, man. I want to. I want to. Dame also said that we should mention this, that there was a wolf of Wall Street. This is the wolf of Healthcare.

[Rashad Bilal]

Yeah, the Wolf of Healthcare.

[Troy Millings]

And I hear the word Prince of Detroit, but we might have to nominate him for another title.

[Tommy Duncan]

Because this is.

[Troy Millings]

This is pretty legendary. That being said, shout out to Jet Talk. And one of the things I know that you guys pride yourself on is Affordability and accessibility. And so I want to encourage people just to check it out. Just check it out. But yeah. Shout out to everybody on patreon.com that is our proud to pay program. Shout out to all the earners that are on there. Shout out to everybody in Eyl University staff has grown, y'. All. Shout out to the earners and shout out to everybody with the merch. I know y' all see us with the exclusive merch.

[Rashad Bilal]

Oh, speaking of Detroit, shout out to my boy, chill.

[Troy Millings]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know him? Nah, that's Southwest T's son and he gave me this merch. He's real. He's a friend of good friend of mine.

[Troy Millings]

It's very rare when we wear something that's not on.

[Rashad Bilal]

I hardly ever wear anything. But my man Chill, they just got in the the legal marijuana business. They working with Al Harrington. Shout out to Al Harrington Viola and they got a strand. And this was the drop of his new strand. So shout out to Chill. Shout out to his dad, Southwest. He got a chance to chop it up with him. Good guy. Shout out to all the guys in Detroit, man. Real, real solid, old school type of just get money.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

You know what I'm saying? It's a good vibe out there.

[Troy Millings]

That's my city. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Rashad Bilal]

I like it, man. So shout out to my boy check Chill, man.

[Tommy Duncan]

Yeah.

[Troy Millings]

But again, shout, shout out to the merch team. Shout out to our boy Mike I Bogard for the exclusive drops. We got something that we brewing, y'.

[Tommy Duncan]

All.

[Troy Millings]

Trust me, it's gonna be major. Yeah. Love is love.

[Rashad Bilal]

Thank you guys for rocking with us. We'll see you next week. Peace.

[Troy Millings]

Peace.

[Rashad Bilal]

My graduates from my school being Forbes. Backdrop, backdrop mic, drop back, drop bag, drop.

[Troy Millings]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Julian Edelman]

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[Tommy Duncan]

Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankowitz. We host the podcast Mind the Business.

[Commercial Announcer 1]

Small Business Success Stories, produced by Ruby's Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

[Tommy Duncan]

We're back for season four to talk to some incredible small business owners. The big thing about working at tech is that it's ever evolving, ever changing.

[Troy Millings]

Everyone's a rookie.

[Tommy Duncan]

That's how fast the industry is changing. So what I'm really excited about is to be part of that change. So listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple.

[Commercial Announcer 1]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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[Tommy Duncan]

That'S odoo.com this is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.