May 18, 2026 – Easy App Building Joel Brewer, Functional Health Dr. Dusty Hess and Ford’s Matt Atkenson

Intro 1 0:04
Broadcasting from AM and FM stations around the country. Welcome to the Small Business Administration Award-winning school.

Jim Beach 0:10
We don’t have time for the introduction to the show, is so cram-packed. Three great guests, we’re going to go ahead and get started right now. Here we go. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Joel Brewer to the show. He built a digital software agency that has had incredible success. It’s called Brewer Digital. They help CEOs, CTOs, tech leaders design great new products. Their clients have been able to use the software to get into places like Shark Tank, Harvard Innovation Labs, Y Combinator, all sorts of great places where the judges have said that’s a nice website, that’s nice software, you deserve to be looked at. So he’s had really cool success. The company is almost 13 years old, which to me is even more impressive than he’s been able to keep it going for so long, very impressive. Joel, welcome to the show. How you doing,

Joel Brewer 1:05
Jim? Thanks so much. Yeah, great, great to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Jim Beach 1:09
And you really focus on small upstarts, right? You have a true place in your heart for us beginners, right?

Joel Brewer 1:20
I do. I do. Yeah, I think I’ve always worked with pretty early stage startups and founders. Yeah, I’ve got a real passion there. It’s been like I said, for better or for worse, I really do enjoy working with the small folks that don’t get it all figured out yet.

Jim Beach 1:37
All right. Well, we will come back to that for sure. Tell us, how you got started. Go back in time 14 years and give us a birthing story.

Joel Brewer 1:47
Yeah, so I guess birthing story is, you know, I got started. I went to school for biology, actually, of all things, but then ended up in the technology, and then got pulled into startups and found myself becoming a software engineer over the course of that, teaching myself how to code. Yeah, it’s been kind of a kind of a whirlwind, but ultimately I really got sucked into startups and haven’t looked back.

Jim Beach 2:17
Excellent. Okay, but give us your birthing story. That was way, way, way, way too compressed, Joel. You had the idea. What’d you do first? Who’d you call first? Yeah, the first customer, where’d the money come from? I’d go massive depth here.

Joel Brewer 2:31
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, actually, it’s okay. So, going all the way back, first customer, actually got my first customer through Craigslist. So, I don’t know if your listeners are.. I don’t know if people are still using Craigslist or if all of

Joel Brewer 2:42
that’s kind of sofas and

Joel Brewer 2:46
yeah yeah yeah so I posted an ad on Craigslist that I was you know available to help people you know build websites build software and I was in Nashville at the time and my first app was a social media app for musicians, it was called In the Mix. Worked with worked with a woman in Nashville, she was a founder, and yeah, she found me through Craigslist. From there, I kind of said

Jim Beach 3:19
that point, were you good at coding? Had you taught yourself coding, or were you selling a skill that you would have to go with and hire someone

Joel Brewer 3:28
to do? No, I was doing it. I mean, I will be honest, at the time, you know, I had like two windows on my computer, and I had like the client’s code on one side, and then I on the other side, I was like learning how to do it, so it very much was, yeah, I guess Lane learning how to do it as I was doing it, but the clients were happy, and you know, I think I was able to pick it up quick enough that, yeah, that they still got a good product out of it at

Jim Beach 3:56
the first product. How hard was it? What was it doing?

Joel Brewer 4:02
Yeah, so first one, like I said, it was a, it was a social media site for musicians. So this was back in like 2013 2013

Jim Beach 4:11
They have that one that

Jim Beach 4:14
they had, like Facebook, they had Twitter, and stuff.

Joel Brewer 4:17
This one really

Jim Beach 4:18
worked for just musicians, wasn’t there one of the big ones. I can’t believe

Joel Brewer 4:23
it. I mean, yeah, we.. I’m sure we weren’t the only one, but yeah, we built it out. It certainly had its challenges on both the tech side and the business side. I was not very.. I will.. I’ll be honest, at that time I was.. yeah, I was junior, I was early, so I was not as good at the business side as I’ve learned a lot since then, but met some great people along the line, yeah.

Joel Brewer 4:52
All right, excellent. And how’d you decide how much to charge? Them

Jim Beach 5:03
MySpace was no space, just for Music Origin.

Joel Brewer 5:06
Myspace, I think you’re right. I think MySpace might have been for Music. Yeah, yeah, I mean, kind of turned into, right, a more, a more broad social social network. We took a lot of inspiration from MySpace.

Joel Brewer 5:18
Okay, so

Jim Beach 5:19
how do you decide how much to charge that customer

Joel Brewer 5:24
going back far here, Jim. Um, you know, I think I looked at, you know, what’s my, what’s my wrench for the next few months, and I think at the time it was, you know, six or 700 bucks, and you know, I think I think I ended up charging five or $6,000

Joel Brewer 5:42
Wow,

Joel Brewer 5:43
because I figure, you know, yeah, because I figure, you know, I can, I can probably make rent for a while here and make enough money. Looking back, I probably severely undercharged, but also I was junior, so you know,

Jim Beach 5:57
right? It all, it all worked out in the end. Yeah, $5,000 for your first gig, I think, is record breaking high. $5,000 for a social media network like Myspace is obviously a little bit low, but still I’m really impressed. You got 5000 for your first gig out of the box, that’s amazing. So, is that platform still up and running, or did they go the way of the dodo,

Joel Brewer 6:20
that yeah, that one, that one’s no longer running. They had a good run, though, for probably five or six years. I should, I should reach out to her and see, see what she’s up to these days.

Jim Beach 6:32
Yes, I have a lot of that to do as well. All right, so you’ve had one big success. How long until you started looking for your second, were you still building number one and marketing for number two?

Joel Brewer 6:45
I was, I was, yeah, I mean, I, I think when you’re in this business, you have to constantly be looking for the next gig, right? Is it if you wait until the end and the finish, then there’s going to be a pretty long gap, or there could be a pretty long gap. So, fortunately, I think I had the foresight. Yeah, so I started looking right away, and I landed a second gig. It was a real estate application. I don’t know, a few months into that one, that one also came through, came through Craigslist. So I definitely got some some early business through Craigslist, but like I said, that platform not so much anymore, but that’s some great, great early business through Craigslist.

Jim Beach 7:27
That is, maybe you should go and revisit and see if it still works.

Joel Brewer 7:30
I probably should. I really should.

Jim Beach 7:33
So, so you were cash flow positive also from the beginning, you didn’t need to go raise investors or get any outside money, correct?

Joel Brewer 7:43
I didn’t know. Yeah, it’s.. it’s all been.. it’s all been bootstrapped. Yeah,

Jim Beach 7:46
very impressive. So, you still own 100%

Joel Brewer 7:50
I do. I do.

Jim Beach 7:51
Wow, that’s very impressive. Yeah, you.. they have a word for that.

Joel Brewer 7:55
Yeah,

Jim Beach 7:56
yeah. Do you not know what that word

Joel Brewer 7:59
is? Bootstrap is another word,

Joel Brewer 8:01
bootstrapped, like you, and are now 14 years later, milial.

Joel Brewer 8:06
No, yes, yeah,

Jim Beach 8:09
that’s really impressive, Joel. You’ve done it 100% right. I love it. And so, when did

Joel Brewer 8:15
it.. doesn’t always feel that way, right? But yeah,

Jim Beach 8:17
sorry, say that again. I missed

Joel Brewer 8:19
you. No, I was.. it doesn’t always feel that way in the moment, right? You’re doing it all right, but

Jim Beach 8:23
in retrospect, you do damn well. So,

Joel Brewer 8:25
right, I appreciate that. When did

Jim Beach 8:26
you bring on your first temp employee? And then, when did you bring on your first permanent employee?

Joel Brewer 8:34
I thought I brought on my first temp employees three or four years into, do, into doing it solo, I brought on a couple, I brought on a few contract engineers to just, you know, help out with the with the workload. It really wasn’t until I think six, it was about six years in that I hired my first two full-time employees of and it’s funny, I kind of, I kind of sailed up. I had about 1010, employees three or four years ago, full-time employees, and now I’ve transitioned the model a bit to be more less full-time employees and more contractors and contract employees, but probably still about 10 folks strong.

Jim Beach 9:24
What’s the advantage of having contractors versus full-time employees? And you’re hiring right now, too, aren’t you?

Joel Brewer 9:31
We are. Yeah, we are. We’re always looking. We’re always looking. Yeah, we’re always looking for programmers. We’re also always looking for designers. We’re always looking for good project managers, actually looking for a good salesperson too. Yeah,

Jim Beach 9:45
okay,

Joel Brewer 9:47
yeah. I think if your listeners are interested, we’d love to, would love to chat. Sorry, your question. Oh, the benefits,

Jim Beach 9:55
the decision between temp and permanent

Joel Brewer 9:58
flexibility, flexibility. I know projects come and projects come and go. We can, we can, you know, land a big project that might, you know, a big mobile app project, right, that we build for six months, and then, you know, once we finish it, you know, it’s, you know, maybe we go into a maintenance plan, but it’s significantly less. So, there’s just, there’s a lot of flexibility, a lot of flexibility that we gain through working with with our contractors.

Jim Beach 10:27
All right, are your temp employees American, or do you hire overseas? What are your thoughts on the different international help that your industry specific can hire?

Joel Brewer 10:39
Yeah, we, I’ve made a decision to really, to really lean into American, American-based folks. I know they, you know, folks here are a little bit more expensive, but I’ve, I’ve always focused on communication being like the number one killer of projects, but also, you know, the number one kind of predictor of success, and I’ve just found it easier to do that, you know, with folks that are here. That being said, we’ve also seen some success with, you know, with Latin America, with time zone overlap, so we’ll use some folks down there occasionally, but the vast majority of our folks are US-based.

Jim Beach 11:18
I think your customers like that. Do you brag about that, is that one of your selling points? I wouldn’t be selling points.

Joel Brewer 11:25
We do, we absolutely do. Yeah, yeah. Again, we’re not, you know, we’re not for everyone. You know, if someone is trying to do it super, super, super cheap on a budget, again, you pay a little more. But one of the big things that we’ve been talking about, too, is this like slow down before you seed up, like especially with these tools with AI, like you can move really, really fast, but you have to know where you’re headed, and to know where you’re headed, you have to, you know, you have to communicate, and you have to, you have to figure it out with your team, so we’ve kind of leaned into that,

Jim Beach 12:03
all right. That makes a lot of sense. And what about flex hours and things like that? Your HR policies, do you require people to be at the office? Do you care when they work, if they do all of their work at four in the morning until eight in the morning? Are you okay with that? Talk to you about your HR policies.

Joel Brewer 12:24
Yeah, yeah, it’s a good question. So, with our contractors, let’s definitely.. we don’t.. we don’t care. Yeah, yeah, obviously. I mean, I don’t even know if legally right in demand that you know we do look for time zone overlap for our US-based folks, for the.. for the people that are, that are on our staff, you know, full time, we do ask for, you know, kind of standard hours. We typically work like eight to five, and again, that’s it’s so that we’re available to communicate with the clients, right? So, if you’re in kind of a certainly, if you’re in like a very client-facing role, we want people that are available to hop on a call with a client, you know, if they, if they message us at 1o’clock in the afternoon, 2o’clock in the afternoon, so that is something we look for. Absolutely, but, but we’re, we are, we are flexible folks, we’ve got a flexible time off policy, so lots of flexibility, but, but we certainly look for availability to communicate with clients,

Jim Beach 13:21
yeah, it makes a huge difference. I don’t like these policies. We’ll, we’ll get it by 5pm then that means tomorrow, you know. So, and what about finances and marketing today? Today, what kind of a formalized marketing plan. Do you use

Joel Brewer 13:44
so well? We’re still, still figuring some of that out, you know. I am a software developer. I’m not a not a marketer. I’m trying to get better at it, but we’re using, we’re running some things on LinkedIn, so we’re running some LinkedIn ads. We are doing some email marketing, and then I’m also doing some, some podcasting, and some, and some guesting on on podcasts. So, we’ve got a few different, few different areas there, but I’m open to open to feedback. If you have any thoughts there on what you’ve seen, you know, similar companies have had success in, I’m curious.

Jim Beach 14:22
Unfortunately, the mix that you just mentioned is probably what I would recommend. Heavy on LinkedIn, I will be a little bit shoot my own industry. I don’t think you’re going to sell as much off a podcast as you hope you will, unless you have your own show, you know. I think that you need to have your own show to really make a difference in terms of podcast selling. You want to jump in? You sounded

Jim Beach 14:51
no, no. Yeah, I was just agreeing. Yeah,

Jim Beach 14:53
yeah. So, if you want to start your own podcast, that would probably be the number one recommendation, um. But you know, that’s a huge commitment. Do you have a formula for how much money you commit to marketing every year? Is it 10% or do you pay that much attention to it? Do you have a goal for what ratio you want it to be to sales or something?

Joel Brewer 15:16
You know, I think it’s that’s a good question. No, I probably should be right around like the five to 10% I would think that’s a number that I should look at as a percentage of revenue. Right,

Jim Beach 15:26
right, yeah, I would think so. That’s the average. So, you know, sounds like you’re probably doing a little bit less to grow, so that would be very exciting. I think

Joel Brewer 15:38
I think so. I think you’re.

Jim Beach 15:39
I know you’ve done something really cool with mobile apps. What’s.. you’ve got a new thing out with mobile apps? Tell me about that.

Joel Brewer 15:48
Yeah, yeah, so yeah, so we’re offering this thing called the Mobile App Blueprint, where it will basically work with you, help you define, you know, who is the mobile app for what’s the smallest useful version? How will we measure success? It’s basically this package for kind of thinking through, all right, what does this mobile app look like? And then included in that, we’ll actually work with the work with you to design the first version of your app as well, yeah, and we’re offering to your listeners at School for Startups. We’re actually offering a $200 Amazon gift card in exchange just for feedback on the mobile app blueprint. Again, this is we’ve been building mobile apps for a long time, but we’re really trying to kind of figure out this blueprint, so yeah, they can post and learn more about it at Brewer digital.com/school

Jim Beach 16:48
Okay, awesome. Thank you. We will post that up as well. Is AI changing the business, Joel? Are you, what would happen

Joel Brewer 16:59
if I

Jim Beach 17:00
snuck off to the side and did my project for the week, totally AI, and then submitted it to you. What are your thoughts on the whole AI, especially because you know some AI is devoted to computer programming and does it very, very, very well.

Joel Brewer 17:14
It does well, I think we’re all in, well, sort of all in, we’re mostly in on AI. We use it all the time. I think where we’re at now is that you still have to keep a close eye on AI, right? So, whether I’m programming like normal, quote unquote, right, without AI, or I’m programming with AI, I’m still sitting in front of a computer, I’m still typing into it, whether I’m typing in English or whether I’m typing in code, I’m still there, sitting in front of that computer, and it still requires someone you know to use it. So I kind of think that our team is well positioned. You probably don’t, you may not need as many engineers, right? You maybe just need one or two, you know, senior folks to build something really cool, but I don’t know, we’re seeing it change the game. I don’t think we’re seeing like the demise of software development anytime, certainly anytime soon. And again, maybe, maybe it happens, but from what we’re seeing, we’re actually seeing more work than we’ve seen in the past, so

Jim Beach 18:22
in the second part of my question was, if I turned in submitted AI written code, would I get fired?

Joel Brewer 18:30
You wouldn’t get fired. We, we do, we do review it, and so we’ve got kind of a rigorous QA process, and we require our engineers to go through the QA process as well. So, ultimately, if you’re using AI to write your code, you’re, we’re still going to hold you responsible, right, for the for the code that you wrote, whether, whether you hand wrote it or used AI. So, to the extent that you can, you can understand it, that it’s still secure code, that it still functions correctly, that you know that you’ve tested it, that you’ve, you know, that you’ve done all the things that you would do, regardless of how it’s written. Yeah, we encourage the use of AI again, with the understanding that ultimately, if you’re the one writing it, and you’re the one signing off on it as well.

Jim Beach 19:23
Sure. Okay, I like that. That’s a reasonable policy that makes sense for sure. I

Joel Brewer 19:31
think so. I think so.

Jim Beach 19:34
Yes. Well, wouldn’t it be? I mean, you would write little chunks, right, like a little sprint or something. Do you all use sprints and all the agile and things like that?

Joel Brewer 19:44
We do, we do, we typically, yeah, it depends. Yeah, some of that, some of that has changed a little bit. We, we these days, we probably do more of like a Kanban approach. Right, where we keep, we keep the board, and we keep track of like what’s in progress, and kind of continuously move through it, versus like a strict, a real strict agile, but I’ve gone back and forth on that. But you were saying about the code, writing it in chunks, yeah, I think that that’s absolutely, absolutely correct. You want to write it in chunks that you can, that you can understand, right, right, right, which has always been the way that you’ve written code, I think, or the always in the way that people should write good code is in chunks and modules, so yeah, I think AI enables you to write it a little bit faster and probably at a slightly higher level of abstraction as well, but still to dig in and understand what’s going on, especially if something goes wrong.

Jim Beach 20:48
Yes, very true. What’s your competitive advantage, Joel? Why do I hire you and not the other guy?

Joel Brewer 20:56
Yeah, I mean, I think I think we found two things: one, the US-based team, I think it’s a big advantage. Two on the mobile apps, we’ve done it a lot, right? We’ve written a lot of mobile apps that have, that have gone on and have been successful. So, I think the track record. So, I would say folks would hire us for, you know, the expertise, and then the focus on communication. Yeah,

Jim Beach 21:20
excellent. Well, those are two things that I would buy on based on that, for sure. So, what’s your goal for the future, Joel? Are you trying to aggressively grow, or do you want to maintain it? What are your thoughts on doubling in size in the next five years? Is that something you want?

Joel Brewer 21:39
I would love to. Yeah, I’d love to get, I’d love to get larger. I think some.. I think there’s a bit of stability that comes with.. well, I have this opinion, I guess, that there’s a bit of stability that comes with being larger and being able to just get even better, I think, at building out these mobile apps. Right, we can further and further specialize. So, I’d like to become like a nice, yeah, nice and specialized with all the different specialists and kind of various components of that, but no growth is growth is 100% our plan right now.

Jim Beach 22:14
All right, well, Joel, you’ve done it very well so far. I’m very impressed. Absolutely perfect, so I mean, you get a nice list from

Joel Brewer 22:24
us. Perfect, I’ll take it.

Jim Beach 22:26
Yes. Do we want to do the.. is now the time for the quick 10, or is that later time for the quick 10?

Joel Brewer 22:32
All right,

Joel Brewer 22:32
all right,

Joel Brewer 22:33
all

Joel Brewer 22:34
right.

Joel Brewer 22:34
Yeah, absolutely.

Jim Beach 22:35
Colorado law requires me to ask, are you currently sober?

Joel Brewer 22:39
I am currently sober. Yes, I’m drinking coffee, but sneak a little amaretto in my coffee here. Yeah,

Jim Beach 22:48
okay. Do you want to accept the standard wager?

Joel Brewer 22:53
What is the standard wager?

Jim Beach 22:54
The bet that everyone else made.

Joel Brewer 22:56
Yes, I will accept that. Yes,

Jim Beach 22:58
here we go. Number one, your favorite creativity hack,

Joel Brewer 23:02
I’d say go in for a run.

Jim Beach 23:05
Number two, favorite bootstrapping trick:

Joel Brewer 23:09
start talking to the people in your network already.

Jim Beach 23:12
Number three, name your top passions,

Joel Brewer 23:15
say family, business, running, reading, and being outdoors.

Jim Beach 23:23
Number four, the first three steps in starting a business are

Joel Brewer 23:28
I’d say, identify your customers, identify your product, and have some runways.

Jim Beach 23:37
Number five, the best way to get your first real customer is Craigslist.

Joel Brewer 23:42
Craigslist, yeah. or talking to people you already know.

Jim Beach 23:46
Number six, your dreamiest technology is

Joel Brewer 23:51
commercial space flight.

Jim Beach 23:53
Number seven, best entrepreneurial advice.

Joel Brewer 23:57
Just don’t stop.

Jim Beach 23:59
Number eight, worst entrepreneurial mistake

Joel Brewer 24:03
questions for your mistake, running out of cash.

Jim Beach 24:07
Number nine, favorite entrepreneur, and why I

Joel Brewer 24:11
would say Charlie Munger

Joel Brewer 24:12
for

Joel Brewer 24:13
his wisdom.

Jim Beach 24:13
Off the.. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten that one. He’s Warren Buffett’s number two, right?

Joel Brewer 24:19
Number two, yeah, yeah,

Jim Beach 24:21
all right. And number 10, favorite superhero

Joel Brewer 24:26
with Iron Man,

Jim Beach 24:28
good choices. While we find out more or calculate the score and find out the winner, how do we get in touch with you, find out more about you, hire you to build us an incredible app?

Joel Brewer 24:38
Yeah, yeah, so we’ve got a landing page for your listeners, built out at Brewer digital.com/school so I’d say go there, there, all of our information is there, also on that $200 gift card, in exchange for feedback on our mobile app blueprint, and then also folks can find me on LinkedIn, so Joel Brewer,

Jim Beach 24:58
fantastic, Joel, I. Oh, Joel, I’m so sorry for you. I just got your score. Oh, I’m so disappointed for you. You got a 94 which is an excellent score, but you’ve got a 95 to win. So, unfortunately, you lose the wager and owe us a Tesla. We always play for a Tesla. All

Joel Brewer 25:13
right, all right. All right, yeah, I’ll ship it out here shortly.

Jim Beach 25:19
Thank you, Joel. Amazing job. Thank you for being with us. Great stuff, great interview, and we’d love to have you back.

Joel Brewer 25:26
Excellent, thanks so much, Jim.

Jim Beach 25:28
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. Very excited to introduce another great guest. Please welcome Dr. Dusty Hess to the show. He is all about realigning health back to God’s design, very interesting in today’s world. He is a faith-based speaker and talks about functional medicine, family health, and God’s design for wellness. He is also the founder of Upstream health.com Dr. Hess, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Dusty Hess 26:11
Doing great, Jim. Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be here.

Jim Beach 26:14
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much. Why do we have so many chronic diseases?

Dusty Hess 26:21
You know, there’s so many different reasons for that, Jim. I mean, a lot of people, they come up with conspiracy theories about how the healthcare system is trying to keep them sick, and this, that, and the other, but quite honestly, you know, our environment, behavior, and lifestyles are completely different now than they were 100 years ago. You know, and so if we also take the same kind of acute base model of healthcare, and we serve that chronic disease with that model. We’re not going to get a good outcome. So, really, the awareness that people are starting to come to is realizing they’re going to have to actually step out of the environment that they’ve created for themselves to be able to get healthier from the inside out. That might need to be some more comprehensive testing, some different leadership, and their own ability to say enough is enough. I’m going to play a role in my own healthcare.

Jim Beach 27:05
I love that. I love that. Are the medical companies, the drug companies, spending as much money on maintenance drugs or solving the problem drugs?

Dusty Hess 27:19
Yeah, that’s a great question. I think that it’s not necessarily the drug company’s job of getting us healthy, right? So, that should be number one. It should be, I mean, if we’re talking to startups and we’re talking to CEOs and founders of companies, your number one goal is to take care of yourself, so that you can be able to lead and impact the world this side of eternity. And so, if you are not giving yourself enough influence and being able to listen to your own health and taking up that that overall responsibility, and you’re waiting for the next drug to be able to keep you alive, you’re in trouble already. So, the, you know, we can lean on drugs and acute based models, and for times and crises and surgeries and acute care medicine, I mean, this is crucial. We shouldn’t demonize them, really. We should just help define and understand what our role within healthcare is, and so we can celebrate when new drugs come on the market, and they can help with different things, but we also have to realize what do we have to play in this. What are some environmental things that might be messing with my insulin, or my cortisol, or my APO B risk, and my cardiovascular risk. Some of these kind of things are the responsibility of the individuals, and we have to be able to help define where the pharmaceutical companies and the drugs lie, and whether or not that’s going to be the best first option for me in the current moment,

Jim Beach 28:42
all right, is my traditional Duke-trained doctor capable of handling the world today with all of these other issues going on, and other medicine solutions that maybe are not mainstream. Do we, is mainstream doctoring part of the problem,

Dusty Hess 29:02
that is a great question, Jim, and you know, curious why you even said Duke trained, you know, I’m actually might be speaking down there at Drake this next year, you know, when we’re looking at a trained doctor, we’re looking at any other profession that’s really being trained, so we have a certain curriculum, you know, whether you’re a plumber or whether you’re a podcast host or whatever, you’re going to be trained a certain way to be able to provide a certain service, and so when we’re looking at a Duke-trained, you know, healthcare provider in an acute care model like that, they’re going to be trained to provide a certain service. Now, in that service, if they’re not trained to take care of chronic disease, if they’re trained as more of a specialist for an acute care condition, let’s say a neurologist or a cardiologist or a gastroenterologist, they’re going to be focusing on things that are. Broken very specifically to an organ system, right. And so, when we’re dealing with chronic disease, we don’t want the specialist to be focusing on the chronic disease, we want more of a generalist, because chronic disease includes multiple different organ systems, not just one organ system. So, but if you put the chronic disease model and you have a generalist, and then you have a brain tumor. You don’t want to go to a generalist, you want to go to a specialist, right, Jim? So, like, that’s the whole point. So, when, when, as long as we are training doctors to do what they’re designed to do, and then we work together and collaborate with other types of doctors to help serve people’s needs, that should be the end goal, right?

Jim Beach 30:41
Yes, but all of those interconnections very rarely seem to happen or to be very effective. I have multiple conditions, and I don’t think that my doctors talk ever, you know. I’ve asked, will this impact my others, and they don’t know, and it seems like also that their primary way of dealing with that is to send you to someone else. Well, you need to see a specialist, you know, and then the neurologist, you know, they’re not necessarily going to give you an answer that works with all of the other systems and doctors and stuff. I just, I’m just incredibly frustrated with the whole system, and feel like it’s dramatically broken.

Dusty Hess 31:26
Yeah, and you’re not alone. You’re absolutely not alone. I think that this frustration is shared by millions of people, not just in the United States, but across the globe, and irregardless of governmental structure, and you know, shared healthcare, and this out of the other, I think there’s a lot of people that feel disenfranchised. We need a better job of communicating healthcare. We need a better job of banding together to put the patient first, or the member first, or the client first, and that’s where we start. So, if we see their needs and spend enough time to get to know them to how we can actually serve them. That’s going to be the difference in healthcare, I think. The biggest what you’re feeling is you’re walking into an acute care system and they’re trying to stop the bleeding, and they don’t really – they’re not really getting to know you well enough to figure out what are the driving factors to why you ended up there in the first place, much less did you not really have too many options to begin with, Jim, to really find other leadership that’s out there to be able to provide you with a different model, and whether or not you were even interested in changing your environmental behavior and lifestyle patterns to be able to mitigate that stuff, and so I think that the future is very bright. I’d like to end this on a note that the future is really, really bright, even though we’re, we have to walk through the struggles to get to the triumphs, and I think a lot of people like you are walking through the struggles to get to the triumphs, where we’re in a system that is really built to stop the bleeding, but we’re wondering how we got there in the first place, and through that, the communication from doctors to other types of doctors that are taking care of chronic disease is, we want to stop the bleeding, but then we want to pass the baton and work with other doctors that help really get people healthy from the inside out, and that’s where collaboration happens, that’s where you start seeing other metrics and other leadership and other communication that allows for you to work with specialists that are stopping the bleeding, but then also working with doctors that are figuring out why you might end up with, let’s say, calcification within your arteries or within other parts of your body, you know, and that’s those things happen over time, and if you wait until the point where they become massive issues, and wait for the acute care model to step in. You’re not really going to like the outcome of the quantity of years might increase, but the quality of years are really going to start diminishing on you. Jim,

Jim Beach 33:54
have you heard of these people? There’s one guy in particular out in California who made a bunch of money, and now he’s devoted to living forever, and he has a team of 10 doctors that take care of him every single day to make him live forever, and he claims that his skin is the same skin as an 18 year old, and he measures his erections at night, and all this. Have you heard about this guy?

Dusty Hess 34:14
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah,

Jim Beach 34:16
what do you think?

Dusty Hess 34:18
Yeah, so I mean, this is what this is why this type of health care is what really makes kind of someone like me stand out, you know. When I talk about the cultural war on health, is when you start to get into longevity, when you start to get into actually getting somebody healthy from the inside out, and looking at a various degree of biomarkers, and just really helping somebody stay healthy, that can go as far as you want it, as far as what you’re talking about. This individual that is trying to stay alive as long as possible, try to even reverse aging. And then you have someone like me that just has a totally different culture in the way that I approach life, and I might not share. Share this with everybody. I mean, people have different cultures, and they have different beliefs upset. I’m Christian, and so, as a Christian doctor of functional medicine, I look and view the world from a different perspective. You know, I see this side of eternity, and I see the next side of eternity. And so, as I’m looking at healthcare in the form of trying to steward somebody’s body to better health from the inside out. Really, what I’m trying to do is just help them with stewardship. It’s not about staying alive as long as possible and trying to, you know, get as many days out of this side of eternity as possible. What it really is, is like, hey, you know, you’re working really hard to change your diet, get some movement and some exercise in there, really working on your stress, your sleep, you know, really making sure that you’re just taking care of the gift that God’s given you. How do you do that with good stewardship? And where is the line between that and really throwing a whole mess of money at the wall to stay alive as long as possible? And that’s the experience that you see with this gentleman, where he is just trying to do whatever he can to stay alive as long as possible, to really just kind of squeeze out as many years as he possibly can, versus just stewarding health well.

Jim Beach 36:16
What do we all need to do to get in better health? What are some of the universal mistakes we’re making.

Dusty Hess 36:23
I’d say number one is realizing that you play a role in your own health. If you, if you see yourself as not playing a role in your own health, and you’re leaning on your health insurance to get you healthy, you’ve, you’ve already lost. So number one is making sure that you’re playing a role, and then get leadership that’s helping you actually figure out whether you are healthy from the inside out, and that’s where it’s so important that you find somebody that you know, like, and trust, that’s going to lead you in a way that will allow for you to steward your body in a way that is honorable to your belief subset, and if you want to stay alive as long as possible, like this gentleman that you were talking about, then get leadership like his leadership, and you’re going to find that you can throw a lot of money at the wall, and you can actually live longer, you know. You know, irregardless whether or not you know something dramatic happens, and you’re out of your control, and you’re going to be taken tomorrow. You know, we can’t control any of that. God can. God is the only one that really controls that. So, or you really come back to the playing field of getting enough information to realize if you are going to pay for something or do something or change your environment, behavior, and lifestyle, that it’s actually getting you healthy from the inside out, and that’s what’s so important, not just the leadership, but then also getting the proper testing to ensure that what you’re doing is actually making the difference that you’re trying to make.

Jim Beach 37:50
So, we haven’t mentioned religion, this you just brought up God. How does God play into my health?

Dusty Hess 37:58
You know, if you think about healthcare in general, and if we play a role in that healthcare, what really guides our decisions? So, you were talking about this gentleman, and something guides his decisions. Well, he just wants to stay alive as long as possible. He wants to enjoy the world and all the pleasures that it gives of it, and so he’s going to sacrifice and make different habits to make that happen. Now, that might be for you know, to get famous or whatever he wants, and whatever his priorities are, you know. But the way that we look at it is very simple. When we’re looking at a belief subset, whether that’s Christian or the belief in God, or whatever your culture is, it’s going to be built off of a foundation of beliefs, and those beliefs will shape your values, and your values will really shape your prioritizations, and those prioritizations are going to shape what you spend your time on, and what you spend your time on is really going to ultimately result on what kind of habits you’re making, and what kind of impact that’s going to make, and that right there is the framework for healthcare. I say, if you’re going to make a sacrifice, listen, Jim, there’s a ridiculous amount of very pleasurable items out there. There’s there’s technology that’s going to make that food taste amazing, that candy taste amazing. They’re going to, they have different devices that keeps you from having to feel uncomfortable or make you feel very pleasurable in multiple facets of life, and a lot of those things that feel good, that taste good, aren’t necessarily that great for you. So, if you’re just in it to just experience and have a great time, you’re probably going to get yourself in trouble, but if you’re going to say no to something that tastes good, you better have a good reason why not to, and that’s really where I share a certain belief subset with people that can really align with understanding that, hey, this isn’t really a good stewardship piece to my body, and that alignment within that cultural design really allows for them to understand why. Either saying no to certain things, maybe limiting screen time or changing the different environment around for their family, so that they have better chance for their kids to be able to have children in the future, so that they can actually have more generation or transgenerational health. These sacrifices come with a belief subset that really helps them understand why or why not

Jim Beach 40:25
excellent information, and tell us about the business, and how you make money there. Upstream health,

Dusty Hess 40:36
yeah, upstreamhealth.com is very simple, it’s a health membership for Christian families to help them get healthy from the inside out. We pair them with the leadership to be able to allow for them to understand what what needs to be done to be able to help steward their bodies and get healthy from the inside out. We also provide comprehensive blood labs, and we screen for chronic disease, and we help Christian families, Christian CEOs, pastors, missionaries out in the field to get healthy from the inside out, so they can serve better and longer behind the pulpit and in the field.

Jim Beach 41:11
Excellent. I love it. Is that nationwide, or do you have to be in California for that?

Dusty Hess 41:16
Yes. So, nationwide, there are certain states that don’t play well with comprehensive labs and specialty labs, so looking at, like, New York, Rhode Island, New Jersey, those kind of that area up there isn’t very friendly for that, and if you’re a missionary out in the field, you just come back to the state, stateside to get your blood labs done. Outside of that, we, we are all online, so we communicate with people all across the globe, and we pair them with a health coach, we pair them with functional provider, and we just help really allow for them to navigate this side of eternity with all the distractions of environmental behavior or lifestyle factors that pull that is pulling them away from transgenerational health and really helping give them the leadership to be able to stay healthy, not negating the acute care model, not taking them away from their PCP or anything like that. It’s really knowing where acute care shines, and then helping them in the area of chronic disease to avoid it up front, so they’re not waiting to address it later on in life. We want their end of their years to be quality years, right? We want the end of, we want 1015 years at the end, where you feel like you can still play with your grandkids, you still have your cognitive abilities, you still have your energy, and there might be maybe one or two years towards the end of your life where things start to just age and go downhill, you know, where a lot of people these days, you are looking at like 15 years or 20 years of chronic pain and chronic disease, and what I’m saying is we don’t have to choose that.

Jim Beach 42:50
Fantastic, Dr. Hess. How do we find out more? Follow you online, get in touch.

Dusty Hess 42:55
Yeah, you can go to Upstream health.com it’s super simple, Upstream health.com You could also find us on Instagram at Upstream Health Hub, you get a lot of great information there, and reach out. I mean, we love to just communicate with people if you’re interested in what we’re doing, if you’re interested in partnering with us, if you’re interested in getting us out for some public speaking, and really just bring awareness onto this topic of getting people healthy from the inside out. Just reach out to us directly at Upstream health.com

Jim Beach 43:24
Fantastic, Dr. Dusty Hess. Thank you so much for being with us, and we’d love to have you back. Thanks a lot.

Dusty Hess 43:30
Thank you so much, Jim.

Jim Beach 43:31
And we’ll be right back.

Dusty Hess 43:32
Bye, bye, bye.

Jim Beach 43:42
We are back, and again, thank you so very much for being with us. You know, all of us entrepreneurs have a lot of decisions to make. Do we work at home? Do we go to the office? What do we do? But there are so many considerations, and there are new considerations, and I really glad that I work at home, because of gas prices. I’m not spending all of that money going downtown, I’m working at home, like so many of us are, and saving a little bit of gas, but we need to talk about it as a bigger issue, and talk about how other entrepreneurs are facing it. So, I’m excited to welcome someone from Ford Motor Company who can help talk about small businesses and the effect that all of the economic turmoil is having on us. Please welcome Matt Atkinson. He’s the executive director of North American sales and operations for Ford Pro. He’s been with the company for about 20 years. Matt, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Matt Atkenson 44:35
I’m doing great, Jim. Thank you for having me.

Jim Beach 44:37
What is Ford Pro?

Matt Atkenson 44:40
Yeah, I’m glad you asked. You know, Ford Pro started about five years ago, but it’s really our complete and total focus on the commercial industry and leaning into our strength there and our long heritage for supporting small business, especially. It’s so fitting that I get to talk to you this month during National. Small Business Month, and our focus is helping making sure the country is up and running with the vehicles that they have come to love and trust over many, many decades. And Ford Pro is meant to accentuate that.

Jim Beach 45:12
Matt, one of my favorite statistics in the world is describing millionaires, and you would think that a millionaire would drive a Rolls Royce or Maybach or something like that. The number one car that millionaires drive in the United States is.. what do you know, Matt?

Matt Atkenson 45:28
I don’t.. I don’t know. You’re gonna tell me

Jim Beach 45:30
truck. I love it. I love it. Your Ford f1 50 is the number one car driven by millionaires in the United States, and it says a lot about the versatility of the 150 I mean, that’s your bread and butter, is that 150 isn’t

Matt Atkenson 45:46
it?

Matt Atkenson 45:47
Well, you’re right, and you know our truck portfolio from f1 50 to Super Duty, but even to our commercial fans that are the focus of Ford Pro, you know, it is, it is, whether you’re millionaires or you’re one of the 95 million skilled labor jobs that are represented across the country, in, you know, in any one of the 3 million businesses that they work in, driving $12 trillion of GDP for the country. You know, customers need and rely on their vehicles, regardless of what their use is, and we’re very proud that small business, especially, chooses four trucks and vans more than any other brand, and honestly, in respect to appreciating what those customers do for us and for the country, that’s why we’ve announced our newest campaign, as I’m sure you’ve seen, but this month we announced our employee pricing from our business to yours campaign, where small businesses can take advantage of employee pricing, same price that I, as an employee, would get. They can take advantage of that during the months of May and June and help provide some consistency when you know small businesses are facing challenges today.

Jim Beach 46:55
What are some of the other things that small businesses can do to fight back on the oil prices, the gas prices. What are some other things that we can do?

Matt Atkenson 47:04
Yeah, well, you know, it always begins with the vehicle, as far as we’re concerned. And I think that consistent and transparent price to help manage costs matters to small business, and is why we were so proud to announce a campaign like this, but even more than that, you know, pro in our view stands for productivity and ensuring that these vehicles stay on the road and are committed to serving the vocations, the jobs, the communities that they represent really matters to these businesses. It matters to our country. When a vehicle is down for any reason, you know that is lost revenue, lost opportunity, that, that, that, without it, is will fail to keep the country moving forward. And our commitment, along with our dealer body, to invest in a service network that can respond to whatever their needs might be, and get those vehicles back on the road, is something that small business should, should take a lot of pride and comfort in, because as they face, as they face different challenges, wherever they may come from, knowing that they have a trusted and reliable vehicle to meet their needs at the right time when they need it matters the most.

Jim Beach 48:16
Matt, what are your thoughts on the electric cars and trucks? The sales have not been what we thought they were going to be, and it didn’t take off the way we thought. What are your thoughts on the electric cars and trucks?

Matt Atkenson 48:29
Yeah, well, look, we remain committed to the electric vehicle business. One of the things I’m sure you and your viewers have read about or listened to is our investment in Louisville, where our next UAV platform, where we’re going to have, or it’s going to start with an electric pickup that we think is going to meet where demand currently sits in the EV business, but, but even more than just any one specific powertrain, you know, one of the things at Ford Pro that we’re really proud to offer to customers is what we call the power of choice, so that could be electric vehicles for the right businesses that fits their needs, but it’s gas, it’s plug-in, it’s hybrid, and it’s diesel that you know we feel like we’ve got the very best portfolio to meet the needs of whatever customers might need. It’s one of the reasons why, again, small business trusts the Ford brand more than any other, but it’s also why we’ve been the leader in this space, in the commercial space, for the last 41 consecutive years, is because we’ve got these options that customers need and value, and we’ll be there for them no matter where segmentation starts to weave and turn.

Jim Beach 49:32
What are some of the biggest operational challenges you’re seeing across all industry right now?

Matt Atkenson 49:38
Yeah, I think what, what, what businesses, small and large, are just trying to find is how do we, how do we help them identify where they can be most efficient within the areas that they can control, and it’s one of the reasons why we’ve doubled down on our investment in our software solutions and leveraging the telematics and other data that we get from. Modems inside the vehicles to help companies more proactively manage the concerns that they might have with their fleet, getting out in front of issues, scheduling service, being able to analyze when repairs may be needed, so that that they can get back on the road being faster, and and they’re very anxious to learn more about these about these opportunities, and we’re so very proud that you know our teams and our dealer network can help guide them through these situations with the very best tools and resources that are there on the market, and we think that in combination with our tried and true vehicle portfolio is one of the reasons why we think we can, we can help small business uniquely in a uniquely forward way,

Jim Beach 50:42
I saw an article the other day in the paper that Home Depot is announcing that their stores are slowing down, they’re not seeing as much foot traffic, and that they think that’s an indicator of the economy to come. And can you at Ford look at

Matt Atkenson 50:57
sales

Jim Beach 50:58
and discern broader economic trends from that. Your sales indicate where the economy is going to be in six months.

Matt Atkenson 51:07
Yeah, there’s no question. And first off, Home Depot is a great partner and a great customer of ours, but you know, if when trucks and vans are selling, it usually will mean that the base of the economy is operating really strongly, and you know, fuel prices and other, you know, commodity factors are, you know, are making headlines today, but we overall, we’re still seeing a very strong industry. You saw our first quarter earnings, which came out really strong. We even raised our guidance for the year, so you know, we’re going to, we’re gonna keep a very close eye on the different macro, macroeconomic trends that are out there, whether it’s, you know, housing starts or some of the other factors that you had had indicated, but for the time being, you know, our bet is on the American worker, our bet is on small business, and we just felt like this was the right time with this promotion by offering employee pricing to thank them for all that they do and all that they’re going through, and that they can continue to trust Ford for whatever their needs might be.

Jim Beach 52:07
Do you think that President Trump announcing that they’re not going to collect the federal income or the federal tax on gasoline sales will help?

Matt Atkenson 52:19
So, what I know from small business is that they watched their costs relentlessly, and any, any opportunity they have to invest back in their business, their employees, their customers, is going to be good for the economy. And we’ve worked really closely with the administration on different policy, and we’re going to look forward to doing that in the future.

Jim Beach 52:39
All right. Excellent. We need to wrap it up. I’m afraid, Matt. I want to say one thing personal, though. Will you pass this on? We don’t want these subscription models for our cars, you know, where you buy the car and then there’s another subscription model to get the air conditioning or something like that. I’ve seen BMW and a lot of the other Europeans or European automakers are coming out with these subscription models. Tesla, of course, has it. We don’t want that as consumers. Will you tell the rest of Ford for us, please?

Matt Atkenson 53:09
You got it. You know, at Ford, we have built our 120 plus year reputation by listening to customers, and that is not stopping anytime soon.

Jim Beach 53:18
How do we find out more? Follow you online, get in touch.

Matt Atkenson 53:20
Yeah, follow online, but especially go to Ford Pro or ford.com and where they can get more information on our promotion and learn much more about the vehicle portfolio and the software solutions I talked about earlier.

Jim Beach 53:33
Fantastic, Matt Atkinson. Thank you so very much for being with us. And Godspeed to you and Ford.

Speaker 7 53:38
Thanks for having me.

Jim Beach 53:40
You are very welcome. We are out of time for today, but you know what we do. That’s right. We come back tomorrow with more great school for startups radio. Go make a million dollars. Bye now.