#19: Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical)

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:00:00]:
You see that providers are really starving for more autonomy, flexibility, and freedom in their life. Not only that, the future of work is, you know, definitely upon us and, you know, work from home culture and all these things and doctors and NPs and PAs and and the like are seeing their friends and other people have flexibility in how they work. And so it's no wonder that, you know, more doctors wanna be able to do telemedicine and it's no wonder that they wanna be able to split their time in different modes of home and work and, you know, clinic and everything, right? And they wanna have more ownership of their career and more flexibility and more freedom.

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:42]:
Let's discover the Cleveland entrepreneurial ecosystem. We are telling the stories of its entrepreneurs and those supporting them. Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland. I'm your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today's guest is someone who I've had the pleasure of working with and learning from over the last year as both a partner and collaborator through my time at Actual. Manoj Jhaveri is one of those people who who is genuinely kind and who unsolicited will every time go out of his way to be supportive and helpful. My own personal admiration and respect aside, Manoj is the co founder and CEO of Hyr Medical A health tech startup based here in Cleveland, Ohio And Hyr is really on a mission to transform the $18,000,000,000 health care staffing industry by making it easier for clinicians to find the best freelance opportunities while simultaneously offering more flexibility for medical practices and other health care employers The growing health care freelance economy really presents nuanced challenges and a massive opportunity for a company like Hyr to enable an elastic on demand workforce, all of which we're going to explore in much more detail in this conversation. I hope you all enjoy it.

To start out, I feel like we have to preface that you and I actually know each other pretty well and have been, you know, working together over the last year on our companies respectively, but also collaboratively.

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:12]:
So I'm glad that we can share your story here to the greater Cleveland community and beyond. Absolutely, man. Yeah. So I know we'll we'll dive right into to Hyr medical and and talk about the problem space and everything that you're doing to solve the problems there. But I I wanna start with just, you know, personal contact setting. Looking back on your career so far, what has been the common thread really that ties your path together in founding a health care company?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:02:41]:
Yeah. I think for me, you know, I I sort of have to go back to my parents and being a son of a 2 immigrants from India who, you know, really grew up in just slum type conditions, you know, extreme extreme poverty. I once visited where they grew up, my mom and dad, when I was like 16. It was one of my first trips to India. I was there for like a month and a half and got to really understand after 16 years like where they came from cause I was born in Chicago suburbs. You know, it was like it was the first time it really hit me like, Holy crap. This is where they were able to come out from? You know, like there's, you know, my dad passed away like 2 years ago and there's like you think about all these things like after your after a parent passes away, like, I wish I said this and I wish I said that. The thing I wish I could say to my dad is like, How did you come out of that and come to America and even live a middle class lifestyle coming from that background, you know? And I mean, he did it because he was top of his class and my mom also worked really hard and studied hard.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:03:52]:
And my dad got scholarships to finally, you know, leave India. And he was able to come to Berkeley on a scholarship in 1962. And, you know, my my mom and dad were, like, 20, 21. They had, like, a totally arranged marriage, you know

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:09]:
Yeah.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:04:09]:
Yeah. Like you see in, Indian movies. And,

Jeffrey Stern [00:04:13]:
yeah.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:04:13]:
I mean, that that whole immigrant story. And they would send money back to their family in India and they just worked really, really hard all the time. So for me, that's where I think a lot of my passion, my my work ethic, my desire to to to do something creative and and my common thread, I would say, is problem solving, you know, solving tough problems that are multifaceted and multidisciplinary and thorny. That's always sort of been my common thread. I studied engineering, mechanical, industrial engineering, like early in my career. I worked in semiconductor aerospace industries, Was working on the in the clean rooms, in the fabs when I was, like, right out of college, like, all over the world, like, in Asia and Germany and all kinds of places and, you know, was was doing like hardcore design and mechanical engineering type work. But then I knew I didn't wanna, it was it was too narrow for me. So I wanted to get more into something that combined business and engineering.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:05:17]:
Didn't really know that much about business, to be honest with you, but I knew I wanted to do maybe something like management consulting. So ended up moving at that time from Silicon Valley to Cleveland. I mean, I grew up in Chicago area, but I had lived in Silicon Valley for a little while. I was doing engineering there, then came to Ohio and I bounced around Ohio a little bit but I eventually settled in Cleveland when I started working for Deloitte. Was there for, about 8 years, doing product development consulting. So like innovation, product development type work. It was a good like combination of engineering and business skills, getting to combine those two disciplines and help companies with all kinds of interesting challenges, everything from people, process, technology. And then I worked for a couple years.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:06:08]:
I wanted to get some time off the road because I was traveling Monday through Thursday like for 4, you know, so 4 days a week of travel.

Jeffrey Stern [00:06:15]:
Sure. The traditional consulting lifestyle.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:06:17]:
Yeah. Every week for like, you know, many, many years and, yeah, at that point, at the end of Deloitte, I had, you know, 2 kids at that point. So I wanted to settle down a little bit. Ended up taking a job locally with Vitamix. I was there for a couple years. Gave me a good chance to think about what I wanna do. I knew like Vitamix was not like I knew I wasn't like a I knew I didn't wanna be like in a in a large corporate environment. Although Vitamix was kinda midsize but it gave me a chance to think about what do I wanna do.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:06:47]:
I had very long drives from my home in Cleveland Heights to Vitamix which was in, you know, quite quite quite a long ways. It was in Olmsted Township. So it like had a 1 hour there and 1 hour back and I'd listen to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks and I sort of credit that time to helping me realize that I wanna do something on my own. So then I started my own strategy innovation consulting company after I left Vitamix. Did that for like a year and a half. It was doing pretty well. And then I randomly met Ferris who is a physician here in Cleveland. I met him at a startup competition and from there, that's where a lot of things started with Haier Medical.

Jeffrey Stern [00:07:26]:
Yeah. So that's that's really interesting because I I have a lot of context, you know, working with you over the last year on Hyre, but I I realized I didn't actually know the founding story. And so I was wondering, you know, if the idea came or if the founding team came or, you know, what what came first. So so you and Farris had met. How did what were those initial steps like to to actually put the idea of Hire together and, you know, jump into to founding and and starting a company?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:07:52]:
The intent that I had when I first met Ferris and we started working on some projects together was not to start a company or that I wanna have a startup and technology and healthcare. It was none of that. Actually, I worked in so many industries when I was at Deloitte and I mean, I worked in, you know, I did projects for, you know, companies that I I mean, I did a project for the Joint Strike Fighter. I did a project for Medtronic. Like, I did all kinds of industries, right? And the one industry I never worked in was, like health care. That was the one thing. And I and I remember even thinking to myself like because I knew people in Cleveland who did health care work. I'm like, man, I'll never do health care work.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:08:31]:
You know, like, that's

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:31]:
Right. Right.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:08:32]:
Because that's not my thing. Like, I I I do, like, things. Like, I do projects with, like, Caterpillar or, you know, semiconductor companies or whatever. But I I also think though I'm a very, like, curious person so I actually do like just enjoying I enjoy learning about areas that I have no knowledge of. So that that sort of serves me well. And sometimes when you're having when you have a startup, it's an advantage to not have the ingrained knowledge of the industry because then you don't necessarily think about things in the in the way that everybody else does.

Jeffrey Stern [00:09:03]:
Right? So Beginner's mindset.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:09:04]:
Yeah. Yeah. So the the reason I met Ferris is I went I signed up for a startup competition. It was very similar to like startup weekend. It was modeled after that. And I went there to learn about startup techniques so I could bring them back to my corporate clients for the consulting company that I had. So I was trying to learn more about, like, lean startup techniques and design thinking and things like that. And I was doing workshops with clients that were large clients, like fortune 500s, like like Campbell Soup and things like that.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:09:35]:
My intention was not like I wanna have a startup. But then I'm I I went to this thing and I didn't have a team. I went by myself. I heard a bunch of people just you people line up, you know, and they give their pitches. Right? And Ferris gave a pretty good pitch about an idea that he was talking about around like optimization for residency programs and scheduling. And, you know, I had like an operations research background back when I did like, before my MBA, I did a master's in OR. So I was like, yeah, that sounds pretty cool. You know, I I know some stuff around that and ended up working with Ferris over 54 hours.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:10:12]:
Like, you do, like, a 54 hour hackathon where you don't sleep much and people don't people don't bathe and everyone smells and, we're just, like, working like crazy. And, you know, we became friends in that short period of time and we liked working together and we pitched together to the judges and we won first place which was, like, really exciting. I mean, they give you like a $2,000 check and it's like a really gigantic check and we're like, Wow. Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:10:35]:
One of those massive physical

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:10:37]:
Yeah. So so we're like, Wow, that's pretty cool, you know? So then, we started working on a few different things together, and we started we actually formed a company called Med Rocket. It's like the worst name, but we we formed a company around this residency scheduling software. And we had, like, a working software and everything. And, we started marketing it to residency programs and but there's not, like, that many resins I mean, there's a lot of there's, like, you know, like, a 1000 residency programs in the United States, but, you you know, it's not like a a largely growing market and it's hard to sell into. And even the software itself didn't like I mean, you know, maybe you sell it once and but we didn't think about all those things. We just thought, well, you know, to have a business, you you create something and it solves a problem and then people buy it and then you have a business. You know? But we didn't think about, like, all the scalability and the market size and the total addressable market and, like, we just thought it was cool to create this thing that solved the problem, which was a good lesson for us to realize that having a startup is way more than creating a point solution to a problem.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:11:42]:
Even, even if it is a really painful problem, that's not enough.

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:46]:
So there is a pivot for Med Rocket.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:11:48]:
Yeah. Yeah. So the rock the rocket, let's just say that the the rocket, went up for a little bit and then it crashed for sure. Actually, the the best thing is that so I still kept running my startup and Farris and I on the nights and weekends with another couple people too started working on this project on the side, like a side gig type of project. And remember we went to some conferences together and all this kind of stuff. And so we didn't really kinda know what we were doing with it and we ended up finally meeting, Matthew Miller who at that time was at Bioenterprise. You know, that was the best thing because we'd never really met with any, like, advisors who knew about startups and raising capital and all this kind of stuff. And I remember, like, the kindest thing Matthew did is he just told us.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:12:33]:
He's, like, we've pitched him and everything and he's, like, guys, this idea is never going to work. He's like, The market's too small. Your margins are like super tiny. This total like it's like a very point solution to this need and even if you fulfill it, like what then? There's just a lot of different things that he brought up and we realized that, like, it's, you know, maybe it's something you, like, sell, like, on an app store or something, but it's not like an entire business that you create around this thing. But, you know, the cool thing was that like a few weeks before we met Matthew, Ferris and I, I remember exactly where we were. We went to a jumpstart event and after the event was over, we were sitting in the lobby and we were talking about Farris's upcoming shifts where he was gonna he was doing a fellowship and GI at Cleveland Clinic, but on the side, he used to do locums work. So locum is a Latin word for standing in the place of somebody else. So oftentimes when a hospital is understaffed or people are on vacation or maternity or things like that, they use, for example, a resident or they use someone who likes to do this kind of locums work and fill in the place of other people and doesn't have a W-two full time employment.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:13:49]:
And, they they'll just kind of borrow from other places. And so he was doing this kind of work but the more and more we talked about it, the entire process for everything from discovery of the job to, you know, the negotiations and the discrimination that often occurs, the dealing with agencies, the haggling, the non transparency of the entire transaction, the paperwork, the FedEx envelopes and snail mail and faxes and emails and phone calls, the bombardment of phone calls by staffing agencies that he'd often get, and then the credentialing process itself and the privileging and then finally getting to work somewhere. And it was just like a tremendous amount of pain. And, like, I could definitely see it on his face where it's just like, Yeah. He's happy to have these couple assignments. He was working in, like, Ashtabula and Akron General but, like, was not in a consumer friendly process.

Jeffrey Stern [00:14:47]:
Right. Right.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:14:48]:
By any means, it was just pain, pain, pain. And so we we created a a a a little, like, pitch deck around what if we were able to, like, make this entire process like a consumer friendly process and, like, with the doctor at the center and make it so that the process was even enjoyable and and streamlined and leveraged technology that, you know, because we noticed that there's no innovation in this space since like 1990, you know. Right. And it's like, you know, there's got there's so much low hanging fruit here. There's gotta be some opportunity that other people are looking at. So, of course, we started looking at other companies that are doing things in the space, but we didn't really find a lot. So then when we met with Matthew that first time, we had that in our back pocket. And I remember that day we said, well, there's this other thing that we've been like like fooling around with.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:15:39]:
And at the time, it was called The name of the company was h I g h e r, like HYR.

Jeffrey Stern [00:15:45]:
Haier. Oh my god.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:15:46]:
It wasn't even HYR. And it was like this this like Pokey logo and it was like this, you know we showed it to him. He's like, You know what? You guys are not complete idiots after all. Like, it was actually a pretty good idea, you know? He's like, You know, well, maybe work on this a little bit more and then like, come talk to me again. And and then we we just kept annoying him and we kept coming back and we're like

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:06]:
coming back.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:16:06]:
Well, we have a little bit more research that we've done. We have a little bit more research that we've done. And the little snowball started getting bigger and bigger. And then finally, I started becoming so obsessed with Higher Medical that I said, You know what? I'm not even thinking about my consulting company. I'm thinking more about this and my obsession with Higher Medical. Let me just shut down my consulting company. So, I think in, middle of 2017, I completely shut down my consulting business and I said, I'm just gonna go all in with this company, which was weird because when I look back at it, it's like I couldn't pay myself anything with the company. I was like, Oh, I'll just live off of some of my savings and I'll empty out my 401 ks.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:16:48]:
And it was a weird time in my life too because I was also going through a divorce at the exact same time all this was happening. So maybe I was having a midlife crisis or something, I don't know. But there's a lot of there's a lot of shit going on at that time in my life. Yeah. And I was navigating, you know, the fact that, you know, I was living in my house by myself in the house that my ex wife and I lived in for, like, 14 years together where we raised our kids there. And and then now all of a sudden, my kids were sharing time between my house and her house and it was like this weird alternate universe. And and then I, like, have this startup and I like and I had money coming in from my consulting business and something something made me say, you know what? I'm just gonna do something crazy and why not, you know? Life is short.

Jeffrey Stern [00:17:35]:
Life is short. So so what what is higher medical? What is this creation?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:17:40]:
I mean, at its core, the way I like to describe it now is it's a solution, and it it it is all about enabling an Elastic on Demand workforce. And that is something that helps providers because, and I mean, this was pre COVID obviously and everything, but even more so now you see that providers are really starving for more autonomy, flexibility, and freedom in their life. Not only that, the future of work is, you know, definitely upon us and, you know, work from home culture and all these things and doctors and MPs and PAs and and the like are seeing their friends and other people have flexibility in how they work. And so it's no wonder that, you know, more doctors wanna be able to do telemedicine and it's no wonder that they wanna be able to split their time in different modes of home and work and, you know, clinic and everything. Right? And they wanna have more ownership of their career and more flexibility and more freedom and be able to say, Hey, I wanna take a couple months off and go travel overseas and then I want to resume working as a doctor. And, you know, I want to have not every doctor is like that and, you know, not every provider is like that, but a lot more are like that. And you have a freelance economy that's growing and growing. You have 59,000,000 people in the US doing freelance work and it's not only Uber drivers, right? It's people who are highly, highly skilled professions like physicians, like software developers, all kinds of things, right? You know, highly educated people.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:19:11]:
So when the idea of being a locum first started in 1970, it started, I think in Utah. At that time in the world, being a locum was considered like, Oh, you're a locum. Like, you can't find a real job, you know? You must be a bottom of the barrel type of doctor who's like not as good as other people. And maybe there is some truth to that at that time. But I mean fast forward 50 years, that's not the case at all. And so we're providing a platform, a software platform and an overall experience that allows providers and employers to connect directly, transparently, quickly, automate many portions of the credentialing process, which is obviously where the partnership with actual comes in big time. And there's still, you know, a lot a lot of work to still do there. And there's just many other things that I haven't even mentioned, but it's not only for the, for the sake of the provider that we wanna create an Elastic On Demand workforce.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:20:09]:
It's also for the sake of the employer, right? Because look at something like COVID, right? You had surges in localized areas all over the country coming ebbing and flowing and, you know, you have more demand somewhere and less demand somewhere else and you don't have, most hospitals were staffed with either, you know, medical groups that contract with them or they have a large employed workforce of W-2s. So then COVID hit, then ER volume and hospital floor volume went down. So So they started laying off or furloughing people. Let's see if they had like 20 to 30% of their workforce is just contingent to begin with. They could have actually flexed it up and down without having to do a lot of those things. Right? I think more of recognition is coming around that. But also you have massive shortages all over the country, especially in rural areas, non metro areas where there's just not enough providers. Right?

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:00]:
Right. And that's a growing problem.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:21:02]:
That's a growing problem. And the number of people going through medical school is not is totally outpacing the amount of residency spots. And that that's a government issue. The opening up more spots in terms of residency programs and and and being able to fund doctors to teach residency programs and all those things. That's a solvable problem. But, you know, in many cases, our government is in gridlock over things like this. So the shortage of provide, just the raw shortage, right, of providers is growing and growing. But then the real problem is the allocation of supply and demand, right? You have a place like Cleveland that is saturated with providers.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:21:44]:
They have no issue. Cleveland Clinic does not have like massive issues And they have a residency program too, right? So they can have people moonlight and fill in extra shifts, right? But you take a place like Findlay, Ohio, they don't have that luxury, right? And they have they have W2 staff but they have to augment it with a layer of contingent people who are freelancers. And so we call that we really call that contingent. Right? You're not filling in the place of somebody who's missing. You're just you're there because if you're not there, the hospital can't, have the same amount of throughput.

Jeffrey Stern [00:22:19]:
Right. Right. Meeting the demand.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:22:21]:
Yeah. Or even worse if you don't have the same amount of throughput When what hospital administrators are often gonna say is, okay, well, we need to have the same amount of throughput. So, well, how do you if you're gonna have the same amount of throughput with the, with fewer doctors than you actually need to be staffed with, then those doctors are gonna get worked more. And that's why you always hear about burnout, right? Physician burnout is a huge problem and the suicide rate is twice the average in America and all these types of things, right? And then it got exacerbated during something like COVID, right? So what really the, the, the root, the way I like to think about it and I actually, you know, because of my operations background and supply chain background and all these things, there's a massive supply chain issue in this whole thing. It's the staffing supply chain and the ability to move supply to where the demand is is very limited. Some of it is because of self imposed things where we shoot ourselves in the foot like, you know, not being able to have a single national medical license, right? So it's like, okay, I have a ton of doctors who live in Missouri but they can't practice in Kansas because they don't have a Kansas license. It's like, but they, you know, it's like, come on. You know, like there should just be one national medical license but there's not.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:23:37]:
And now with telemedicine, it's starting to kind of bubble up. There's this thing called the Interstate Medical License Compact, but it's a long ways to go. So there's not a fluidity because of regulations, but there's also the biggest problem is not the regulation fluidity. The biggest problem is things like credentialing and the amount of time it takes. 3 to 6 months, over a 100 days to credential a doctor. Lots of, like, manual processes and med staff offices having to call up and verify the same facts over and over again. Every place a doctor wants to work. This is obviously a problem you guys know very, very well at Axel and

Jeffrey Stern [00:24:14]:
That sounds familiar.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:24:15]:
That is the problem you guys are trying to solve. So, and then, you know, ultimately, right? So, this Elastic On Demand workforce that we're trying to enable with technology and better process, that's really what Hire Medical is all about. It benefits the provider. So I kinda describe that. It benefits the employer because then they can have adequate throughput, which therefore translates into revenue for the hospital. Right. Right. Without destroying their workforce and having people leave and having turnover and having people have mental health problems because lots of doctors have mental health crisis that they're going through right now too.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:24:52]:
And then ultimately, you serve patients better, right? You have less malpractice. You have less issues happen because you have people who are fresh and able to work, who are you have a well staffed, well running machine, right? So, at the heart of it, Hire Medical is is, you know, we we we tend to start by talking about the provider but it's it's helping the employer. It's creating a machine that's much more efficient and it happens to be that the very first place that we're starting this foothold is in the freelance market. So, but we have ambitions to go beyond only having a person like one provider being a freelancer at a single location or multiple locations. Ultimately, the benefit of having a vetted high quality workforce on higher medical is that now that workforce can ultimately self assemble in ways that we haven't even even fully thought out where they can form maybe a virtual group of practice and and serve clients on our network that need that type of care, right? And maybe they don't need 1 GI doctor, maybe they need 5 GI doctors, right? And they and they can organize in a certain way. So anyway, pretty long winded but that is the the whole that is the whole thing in a nutshell, I guess.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:09]:
Yeah. No. It's it's really interesting. I mean, the benefits are evident for the doctors, for the clinicians, for the health care organizations. The macro prospects are there. You have this proliferation of locum tenens over the last 50 years or so. You have this growing physician shortage. But then, ultimately, the way I I kind of think about Hire is as this marketplace, if you will.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:31]:
Right?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:26:31]:
Mhmm.

Jeffrey Stern [00:26:31]:
It's it's difficult to bring together the supply with, you know, the physicians, the nurses, the practitioners with with this demand for work. And so at scale, it seems to me it's inevitable. So something like Hyre has to exist in the future. How do you surmount the the initial challenges of of building that marketplace and and tying those pieces together?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:26:55]:
Yeah. I mean, you you know, this is my first time as a CEO of a startup and, of course, I picked like a marketplace business which is one of the hardest kinds of startups to create. But, I guess I like solving trying to solve hard problems. But, yeah, I mean, marketplaces are hard hard to build because you have to get, enough critical mass on both sides to get the flywheel moving. We've been able to after like years of grinding, I mean, now we have about we have over a 1000 providers on the network and we have, over 30 clients, healthcare systems, medical groups on the network. And that that's that's helping because now our sales cycle is shorter. More natural matches can occur between our algorithm can match people up easier between providers and open needs. And we can focus on so many of the other parts of this whole supply chain issue and the entire revenue wheel, everything from getting clients onto the platform and getting, you know, opportunities posted and matching people up for opportunities and sending communications automatically.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:28:02]:
Now, we're able to do a lot of those things automatically. And then ultimately, moving the credentialing process forward and then getting all the way to finally completed shifts and assignments. And ultimately, that's how we generate revenue. It's only when providers actually provide service, when they deliver care, is when Hyram Medical invoices our clients and pays our providers. So the providers on Hyram Medical are all 10.90 nines to Hyram Medical. So there's a lot of different parts to the the overall machine. I don't think that we fully, like, surmounted the whole thing yet. I mean, it's still it's hard building a network.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:28:36]:
A 2 sided marketplace is is hard to build. And I I mean, you know this well. I mean, actual is like a 3 sided network actually. So

Jeffrey Stern [00:28:45]:
Yep. Yep. So Also like hard problems over here.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:28:49]:
Yeah. Exactly. So, I mean, there there are a lot of things we have to do. You know, one of the things that we have as a big initiative is to make it easier to onboard clients, new new providers to join the network, right? I mean, think of something like Airbnb. You know, a guest can easily create a profile and sign up and start searching for places to stay and a host can fully onboard themselves and sign a contract and start, you know, listing their location and all that type of thing. And, you know, we're we're really stronger on the provider side and they can self-service completely. We need to ultimately get there on the employer side where they can self-service completely. Some segments of the market are there where employers would do that.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:29:35]:
There are others that are still not fully, I don't think caught up and like this concept of doing things this way still isn't familiar enough to some folks where it's like, oh, yeah, you know, we would go on to hire and, you know, we we would post these needs and we'd get matched up and we'd check our dashboard and and we do credentialing in an automated way. And, I mean, as you know, that's just not how this industry works right now. So, some of what we do, we have to do to survive and generate revenue, but we're always having an eye on the future and how do we have to evolve our solution. And, you know, ultimately, we probably will get more picky about the kinds of clients we work with because of the speed at which they're willing to move. You know, I don't think we're quite there yet. I mean, this is where you get in the challenge of balancing like, you know, you gotta have immediate revenue and you need and you need some revenue to get investors excited and and to come along and feel like, okay, you know, these guys need more fuel and then they can they can do even more, you know?

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:34]:
It's the it's the catch 22 of early stage startups.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:30:37]:
Yeah. So you know, we have we have some elements of product market fit. I think there's still so much more that I think we need to do to fully say like we have total product market fit. Just being very honest. But but we're getting there. We're getting there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:30:53]:
Yeah. And the self-service model is highly differentiated from the traditional staffing industry, which, as I understand it, is notoriously competitive, cutthroat even. I'm curious how you think about higher you know, strategically differentiated from the traditional staffing company and kind of leveraging technology and, you know, all these efficiencies that that you're working towards relative to how, you know, historically this in this industry has worked.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:31:24]:
Yeah. I mean, you know, for one thing, obviously, the technology bringing technology to bear in itself in this industry, I think is a differentiator.

Jeffrey Stern [00:31:34]:
I don't mean that. Unfortunately.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:31:36]:
Yeah. I mean, it just it's it's just an industry that hasn't evolved and, you know, it it's kinda like, I was listening to this podcast today in health, it was it was a really smart woman talking about about health care challenges and she said, you know, everyone knows this annoying problem. Like, when you go to a a a doctor that you've been seeing for, like, like, years, You walk into the office and they're they give you that piece of paper with the clipboard and you're they give, you know, they they wanna scan your insurance card and your driver's license. It's like they've never met you before. It's like it's like, but I've been coming here for, like, 5 years. Like, why are you why why is a consumer experience so terrible? And why does Amazon know like, why am I able to go on to Amazon and, like, immediately recognize me? And not only that, they know what my kids wanna buy and they know what my friends wanna buy and they know, like, what to present me with and they have all this data and they don't ask for the same stuff over and over again and, you know, like, the consumer experience is very, very front and center. Mhmm. And in health care, it's not.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:32:43]:
The whole patient centric thing that everybody talks about, like, the clipboard thing is like the worst patient centric experience I can imagine. It's like, what are you doing to me? Like, this is awful.

Jeffrey Stern [00:32:56]:
It's not enjoyable.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:32:58]:
So, you know, I think there's a lot of a lot of evolution in that area. I I think you're starting to see it in things like in Columbus, like the InsureTech technology that's happening. Like, you're starting to see that, like, there's almost like a a, like, I I love Root. Like, I I use Root and it's almost like a fun experience to use Root, you know, but it took a long time for insurance to kinda become somewhat consumer friendly and fun.

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:24]:
Right. And still some sense of empathy Yeah. The the whole process.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:33:28]:
So I think that's kinda where health care is at. It's like I mean, it says a long way to go to kind of be more consumer centric in that way and then also when I think about something like staffing to be provider centric, right? And that's something that actual is trying to solve too. It's like put the provider in control. Allow them to have a digital wallet of all their important credentials because this is the lifeblood of their career. And that's not how how health care staffing works today or even just normal w two employment or recredentialing of current employ employees. Right? It's actually a painful process even when you're within the same system year after year. And every 2 years, you have to get re credentialed. Like, so I think the more we think about things where we put the the right person in the center of the experience, that's how you start to at least crack this.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:34:20]:
So, yeah, I mean, important for us to bring technology to it but it's also a lot about process, smart process and, you know, really thinking through what the experience should be for the provider, for the employer.

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:32]:
Yeah. No. I I think that makes a lot of sense. I kinda wanna segue here to to some personal learnings and and reflections. You know, over the last few years, have you gone through the process of building Hired to to where it is today? You know, being a a first time CEO, what what have you learned from from this process?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:34:53]:
Oh man, I don't even know where to begin. It's like the most accelerated learning process I've I've ever had in my life. You know, I actually did complete my MBA before, like right before I started higher medical. You know, it's like they always talk about, like, you know, if you do an MBA, but, like, but, like, being a CEO of a company is like a real world MBA because you you really are involved in every part of the business, especially in the, you know, the first few years and you need to be, I think, but also you have to be because you're short on resources and you have to understand and have a pulse on everything that's happening in the company. You can't do it all. I mean, I think I I've at least tried and I think I've done a better job of, you know, being providing support but allowing others to execute. And I don't think you can be a good leader if you don't allow others to execute but then provide support, you know, where where it's needed and help build good processes that that people can, you know, can can follow and that are repeatable and having open dialogue and communication. I think the hardest thing that I've, you know, had to struggle with or I don't think I've overcome it by any means.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:36:09]:
I think it's just it's one of those things where I I listen to this podcast, Radical Candor, a lot and it it it's a really good podcast on leadership and how to they have like this quadrant model where they talk about, you know, in the top right quadrant, you care personally but you challenge directly. And for me, that is, something I try to do every day. I'm not always successful but, you know, I really try to show the person I really care about you and your career progression and I have something I need to tell you that will help you be more effective. And and and it's because of the fact that I'm being so straightforward with you and honest about where you're falling short, that is a reflection of how much I care about you too. That's a hard thing to do as a leader. But I think the really good leaders I've seen are able to do that. Like, man, I I love you, Manoj. Like, you're an awesome guy.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:37:02]:
You care so much but, you know, I I wanna see you do this this this and this differently, you know? And, like, if you can show that and do that with, like, empathy, then I I think people people will follow you. Mhmm. But it's if you fall into any of those other three quadrants. Right? So, like, if you like, I think one of the one of the providence is called ruinous empathy where, like, you care personally but you don't challenge directly. Like, I really care about you but, you know, in my way of showing I care about you, I'm not going to like tell you things like that are too direct. So Ruinous. Ruinous. Ruinous empathy.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:37:37]:
I don't know. I can't remember the names of the other two quadrants but basically it's just not a place you want to be.

Jeffrey Stern [00:37:43]:
Yeah. No. I I I will say, like, that a lot of, things are are connecting for me, I think, about your story. You know, from my perspective, I feel like you're you are a true Maven and, like, connector of people and then, like, bringing people up. It's just something I've noticed working with you over the last year, and I was curious how you think about networking and and curating your time with with great people because I I feel like you are very intentional about that.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:38:10]:
Yeah. You know what, though? I I think I have a decent amount of of humbleness to know that I'm generally not the smartest person in the room. And I, you know, like, when I look at a place like Hyre, like, and and the people I get to work with and stuff, you know, I'm I'm genuinely curious and I like to see the way they think. Like, I work with, you know, obviously, my cofounders, Oliver and Farris. We're, like, very different personalities. But, you you know, both of those guys are, like, smart as shit, like, in their own own different ways and I don't know. Like, I don't I'm not saying this in, like, a negative way towards myself but I I guess I just I don't I'm like, well, you know, I don't think of myself as like a as like a brilliant guy or anything. Like, I really don't.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:38:55]:
I I just I am a very curious person and I like having conversations with people who, you know, are really like thoughtful deep thinkers and and just and fun to be around. And I I I think the way I network with people is just with a genuine curiosity to to learn and also to kind of extend my own experiences in life. And I think I just genuinely enjoy it. I I don't know how maybe I'm intentional and I just I I don't it's just kind of ingrained in me at this point. There's probably some intentionality about it. I think I like being around people who enjoy solving problems and who have a certain kind of grit and determination and they're doing things outside of just beyond their own, like, gratification or, you know, their own glorification, I think. Like, they're they're they're very purpose driven. You know?

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:46]:
Right. Right.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:39:47]:
Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:39:48]:
I'm curious how in your worldly travels and arrival here in Cleveland, bringing it back to Cleveland, you know, what what is it about Cleveland that, you know, ultimately, that that you're here building higher in Cleveland? And, again, from my perspective, I are, like, a champion of of Cleveland and the and the startup scene and the entrepreneurship around here. Yeah. Really, really a champion of it.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:40:12]:
No. Thank you. I I appreciate that. Man, I don't know. I mean, I I I think the time I came here, I came here 14 years ago. I still remember because my son was he's 14. He was a baby. Like, I remember, you know, we bought our first house and he was, like, in his in his little, car seat.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:40:28]:
And it's like a second home for me because I grew up in Chicago suburbs and and, like, now I think of Cleveland as, like, just like my home, you know, and it's like a mini Chicago in some ways but I've gotten to know I've gotten to know Cleveland better than I ever did get to know Chicago. People are very accessible and people are very, like, you know, willing to help each other. And, you know, there's no way, like, this company would be where it is. Like, I have to say a shout out to all the advisers that we have. Charlie, Louheed and Matthew Miller, Jean Groys, Nick Barrett. Another adviser of ours is in Florida, Sunil Pandia. Like, you know, like, having these advisers, like, they will tell us, like when our baby is ugly and like when we are just going out. Lack of candor.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:41:17]:
Yes. And they care about us deeply. See, we never feel like they don't care about us deeply, but they will tell us like the really hard truth. And they've told us it's like, because we don't want you to waste your time and we don't want to see you fail. Like, so if our strategy for product development's all screwed up or we're not prepared well prepared enough or if our fundraising plan sucks, like, or whatever it might be. Like, they're just gonna tell us like and it's it's hard sometimes to hear but then you're like, Man, they're freaking right. So like just so many people have, like, I feel like welcomed me to this city and even when I was at Deloitte, I mean, it was like an amazing, environment of people. And so I just I I I started out here at Deloitte and, like, I just continued to grow with the city and I just feel like such a closeness to it because of probably all the people who have just helped me grow along the way and have really just like cared about me and believed in me.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:42:19]:
You know? Yeah. So even in my worst times, you know, like, believed in me.

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:23]:
That's that's awesome to hear. And, get into the the nitty gritty of of Cleveland, A question that that we are asking everyone coming on is, is for their not necessarily their favorite thing, but for a hidden gem, something that other people may not know about but is particularly special to to them about Cleveland.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:42:43]:
Yeah. I, it's not directly in Cleveland but it's in driving distance from Cleveland. I really like going to Lakeside. Mhmm. I have a good friend of mine, Ben Linville, who has a a restaurant in Lakeside too. So Lakeside, if you don't know, is like a have you ever been there?

Jeffrey Stern [00:42:58]:
I haven't been to Lakeside.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:42:59]:
So it's it's a gated community. It was started by the Methodists. I think they went there because to kind of, like, avoid, like, persecution. So they kind of set up their own community there. And then, like, over time, it's evolved into this, like, really kind of awesome I think it's called, like, the Chautauqua. I don't really know. Like, there's so many Chautauquas all over the US or whatever. There's only so many and it's like this, like, utopian it's probably I mean, I know it's not, but it seems to me, like, when you go there, it's like this utopian society.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:43:31]:
It's like there's, like, basketball courts everywhere and, you know, there's not too many restaurants. Like, in order to have a restaurant there, like, you have it takes, like it took my friend, like, 5 years to like get a permit to have his own restaurant there.

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:43]:
Oh, wow.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:43:44]:
And there's only like 5 restaurants in the whole like it's a square mile. People just go there and hang out and it's just a really it's a very unique place, very relaxing. You can take your kids there and like, you know, play on the you know, it's right on the Lake Erie so you can, like, play in Lake Erie and you can go do water sports and you can go play basketball there and get food and Yeah.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:08]:
Yeah. That sounds awesome. I'm building this bucket list of all the hidden gems that I have not been able to go to. And as the world opens up, I'm looking forward to exploring a lot more.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:44:19]:
Yeah. I mean, if you go to Lakeside too, it's not too hard to go to, Kelly's Island and all those different things around there too, which are also really cool too.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:27]:
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I've personally really enjoyed this conversation. It's been cool kind of filling in the gaps of hire that I I didn't know existed, but are are really interesting. So I I really appreciate you coming on Manoj and and sharing, your story.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:44:41]:
Cool, man. And the partnership with Axual, I have to say, is is amazing. So, you know, may maybe, maybe I should, like, interview you some someone's gotta someone's gotta interview you because the story with actual is also pretty awesome.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:56]:
Well, we'll get there someday.

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:44:58]:
Yep. Yep.

Jeffrey Stern [00:44:59]:
Awesome. Well, if if if people, clinicians, hospitals, whoever it is, wants to wants to follow-up with you on on anything, that that we talked about. Where is the best place for them to to find you?

Manoj Jhaveri (Hyr Medical) [00:45:10]:
You know, you can always send me an email, mjaveri@hyrmed.com. It's just mjha veri@hyrmed.com. You can also email info at higher med dot com. Or you can go to our website, www.hiremed.com.

Jeffrey Stern [00:45:30]:
That's all for this week. Thanks for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show, so shoot us an email at lay of the land at upside dot f m, or find us on Twitter at podlayoftheland

Jeffrey Stern [00:46:14]:
All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of Founders Get Funds and its affiliates, or actual and its affiliates, or any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. We have not considered your specific financial situation, nor provided any investment advice on this show. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.