Luke Etter: Visionary Founder Scaling Advanced Solution Without External Funding

it is my job to get the right players on the bus and when I was able to accomplish that and I started building this executive team out I started landing some really heavy hitters with great industry experience, great workplace experience and we just come together as 1 and we do share a unified vision at this point. Everybody's bought in on what we're doing but I think it just goes back to leading by example and working extremely hard and setting that daily example day in and day out.

It's easier to get people to buy into what you're doing. If you're leading from example in the front, rather than just bossing people around Welcome to Super Entrepreneurs Podcast. I'm your host, Shahid Durrani. Today we have with us Luke Etter. Luke is the visionary founder and CEO of Advanced Solution, a trailblazing

force within the wound care industry. Welcome to our show, my friend. Thank you, Shahid. I greatly appreciate you having me on here this morning. Great to have you on here. What really got my attention is how you got this company launched without any external help. Funded the entire thing.

I would like to hear from your own words. What went through in that journey to make that happen? And then if there's anything that you learn. While achieving this feat for your company that could help another entrepreneur. Absolutely. That's a great question. I'd love to answer it for you. So I'll take you back to 2019 when I founded advanced solution. I was working in corporate America.

I worked for some of the competing organizations in the wound care industry I have about a decade of experience in this industry. And you hit it on the head there. I have grown this company to where it's at today with zero external funding. We've never taken one loan. We have truly scaled this from the ground up. It was originally just my mother, Teresa, the CFO of this company.

She's actually the OG. She guards the pocketbook. And it was just her and I, it was just her and I, and, we got started shortly after I brought in our chief operating officer and my business partner and co owner, Jonathan Sharp, and us three set out on this quest of, growing advanced solution and trying to make it a pivotal player in this market space. And we've done just that we've scaled to, we now have 20 employees on salary here about 2. 5 million dollars of payroll.

And we're eating market share right now. I was just talking with our executives here at our conference table at the beginning of this week. And, we're marching down the court right now. And you look to the left and you look to the right. And the only thing I see are publicly traded companies on the NASDAQ. That just to give you an idea of the level that we have reached. And it's pretty exciting. So that's how I've got to, Where I'm at, Shahid with that being said I'm a serial entrepreneur.

I have a, a great entrepreneurial spirit. And in addition to Advanced Solution, I have founded another company called MedCollect, which we are starting to scale and we're growing awfully fast. And I've also been running Etter Events. So we have an event center here that I'm running as well. I'm an entrepreneur at heart and I appreciate you having me on here. No, no worries. Basically how you got it funded was with your own money. That's correct. Yeah, that's correct.

So basically as we started to do well, I just poured back into the company. Rather than cashing out and taking big paydays, I poured back into the vision. I'm a visionary. And Jonathan and I decided that we were going to scale this and that was important to us. So You know, there were, 2019, 2020, 2021, that was us continuing to pour back into the company so we could continue to scale without, taking any outside funding.

And, speaking of visionary, how do you actually communicate your vision to the entire company,? How do you get that vision to penetrate all that is?

Which is your company? Absolutely. I think first and foremost, I take great pride in leading by example. So that is first and foremost here. The second thing is I got a great group of executives working at our executive table and, as the CEO of advanced solution, it is my job to get the right players on the bus.

And, when I was able to accomplish that and I started building this executive team out I started landing some really heavy hitters with great industry experience, great relationship ships, great workplace experience. And we just come together as 1 and we do share a unified vision at this point. Everybody's bought in on what we're doing. But I think it just goes back to leading by example and working extremely hard and setting that daily example day in and day out.

It's easier to get people to buy into what you're doing. If, you're leading from example in the front, rather than just, bossing people around, if that makes sense. Yeah, no. Oh, a hundred percent. Now, you identified some gaps here in the market in the wound care medical billing. Can you share with us some processes that you use to, to uncover?

These pain points to find a solution for, or was it just pop into your head one day because you were in this field or was it a serial journey into the concept formation? That's a great question. So I'll take it back to my previous roles, coming from corporate America and working in this space for the past decade. Before finding founding advanced solution that did an awful lot for me. I was able to see what good looked like and what bad looked like as well.

And I was able to take a lot of that bad and bring it here to advanced solution and streamline those things. We work in the wound care industry in a very volatile and insurance driven market. So these products, these skin grafts, they are constantly changing. The reimbursement landscape is ever changing. And a lot of these manufacturers. Are married to the products that they manufacture. So they're pinpointed and pigeonholed enter advanced solution. That's what makes us unique.

We're not married to anything. We're able to stay light on our feet, adapt, pivot, be proactive rather than reactive. And it's truly what separated us. It's truly what's, generated so much growth here over the past 24 months. That right there, what I just said, being able to be light on our feet and adapt to the market. But when you initially launched this startup was it apparent these gaps or you worked your way into them? Absolutely.

I think that the, the gap there is, we're partnering with clinicians all over the country and we are becoming a true partner to them. We're streamlining the buy and build process for them. So we're not looking for a quick sale. We're looking for longevity with our clinicians and, come from these other companies, they're missing the knot on that. They're not truly making themselves a true partner to the clinic and that's what we're doing here at advanced solution.

So that need right there was apparent to me and we were able to put processes and procedures in place. I call it a proprietary program. We have a proprietary program here at advanced solution that

we implement in that clinician's clinic to set them up for success. And these billings are directly to the insurance companies yeah. So I can talk about that a little bit and, give you a bird's eye view of how it works. Essentially the physician will identify a patient that could need some help. They need a skin graft. They will reach out to us and we will check the patient's insurance verification, make sure that the patient is covered for that.

This is all automated in the backend, the system does it. Yup. This is automated on the backend. We actually have a contract with a third party company that does all of this for us. So they'll spit back the results upon the patient being covered for the product. The physician will use the graft. We'll ship it into them. He'll use the graft. He then bills it out through the patient's insurance. And, typically within a few weeks he will get paid.

And, we put these physicians on a net 60 billing cycle. Within 60 days that, we're getting our money back. Are you going to branch out to Canada, no, we're just focused on the United States right now. But we are, we're doing business in 35 states right now. And, it's our goal to pretty good. Yeah we've grown an awful lot. We're doing an awful lot of business in California and Texas. So there, there are some hot spots for us.

Speaking of growth, can you share some strategies that you live by or you discovered that helped you experience this growth, which

could help another business owner? That might be listening or watching. I think, it comes back to, having a growth mindset and, not only professionally, but personally as well in your personal life. Whenever you shift your thinking a little bit. Yeah. You know what I'm talking about? Whenever you shift your thinking, And you change the perspective, you can break it. It all changes. It truly does. It's pretty cool.

Yeah. That's how you get the help that you need when you're fusing with that feeling and that excitement, that enthusiasm, You feel like some of these ideas or these plans or these concepts that you want to do, they start becoming more apparent and when they become more apparent, you actually feel incredible when you've discovered them within or somewhere out here and you realize, whoa, this is what I needed. So you must have experienced those kinds of wake up calls or aha moments.

Yes, that was very well said. Actually, I've had quite a few of those aha moments. Yeah, you're pretty cool. That's fun. That's awesome. But is there anything else that you do strategy wise to grow your business that could help someone? I think, one of the things I've learned is as the CEO here, as we've continued to scale, I mentioned it a little bit ago about getting the right people on the bus here. It's really important.

And once you do get the right executives in place, and you remove yourself from the daily operation and you're able to start delegating. That's when you really open yourself up to be able to grow. And we started doing that 24 months ago and the growth we've seen is significant. It's not anything I'm doing. It's the people that I have in place here. We have a great team, a dedicated team. And a God fearing team and it's, we're all having fun. It's fun over here. It's fun. Fun is important.

Yeah. Fun is definitely creative. We're having fun. That's wonderful. That's wonderful. Also I noticed that you built some great partnerships, relationships with, medical building experts with med collect. Can you speak about how you build these partnerships are strategic partners? Where is mutually beneficial, obviously, it has to be a win or win situation. What do you exactly do? To find these ideal partners and then build upon it.

Yeah. So one of the, you were talking about it earlier about some of the needs in the market. And one of the pain points that I saw was the billing side of these skin substitutes. These clinics is very specialized and it's a headache for a lot of these clinics. A lot of these clinics have to contract their billing out to a third party company. And a lot of the times.

That third party company is not sufficient in skin substitute billing, CPT billing cause that's a very specialized type of billing. So you start seeing claims get denied and the sales cycle gets really messy. So that's what prompted me to find MedCollect, found MedCollect. And what we're doing at MedCollect is we have vetted some of the top billing agencies in the country that are specialized in skin substitute billing. And we are taking our valued customers and we are plugging them in.

To these billing agencies that are very specialized in skin substitutes. They're setting the clinic up for success and cleaning, keeping that sales cycle. Nice and clean. So that's what we're doing at med collect. We're providing solutions. It goes hand in hand with advanced solution. Med collect is truly advanced solution sister company. It's a solutions oriented company.

And it's a testament to us trying to partner with that clinic on a deeper level and, facilitate good business on behalf of their clinic. Yeah. No, wonderful. And, speaking of two companies and they're big companies and it requires a tremendous amount of management skills, focus, attention delegating.

Like you mentioned, you have the right people in the right positions, but how do you organize your own task and responsibilities and to ensure everything is running smoothly, especially when there's multiple companies involved? I think that's a good question. And I will give a lot of props to my assistant, Daniel Kent. My, he's great. My executive assistant is great. And. Man, does he keep me on track? So I would be lost without him to be quite honest with you.

So I'm going to give him the spotlight on that question and he keeps me focused. I'm a very schedule oriented guy. I like my schedule, so I'm all about maximizing time. We only have so many hours in the day. And it's very important that my schedule is dialed in and I'm maximizing those hours that we're working because there is an awful lot going on over here, with advanced solution and med collect there's a lot of direction that needs given on a daily basis.

There's a lot of fires that need put out. I hope that answers your question a little bit. No, yeah, just looking for more on your side of things. But what it sounds like is that you already have someone in place to manage that for you, which is wonderful that you reached that position. But if there's any guidance, even if anything comes up while we're speaking that could help someone become better organized, you can share, no problem. I would say, yeah, I could speak to that a little bit.

I would say preparation is key. So you should never start your day without knowing what you're looking to accomplish. So the night before. I'm already prepping for the next day. I already have my to do list. I know exactly I'm dialed in. I know exactly what needs done for that day. So I think preparation is key. Yeah, I would say preparation. Good. Yeah, the night before writing down what you need to accomplish the next day and you work on accomplishing that list before you do anything else.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. No, that's good. So you're a, dog dad you're busy with the family life as well. Can you speak about balancing work and life and personal life

while running these two companies? Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So first and foremost, I'm a husband and. Yesterday was actually our second anniversary. We celebrated our second anniversary. Thank you very much. So first and foremost, that is my top priority, my wife. And making sure I'm serving her appropriately. Balance is important. And I'm not going to sit here and lie. It can be tricky at times. Especially, when you're trying to run two organizations.

Work life balance at times gets a little, a little sketchy. It's important to stay grounded. And just gratitude is important. Taking a second to reflect and show gratitude. And I don't really know what else to say besides that. Are you going to integrate artificial intelligence, yeah, that's a great question. I'm glad you brought that up. So we are actually getting ready to launch a proprietary software. We have put a lot of monies and time into getting this software to market.

It's going to be launched in September. We're really excited about that. It's truly going to revolutionize the way these practices and clinics track their tissues. There's a lot of compliance and regulatory that comes along with using skin substitutes and making sure you're tracking things appropriately and documenting. And this software is lights out. It is going to be a clinician's best friend. It's going to keep them compliant and it's going to help increase good business within their clinic.

We're really excited. Wonderful. Anything that's going to help people out there with these kinds of innovations, some people are afraid of AI, some people are embracing it. But at the end of the day, if we can utilize it to make things more efficient it's incredible. I had an idea about.

Incorporating artificial intelligence for x ray readings, it could be created in artificial intelligence to read x rays and provide a report Unless it's required, a human being to look into it, obviously to double check. But I think artificial intelligence could do a very good job at reading x rays. I I'm intrigued. It sounds, I would agree with you. I think you should definitely look into it. I might just do that. Yeah, do it. Just remember me though.

And then everybody else that's listening to watch yeah, no. Yeah, it could be something, it will definitely make things more streamlined and just like your idea, what you're talking about incorporating artificial intelligence is going to change, not just your company, but everybody that's dealing with your company, their experience will elevate, I'm very excited about artificial intelligence. It's definitely a hot topic these days.

And it excites me as well, that's the reason trying to integrate some of it into, our advanced solution model. I think that, I think it's quite powerful. It was great having you on a show today. It was wonderful speaking to you, wishing you all the best. The market is so huge. You're just scratching the surface. I guess you would say there's a lot that you can do in this field.

So I'm wishing you all the best. I greatly appreciate that. I greatly appreciate you having me on here today. And I look forward to future collaborations with you. 100 percent. Thank you, my friend. Thank you.