The Irresistible Factor

Radiologist turned founder, Dr. Cristin Dickerson, didn’t plan to run a company, she just wanted to do her job. But after seeing hospital acquisitions triple imaging prices and claims processes fail patients and doctors alike, Dr. Cristin looked to an unlikely category to find a solution. She built Green Imaging: a “Travelocity-style” marketplace that buys unused scanner time, bundles the entire episode of care, and passes transparent savings to employers and patients.

Key takeaways from our conversation:

Unused capacity, fair bundles: “We started buying the extra time on the scanner, our radiologists read it, and we bill a fair self-pay price.” The result is one all-in rate, no surprise CPT add-ons or separate radiology bills.

Employer-first economics: “Employers can waive member co-pays and deductibles with Green, and still save money.” For self-funded plans, members pay $0 out of pocket while plans avoid hospital rates and unbundled charges.

Concierge beats DIY: “Consumerism has failed in healthcare, when people are under stress, they want to be taken care of.” Green Imaging leans on live, multilingual concierges to educate, schedule, and simplify every step.

Hospital alignment without bloat: By leasing time (they’re Green’s patients) and using Green’s radiologists, exclusivity hurdles drop—unlocking partnerships such as PET/CT reads and filling idle capacity.

Bootstrapped resilience: “I worked full-time as a radiologist until 2020 to subsidize it.” The team survived a co-founder’s sudden passing, COVID’s volume collapse, and an IP lawsuit, without layoffs, growing to 5,000+ facilities and ~3M covered lives, still majority physician-owned.

With the success of Green Imaging, Dr. Dickerson proves that there are creative ways to solve all kinds of problems. Even the behemoth of healthcare. 

Learn more at Green Imaging, and check out Dr. Dickerson’s book, Aligned, for a plain-English guide to making healthcare incentives work for patients, employers, and clinicians.

“It was very hard to accept, but I had to face the reality that our business was never going to give us the return we deserved. That was a mature set of decisions, to give up on dreams and accept defeat,” she says.

As you can see, Kelly Spillane has lived both sides of the CPG journey. She started in Ireland as a founder, building a jam and marmalade company with her sister and even landing on supermarket shelves and high-end delicatessens in Paris, London, and New York. But after years of incredibly hard work, she faced a tough truth: the business wasn’t going where she hoped it would.

Instead of walking away from the industry she loved, Spillane turned her hard lessons into a career helping other founders succeed. Today, she leads investments and accelerator programs at Whole Foods Market, guiding early-stage brands with the perspective only a former founder can bring.

Key takeaways from our conversation:

• Agile growth first: “Being lean and agile is the number one thing. Not raising money for as long as you can is really the number one thing, along with the lean and agile.”
• It’s all about people: “In reality, when you’re investing money, you’re investing money in people. So I look at the founders, their vision, their experience, and whether they’re coachable.”
• The value of the journey: “Even though I didn’t achieve my big dream of making lots of money, I found myself, and I found lifelong friends. The journey was still worth it.”

From winding down her own company to mentoring the next generation of founders, Kelly Spillane’s story is a reminder that resilience, focus, and adaptability matter as much as vision in building lasting businesses.

What began with Matt’s own martial arts injury grew into a business model that now includes international instructor training, wellness retreats, and tailored protocols for everyone from elite athletes to entrepreneurs. His story is both exciting and inspiring. 

But building Cold Club hasn’t been easy. Matt has had to navigate the realities of entrepreneurship, scaling globally, wearing every hat, and planning for sustainable growth in a crowded wellness industry.

3 Key Takeaways

1. Building Requires Vision and Systems

“Tons of challenges. I need a bigger team. That’s step one. I need people to fill the different roles. As an entrepreneur, I work all the time, and I’m happy to work, but what I’m really trying to establish right now is a very clear, systematic approach to regular offerings worldwide.”

2. Scaling Means Thinking Globally

“Where do we see ourselves? We see ourselves as like a very powerful global network within the next three years. I think we will be in just about every continent. I see us as a very strong group. Leading wellness, we will be among the best known in wellness in the next three years.”

3. Collaboration Is the Future

“Collaboration is the future. And it’s the only way to sort of leverage the existing tools and systems that are out there to break through the noise. We’ve got to get signal. How are we going to get signal in today’s world? It’s really hard. And so collaboration is really the key.”

From personal healing to global expansion, Matt Soule is proving that Cold Club is more than a wellness trend, it’s a movement built on resilience, innovation, and entrepreneurial grit. His journey is a reminder that scaling impact takes both passion and persistence.

For Emily Stein, the path from Stanford scientist to startup founder wasn’t straightforward. What began with a deeply personal motivation, preventing her grandmother from losing more teeth after a stroke, has turned into building Primal Health, an international company tackling one of healthcare’s most overlooked problems: oral health.

Emily has led Primal Health through the challenges of launching products in both the human and pet markets, raising capital in a tough environment, and educating consumers and practitioners about a brand-new approach to oral care. Emily intended to build Primal Health, a human oral health brand, but had to pivot when she couldn’t penetrate the dental market. Now there’s Teef, an oral health company for dogs. And it’s working.

3 Key Takeaways

1. Creating a New Category Isn’t Easy

“We started in humans, but dentists didn’t wanna have anything to do with us ’cause they thought it would work and cut into their bottom line. So we pivoted to pets, and that saved our company.”

2. Founders Have to Be Resilient

“This is my fifth startup. It’s messy. Every single startup.”

3. The Mission Drives the Business Forward

“Our goal as a company is to be in every mouth at least once a day.”

Emily Stein’s journey highlights what it takes to build a business in uncharted territory: scientific credibility, entrepreneurial grit, and an unwavering mission. By blending innovation with resilience, she’s positioning Teef to transform how people, and their pets, approach oral care.

If you’re trying to sell ideas, products, and technology in the Healthcare industry, this podcast is for you.

For Brendan McAdams, sales in healthcare isn’t about pushing products, it’s about creating real fit, listening deeply, and helping founders build businesses that last. As the founder of Kiinetics, Brendan has worked with health tech startups and entrepreneurs to navigate one of the toughest industries out there: selling into hospitals, payers, and health systems.

With a career spanning UnitedHealthcare, WebMD, and startups across the health space, Brendan has seen firsthand what works (and what doesn’t) when it comes to turning an idea into traction. In this episode of The Irresistible Factor, he shares candid advice on how founders can approach sales not as a script, but as a conversation that builds credibility and long-term success.

Key Takeaways

Don’t Start with Building, Start with Listening

“Early stage startup founders often start by building something. And what I would suggest is before you do any building, go out and talk to as many people as you can in as many different areas.”

Sell the Transformation, Not the Features

“You really need to be selling the result, the transformation that’s gonna take place. It’s not about features, it’s about how this improves the experience for their patient."

Fit Matters More than the Pitch

“I’m really not looking to make a sale. Of course I’m looking to make a sale, but I’m looking to make a sale within the context of: does this fit? Because if it’s not a fit, if I can’t really solve for them, that’s gonna figure itself out sooner or later. And I’m just wasting my time.”

Brendan’s philosophy is clear: sales is about conversation, curiosity, and fit, not pressure. For founders navigating healthcare, his advice is a reminder that building relationships and understanding the customer deeply is what makes innovation stick.

After nearly burning out at her high-pressure job, Aisha Chottani knew something had to change. She swapped caffeine for meditation, cut sugar from her diet, and started paying attention to how she felt. The results were transformative, and they sparked the idea for Drink Moment.

Launched in 2020, Moment is a functional beverage brand inspired by the feeling you get after meditating. With no caffeine, alcohol, or added sugar, each can is infused with adaptogens to help reduce stress, support cognitive clarity, and reset your day.

“Wellness isn’t about not doing hard things,” Aisha says. “It’s about aligning your mind and body so you can feel good while doing them.”

Now leading a 10-person team, Aisha is building a brand that’s rooted in purpose and designed for scale, with every can purchased funding mental health programs.

Highlights from our conversation:

Build for impact, not optics
“Every decision should serve the customer first,” Aisha explains. Moment prioritizes clean ingredients, calm energy, and honest expectations.

From DTC to national reach
With 10,000+ subscribers and growing, the company is working to expand access through more retail partnerships and a shift toward broader distribution.

A product with purpose
Moment doesn’t promise overnight results, but its blends are designed to work over time. The result? A devoted community and a high repurchase rate.

Try Aisha’s favorite blend, Strawberry Rose, at drinkmoment.com and find your moment.

When Roger Ford heard the word “move” during a late-night meditation, he didn’t expect it to uproot his life. But within weeks, he and his wife had sold their healing center in the UK, bought a home in California online, and launched a brand-new chapter.

That leap of faith became Healing in America, a nonprofit dedicated to making energy healing more accessible and more credible within the U.S. healthcare system. “We teach people to follow their intuition,” Roger says. “So we had to live that ourselves.”

Rooted in more than four decades of practice, Roger’s mission goes beyond sessions and certifications. He’s building an ecosystem, training individuals, supporting trainers, and slowly integrating healing into clinics, hospitals, and everyday care.

Highlights from our conversation:

Scaling with integrity:
“We always wanted to train others and then train the trainers,” Roger says. “That’s how we scale: by finding the right people, holding high standards, and building a network of excellence.”

Challenging the status quo:
“I came here a bit naïve,” he admits. “I thought the medical system would welcome us. But it’s taken years of persistence and starting with nurses and functional medicine to build real bridges.”

Healing is for everyone:
“There’s no illness people can’t get better from,” Roger believes. “Our job is to remind them of that. The energy is the same; it’s the practitioner and the process that make the difference.”

Learn more about Roger’s story and explore his work at healinginamerica.com. 

Lisa Boduch is taking it head-on, with a career that began in the salon and evolved into national leadership roles. She understands both sides of the beauty industry. Now serving as VP of Sales and Education at Alfaparf Milano, Lisa is applying decades of experience to drive growth for a professional Italian brand that’s stayed intentionally boutique.

Her approach? Clear identity, disciplined storytelling, and meaningful innovation. In an industry often crowded by copycat products and big-box noise, Lisa is focused on long-term brand equity, operational excellence, and empowering the professionals at the heart of the business.

Key takeaways from our conversation:

Stay close to your core customer: Alfaparf’s strategy is rooted in deep relationships with salon professionals, not just as customers, but as advocates. Lisa’s priority is supporting them through education, training, and tools that help grow their businesses.

Stay true to your identity: As bigger brands chase mass market appeal, Alfaparf is leaning into its boutique positioning, Italian craftsmanship, and loyalty to the hairdresser.

Be ready to evolve: Whether it’s integrating AI tools or refining hero products, Lisa is focused on meaningful innovation, not just keeping up, but creating something new.

Want to see how a boutique brand competes in a crowded global market? Learn more at https://www.alfaparfmilanopro.com/us-en and watch how Lisa and her team are building trust, loyalty, and long-term impact, one salon at a time.

“PX stands for patient experience,” says Shareef Mahdavi, founder of the PX Movement. “My mission is to change the way that patients experience going to the doctor.”

With PX90, he’s applying his decades of experience in healthcare and customer service to help practices rethink their environments, retrain their teams, and rebuild trust, starting with a 90-day, exercise-themed program that includes warm-ups, cool-downs, and strategic “workouts.”

At its core, PX90 is about the mindset of the physician. “That’s really the goal of this: to help doctors see things from their patients’ perspective,” Shareef says. “We want to remind them why they became doctors in the first place.”

Key takeaways from our conversation:

• Patient-first isn’t optional anymore: “80-90% of patients are researching doctors online before they ever make contact with the office, and they’re not just looking at the doctor’s website, they’re looking at all the websites.”
• Service is strategy: “You can teach pretty much anyone to do anything, but you cannot teach a servant’s heart.”
• Doctors need support too: “The issue is that most practices are absolutely just missing it when it comes to this thing called customer experience, and in a medical context we want to call that patient experience.”

To bring the PX movement to your office, visit pxmovement.com or connect with Shareef on LinkedIn.

“You should always be heading toward something you’re proud of,” he says. “Something that feels like a meaningful contribution.”

That’s why, after a career negotiating some of the biggest deals in the travel industry, Lou Zameryka decided to build something with a much deeper impact. 

That mindset led Lou and his co-founder, Andrew, to the much-discussed notion of healthspan. Instead of asking how long people can live, they started asking: How well can they live? The answer: Alively, an incredible platform, focused on helping employees build better habits to live a more vibrant, healthier life. 

Aggregating data from wearables into a carefully curated behavior-change engine, Alively doesn’t overwhelm users with dashboards. It identifies a single health metric to improve, like REM sleep or burnout, offers five evidence-based ways to address it, and tracks results over time. Companies benefit by building a more resilient, agile workforce.

Highlights from our conversation:

• From insight to action: Alively pairs metrics with realistic, research-backed behavior shifts.
  
  
• B2B from the beginning: Rather than going directly to consumers, Lou and his team leaned into impacting as many people as possible, which led them to corporate partnerships. Their pilot programs are already helping HR teams tackle burnout and drive engagement.
  
  
• A mission beyond margins: “People don’t realize how good they could feel,” Lou says. Alively wants to change that—and shift the wellness conversation from short-term perks to long-term transformation.

Lou’s advice for founders? Start simple and just begin. “If you move, the world, for some reason, moves with you.”

Learn more at alively.com.