[MUSIC] >> Welcome to Category Visionaries, the show dedicated to exploring exciting visions for the future from the founders or in the front lines building it. In each episode, we'll speak with a visionary founder who's building a new category or reimagining an existing one. We'll learn about the problem they solve, how their technology works, and unpack their vision for the future. I'm your host, Brett Stapper, CEO of Frontlines Media. Now, let's dive right into today's episode. [MUSIC] >> Hey everyone and welcome back to Category Visionaries. Today, we're speaking with Brock Leonti, CEO and co-founder of Prescribed Fit, an orthopedic care platform that's raised 15 million in funding. Brock, welcome to the show. >> Thank you, Brett. >> No problem, super excited to have you. Let's go ahead and jump right in. Talk to us about what you're building today. >> Sure thing, so we're building a platform that's proper for orthopedics to be able to administer lifestyle modifications to patients. When you look at a patient, they go in and they see the orthopedic surgeon, there's routine treatment items that are available to them, such as, or treatment pathways. They're usually based upon guideline-based treatments set by a national organization. Some of those treatments are just typical. These physical therapy, you have surgery as an option, you might do some bracing, there's injections, all sorts of things. For us, what we're doing is adding one to the mix that that national organization has long since talked about for decades, and that is lifestyle modification and weight loss for pain management, mobility improvement, and more. So it's a platform in which we work on that's based on software, a device. And then we have a team of people and we've kind of conjured up our secret sauce to be able to administer the program for the practice, but while keeping the physician involved. So that way everything is coordinated for the care of the patient and the experience that they have there at the practice. Now, just to help us visualize what this looks like in action, are there any like patient stories you could share or customer success stories that you could share just to help visualize it? Yeah, sure thing. So we consider our patients a little bit different than our customers, even though they are the heart of the company. And their success is the only success that truly matters in the program, right? So as you're getting care, I mean, you're patients, the one that needs to have the good experience and the good outcomes. So just to share one that was shared yesterday with us, this is a really recent one, a patient's name. And I can just say her first name, she had authorized us to do this, this is Adam Ease. And she started with us in the program and lost 174 pounds. And she really just saw herself struggling. She was kind of sitting on the sidelines. She wasn't available to do things with her family as she was, you know, way back when and she had to cancel plans often. So she really took some time with her coach, who's a clinician, Jolene, and went through the program and went from walking 10 to 20 steps a day and being completely out of breath to going to 5,000 steps and being able to eat three healthy meals and all of that. So there's a balance that we have for our patients. And one thing that I always like to say is just when you think about her story or the other stories of our patients, some of them have had a significant weight loss. We call other wins or outcomes, non-scale wins. In other words, they didn't lose weight necessarily to the tune that really had made a huge difference. But what they did was they helped increase water or they reduced stress or they helped sleep or those kind of things that really yield a better musculoskeletal stance. And that's what we're all about is really figuring out what works for our patients and what makes them healthier. Now, take us back to November 2017 and the founding of the company. What wasn't about this idea, this product, this company, this problem that made you say, yeah, that's it. I'm going to go spend the next six, seven, 10 years of my life building solution. Okay, I mean, I'd say that the aha moment for us, this moment that we really thought, okay, here's we have something. I was doing a hard workout for myself. I decided to start it in January. It just so happened to be that time. I had been working out beforehand, but this was truly a four hour a day workout, so two hours and two hours. I was in the gym most of the time. I took some time off work and had a successful exit for my first company and was there. I met the gym owners and he'd said, hey, there's this position that just came over and said, exercise is medicine and we want to bring in our patients to this gym just right next door and have them work out and have them really get healthy. That was the moment where we both thought, oh, man, this is like, there's something here. Why aren't we issuing daily doses of physical activity to people from their providers to be able to get healthy? Instead, we're using medications like metformin or other blood pressure medications that really don't yield that long term improvement in our health. So that was the moment where we're like, all right, there's something here. We need to uncover this. Where do we start? And we kind of started to look at what was available in the market. We surveyed some providers, patients, physical fitness, professionals, gyms, all of those things just to kind of get a good glimpse about what people were thinking, if anything, about some solution here in health care. How long do you spend in research mode and having those conversations? Yeah, right. So if you want me to peel back the onion a little bit. So we spent really a better part of a year and a half. And back then, I would have said six months. But I'd add a year to that because we actually took a product and we went out to sell it. And we built it, we sold it to these customers or tempted to at least. So we went into practices and sat down with physicians, actually over 100 practices and a few hundred physicians and said, all right, what do you think about this? Like we want to put your patients in the solution. You would identify the patient by maybe some improvements that they could make. You'd normally probably say something like, hey, you know, Sally, I want you to eat a little bit better. You've probably gained some weight just over the course of the six months or years since I've seen you. And exercising a little bit would be great. I have this program that'll help you get connected to those resources. And really, that's kind of where we started. But what we found out is that through really a very small number of physicians putting their patients in the solution, but a large number of physicians saying, hey, I really like this. And this is something that should be available. We just can't find a way to make it work. So that's why I add that year on to the six months that I would have said back then, because we took time then to really understand further what the customers wanted. We did a pivot in late 2019, launched it in early 2020. And that's really where our product stands today since then. And what we've had to do is the product on the patient experience and truly the provider experience hasn't changed much when it comes down to what we're doing and what we're treating. But when you look at how it's used and how we're implementing it, the onboarding of a patient, all of those things are things that we've added to help the practice manage the solution and manage the patient even better. At what point did you start to really feel like you were getting in traction with this new product? It was pretty much right away. I'll be on it in early 2020. I mean, and you might think, oh man, COVID, but really COVID helped boost us. It didn't necessarily in terms of sales, but in terms of acceptance in the market, it was a great advantage for us. And I'll kind of explain. So we launched in a local, we're here located in Columbus, Ohio, a local orthopedic practice around that's well known in the orthopedic community, pretty much across the US. They've just been really great in the way that they've done things. They do a lot of research. They're always the top thought leader in the market and their voice heard because they have well respect or good respect. So we launched there. The first patient went in and then COVID hit, shut us down. But we had that patient in the solution and that patient is on our website today. It's David Plummer on there and he did super well with us. And so he got all of our company attention and resources. It was kind of interesting for him to be able to have that. So as we took that, we then built the product and continued to iterate on it. And that's when we kind of really knew, all right, as soon as COVID led up from the shutdown and the practices were operating again, more patients came in. We found the same success and it just kept going. So at that point, it was a little bit slow to pick up on in terms of operating or obtaining new practices, but in the current practice, I mean, we had patients coming in to the solution where they were finding great success. So it really kind of allowed us to pull the product in the right way. And then it focused the industry on digital health as an optimal solution for patient care, whereas before orthopedics, you know, it's knocking on a knee. I mean, you're literally taking a drilling into someone's knee or touching it, figuring out what's wrong with their hip or those kinds of things like now they've realized, okay, there is an option here for digital health in our industry and specialty. And what about from a kind of ICP perspective, who are you typically selling this to? Is it the practice owner themselves? Is it to larger organizations? What does that look like? Yeah. So for us, I mean, if you might think orthopedic market, okay, everybody's kind of the same, right? They're not. So I'll just kind of just divide this out and really filter it down. So there's 31,000 orthopedic surgeons, approximately in the United States, right? About half of those operate under a health system or some type of education-based health system. The other half are independent and they might be under the structure of a managed service organization or also knows an MSO for short or just a practice where they have some leadership. Some of them are large, some of them are smaller. Anywhere from one, I'd say about 200 or more, generally the 200 or more or less prevalent. So when we look at that, our customer profile has been anywhere between one, which we have, but about 10 to 25 physicians and then we can go up to the larger size practices as well. And we really found great success there because really when you're looking at that, we're doing the same things to be able to implement in the practice and we're treating the customer differently, but there's still the similar processes we would put into place, right? There's got to be a data exchange protocol. There has to be a way for us to be able to onboard the patients and kind of be able to get a hold of the practice and inform the doctor about what's going on and all those things, right? It's the same they're in the practice. And those locations within a larger practice kind of operate as individual practices. So we just phase the rollout and really make it work for both the client, the practice that operates there and then us. This show is brought to you by Frontlines Media, podcast production studio that helps B2B founders launch, manage and grow their own podcast. Now, if you're a founder, you may be thinking, I don't have time to host a podcast. I've got a company to build. Well, that's exactly what we built our service to do. You show up and host and we handle literally everything else. To set up a call to discuss launching your own podcast, visit frontlines.io/podcast. Now back to today's episode. What about from a positioning perspective? How are you positioned in the market? And then what's the competitive landscape look like? If they're not using you, what are they doing, what are they using? Yeah, that's great question. So right now we stand truly competitive list. There are others that are in our space that are using what they call the RTM codes, remote therapeutic monitoring codes. And those were created by Medicare actually after the codes that we use which are remote physiologic monitoring. So I'll put that aside for a second, but they focus on the therapeutic side of care. So they're looking at most likely it's physical therapy or PT. They also have some other tools that they use the RTM codes for, I might be home exercise programming or things like that. For us, what we use is remote physiologic monitoring. The whole category would be known as remote patient monitoring or RPM. When that's become a buzzword now in healthcare, it was originally created 2018. Codes were really redesigned in 2019. They became more useful in 2020. And then the RTM codes came out after that. So what we do is we're monitoring the patient for the monitoring and improvement of a physiologic data point, which is weight for us body weight, right? So we take that and we issue a scale that connects to our smartphone app that we develop. And then from there, we have a team of coaches and a clinical oversight structure that allows us to be able to work with the practice and the patient to improve their health and to continue offering the program and progressing the patient through it. So it's a little bit different than what anybody else is doing in the RTM space. And truly, they don't really have the same type of focus or outcomes that we have and we promote. So it prescribed fit. We're looking at weight, pain and mobility. They may be looking at some mobility through therapy, but we're looking at it through the weight loss or the lifestyle health improvements that we're making on a routine basis. So it's kind of, we see on competitor lists, it really has allowed us to be the voice and to be able to come out with education based marketing and to really help the industry, the specialty in orthopedics, understand why it's important to have digital health as a tool. Why it's important, they kind of already know why weight loss and BMI control is a factor in orthopedic care and musculoskeletal care. But now it's their advantage that they get a tool to do that instead of being able to say, hey, let's just go over here to see in registered dietitian or some generic advice like lose weight or here's your, you know, table for weight loss or the foods that are healthier or food pyramid or things like that. Whenever you're doing something new, I feel like it's inevitable that you're going to run into people who don't believe in what you believe. Have you encountered that yet? You are there any kind of critics of this approach or people who don't think this is the right approach? Have you encountered anything like that yet? We have, yeah. And so for us, the approach is really not necessarily our approach to it, but what we've encountered. And really, we welcome this and we see this in the industry. And this is across health care anyways. So you have studies that go on and providers or people way smarter than I are standing on stage and talking about how this study went and why the results of this and the conclusive evidence is showing that it should be or not be, right? Or that it was or really wasn't the way that they thought it would be just to be very general about it. And so when we look at that, there's a lot of on-stage efforts at the conferences that are educating orthopedic surgeons across the United States that show that BMI control, obesity care, and musculoskeletal treatments is effective or not as effective as we think. And for us, we know it is. I mean, we can see that through our results. We see that every day as we look at how patients are doing, report outcomes to providers and that kind of thing. And overall, the studies, I mean, it's hard to say to someone, you know, if you're generally healthier, that's not good, right? I mean, if we're generally healthier, that is a good thing. If we practice good health and we're of a weight that is within what we would call the normal weight range or close to it, you know, and you're doing the right things for your health on a daily basis, like exercising and strengthening your muscles and your joints, then you probably have a better health outcome and just bill of health for your musculoskeletal part of your body. What about from a marketing perspective? What are you doing right now that's really moving the needle in a meaningful way? Yeah, so we have taken a couple things. So I'll explain two parts. The first is just from a specialty standpoint across the United States to be obtained new clients or customers, which are the practices and surgeons. And then the second is within a practice to educate their patients and onboard their patients. So the first is we have really done, we've put out case studies, we've put out white papers on different subjects. So that way it educates the market on what prescribed it is, but even higher than that, what remote patient monitoring can do for the practice and how it helps improve the other treatment options that have been there and are traditional in orthopedic care. And what it does for the patient to be able to have a guide and a coach that's there on a daily basis to be able to turn to and say, hey, I have this issue or can you help me through this scenario? I'm having some trouble at selecting some foods at this restaurant that I know we've talked about a low carb diet, but what do I do in this situation? So we really take the time to go through and we've put out a lot of information. In fact, our VP of marketing is excellent at this. And I've even just shared as we're going through this and kind of doing an updated version of some of our stuff like we have a ton of content. This is great. And we've tried to put it out there. So that way it's educating our partner physicians and providers out there. The second piece is what we do that's different in the practice is really help the practice build up. What I would deem is their virtual arm of their practice, right? It's the prescribed fit arm that helps manage their patients at a distance and virtually. So just like their brick and mortar practice, I mean, this requires some intentional effort to enroll patients and to help them get to know the program. So take this, for example, you go into a practice, right? Your knee hurts. You can probably look to your neighbor to your left or to your right. And one of the two has had gone through physical therapy and had some treatments at a practice. So when we look at that, we're really saying, okay, you have this information out there. You can turn to resources like chat, GPT or Google or your neighbors and really figure out kind of what to do for us at prescribed fit. It's a newer solution. So what we do is we help the provider educate the patients on what to do in the program, what they're going to experience, what the outcomes are, all of those kind of things. So that way they are more informed on this topic. What does that process look like for education? Because it sounds complicated, right? You have to educate the educators so they can go and educate the end patient. It sounds like, what does that program look like? And how did you build that out? Yeah. So that was a very intentional piece of ours. We call it fast track to health. We've kind of moved away from using names often, but I'll still call it that. So that way it's an easy part for our quest to converse about. So we said at the beginning, what they have out there now to be able to educate providers, there's pharmaceutical reps in an adjacent industry, right? So they go out and they talk to the providers, they give them information, they come back in the office, they send them lunch, they do all the things, right, to help them just keep top of mind what their product is and to be able to write prescriptions to the tune that they think they should be. And so we thought that's a really archaic way of doing things. We don't need to send folks out, we don't need to provide, we're definitely not providing cookies and calling it prescribed fit, right? So they have healthy lunches out there and sending it out. And it just wasn't necessary. So we thought, how can we do this? And how can we help the practice build this in such a way that's mindful and maintains and enhances the reputation and builds them up as the thought leader in their community. And that's why we built the fast track program. It's an outreach program that takes patients that the provider has deemed to be medically necessary. They've written the prescriptions form and we send those prescriptions to them. So they get an email with the prescription, it's all, everything's HIPAA compliance, of course, and all that. We've done a lot of work to make sure that the messaging is correct to on the way that we've administered this program is proper. And so when they get those emails, they fall on a landing page there that is built for that patient specifically with the practices information, video of the physician. I mean, all of this is very intentional. So the patient has the information directly from the mouth of the physician and from their point of view to be able to say, hey, Mrs. Smith, this is why I'm offering you this program and I've prescribed it for you. I'd really like for you to learn these things and really take this approach to your musculoskeletal care. And that's improving your overall lifestyle health. And you know, at the end of the day, what you're going to be able to do is the things that motivate you, right? Like play with your grandkids or going on a hike or taking your dog outdoors or those kind of things. So the program is built so that way it's personal to the patient and the practice and provides them the information that prescribed fit needs them to know to be successful. What about learnings from a go-to-market perspective or maybe a better way to ask this would be around decision? So let's talk about the most important go-to-market decision that you've made today. What is that decision and how'd you make it? Oh boy, the most important go-to-market decision. Honestly, I'd say, Brett, that it was this program. It was our fast track program. And we struggled quite a bit at the beginning. And I say struggled. I mean, we were in a practice that was very friendly to helping us figure this out, which was nice. But as we looked at that, we thought, you know, all practices aren't functioning like this one here. They were a pioneer in the leader. They are innovators of the way that they think and the way that they approach care. So knowing that, we thought, how this is going to work in other practices, you know, they're a little bit dissimilar in the way that they approach things. They might be a little more conservative and want to say, hey, we want everything to be buttoned up, which for startups sometimes doesn't happen right off the bat. You know, so as we looked at that, we said, okay, we need to make sure that we have everything in line. And so we took that intentional time to really update what we had worked out within that practice. And they said, all right, let's do this in another smaller one. Let's get their impact or their feedback and see the impact. And let's continue from there. And we have our original customers still with us. I mean, as of today, almost four years, well, four years later now, and we're really just operating at a good speed to be able to acquire new customers. I mean, what we're looking at next is how do we work with the more complex practices and more situations that, you know, may just be larger customer situation. So it's worked out well. This show is brought to you by the Global Talent Co, a marketing leader's best friend in these times of budget cuts and efficient growth. We help marketing leaders find higher vet and manage amazing marketing talent for 50 to 70% less than their US and European counterparts. To book a free consultation, visit global talent.co. If you think ahead, I just touched on it there. But let's talk about like the number one starting priority for the next 12 months. What is that top priority? Oh, yeah, good question. Okay, so we have a human centered approach to care. And, you know, a lot of times you're talking to, probably you're here on the podcast talking to tech companies that have a SaaS model only that, you know, they don't really have people that are needed to help grow that are a part of that growth model we do. And just like any healthcare practice. So our care coordinators are the coaches that coach the patients. And right now every care coordinator can handle about 80 to 100 patients. So when they look at that, we're hiring when we grow. And so we're a human centered company. And what we've found is the way and the secret sauce to kind of make that scalable. And that's why BC has been interested in us. And we've closed our recent funding round and all that. So it's been a success for us in that way. So that probably, you know, as I look at our next 12 months, we want to make our approach to hiring and training remote and scalable remotely. So that way we can move outside of just the central Ohio area, which is where we primarily have our coaches now. And then by doing that, I think we're going to open it up to a lot, you know, really interesting folks out there who just find passion and really helping people get healthy. I mean, there's so many out there we talked about, but we have to have a clinician doing the program. And we're talking about how can we get other people that are in similar industries that are part of this. But I think what our true path is is to find people that are clinicians of the same sort as we have now, but just to have that true undying passion for lifestyle improvement. And as you think about executing on that plan, what do you think is going to be the number one challenge that's going to get in the way? And what are you going to do to overcome that challenge? I think it'll probably be just the interesting approach from state to state, you know, pop place and how where we'd expand first. And, you know, we like to have a good culture of people, maybe it's not state, but region, I'd say, or just locale. Like, where are they located? Because like, just the Saturday, excuse me, we did the teen, you know, event and we all went to an axe throwing thing here in downtown Columbus. You know, every second Friday of the month, we take two hours and we come together and we'll do things like team building stuff or company education or we have line dancing, even we have a karaoke machine. I mean, I've quite frankly never used, but we have people that love to do it there and they don't want me to do it. And it's a really good culture building event. I mean, our core values are important to us. And as I look at that building a human centered company, you have to really appreciate people for themselves and our diversity efforts and all of that are really real. And we make sure that we value that person as an individual. And you know, what that really translates to is the fibers that are in your company that within, you know, really show externally. And it creates a better and stronger person to be able to care and just take our patients through their experience. I'd say maintaining that if I'd summarize it would be the thing that maybe not a challenge, but something that I look forward to executing on and monitoring as we continue to grow and expand. What about fundraising? So as I mentioned there in the intro, nearly 15 million to date, what have you learned about fundraising throughout this journey? Again, good question. So the one thing that I'd say is like, you know, this is my first effort in really truly fundraising out there. I mean, I've done other things. I've done non-profit fundraising too and shared some large dinners that have raised $200,000 or one night or those kind of things, but this is totally different. And the efforts that you put into this, the passion is the number one thing that I think drives people to make a decision in how they're going to write a check. And then it's results, right? It's executing on that. Of course, there's no doubt. I mean, that's why investors are writing a check is to get results out of that and financial results. But that passion and the team of people that are around you and how you bubble wrap that thing, the product, your service, whatever you're taking forward is like the number one thing that I've learned that drives a check to be signed. And so as a fundraise, I try to find people and sometimes it's easy for them to connect with this and they feel that passion. As I tell the story about 174 pounds lost or let me tell you another one, there's a patient that was in our program, lost 40 pounds, was in it for a muscle smell to improve it, right? Went to another doctor and I don't know if it was a pulmonologist or whatever, but they were diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. And at that point, they said, "I have six months to live." They came back to their coach and said, "I don't care what happens to me right now. I just want to go out and have fun. I have six months to live." Right? So about six months later, we got an email from her and it said, "I've just been a lung transplant and now I'm cleared for another several years." And I never would have gotten the lung transplant had I not met the weight criteria and I wouldn't have met that without prescribing and losing weight. So it's kind of cool things like that. So that story, I mean, I've told and when I was first told that story, I mean, there was no way that I could keep my eyes from being clear. I was very much emotional about that. I mean, it's those kind of changes that really bring this solution to the forefront of the industry and really help people to understand why it's so important that we focus on the whole person and not just the one specific joint or organ or whatever. I mean, you as a person are being treated. And so those stories connect with the investors and the investors then see that. And of course, then it's the result. And what we've been is we've been really results driven. I mean, we grew 3x last year in 2023, three times, size, revenue, patience, all of that. We have providers that are still available to us but are in contractual arrangements, I guess, under a practice to be able to be referring. So we have a good contracted annual recurring revenue that we're available or that it's available to us. So those kind of things have driven also our further investment and especially this series around where we were able to close it larger part due to the investments or reinvestment from our current investor base. I'm a question for you. Let's zoom out three to five years into the future. What's the big picture vision look like? Yeah. So I would love to be in other specialties. First of all, expanding into orthopedics even further. So I just let me start there and then I'll go to the future. You know, we have some other products that we'd like to launch this year, especially we are not looking for AI to replace our coaches whatsoever. But we want to make our coaches smarter through AI to be able to say, Hey, this data that we have, we have hundreds of data points. There's no way I can look through this all at once. So I'm going to sit here and I'm going to use this AI feature in here to be able to help me inform the patients in a better way and a smarter way. So those are our product expansions. And then into the RTM, which I mentioned is the therapeutic side, but we won't be doing physical therapy stuff. We're going to be taking a little different approach to that. And then further out, we'd want to expand it to the further parts of health care. I know that value-based care is definitely something we've all talked about, but we find that our solution aligns well with the quality of care that's required for a value-based arrangement or a bundle arrangement. And so, you know, as we look at what we're going to do to help support that, our data is able to be utilized in such a way that provides them with smarter insight for actuarial science activities and all of that to determine the rates that are necessary for a proven proper arrangement. So that's what that looks like in three to five years. And, you know, we might find a sooner that we're there to connect with in some way. We'll see, but a large in part, I'm just excited for the expansion in orthopedics and potentially into other areas as well. Amazing. Well, I love the vision. I love this conversation. It's always fun to speak with founders who are having an impact on people's lives. So, appreciate you taking the time. We'll be rooting for your success. Before we wrap, if there's any founders that are listening in that want to follow on with your journey, where should we send them? Where should they go? Absolutely. So, they can come to my LinkedIn page. That'd be great. Feel free. I think my name will be posted up there, but I'd love to hear from you. I always find that that's a great thing is when you have other founders. I mean, you just talk about something. You can even just get going on the ideation side of things, which is my favorite headspace to live in. But, you know, all right, let's talk more about stories or about experiences. That's what it's about. It's about sharing all of that. And then, you kind of help each other through it. Thanks so much. Really appreciate it, man. Thank you, Brad. And thank you very much to Category Visionary Podcast. This has been great. Appreciate it. This episode of Category Visionaries is brought to you by Frontlines Media, Silicon Valley's leading podcast production studio. If you're a B2B founder looking for help launching and growing your own podcast, visit frontlines.io/podcast. And for the latest episodes, search for Category Visionaries on your podcast platform of choice. Thanks for listening, and we'll catch you on the next episode. [MUSIC PLAYING]
