Brandon has a dynamic, 30-year leadership career spearheading several health technology businesses with an emphasis on growth, revenue, and operational excellence. He has run many high-growth environments, including start-ups, turnarounds, and $1B+ dollar businesses. As a serial entrepreneur, he has a proven record of founding new businesses and advancing them through growth and acquisition, merger, or roll-up including ScripPoint, Veridian, and AviaraMD. Since co-founding Xevant in 2017, an innovative business intelligence company delivering client optimization solutions that create value for its customers in the payer, consulting and PBM markets, Brandon has led a diverse team of employees spanning 3 continents comprising of data and software, sales and marketing, account management, and operations. He has proven to be a driving force for vision, new market strategy, revenue growth, technology development, and partner alliances.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Xevant all about?
Xevant is an Analytics and Automation technology solutions provider focused on reducing the cost of healthcare and improving patient outcomes. We enable healthcare payers, health plans, TPAs, PBMs, consultants, and brokers to deliver better insights and analytics to their end customers through a robust suite of data automation. Our solutions have helped thousands of employers groups reduce their cost of pharmacy benefits while providing health benefits administrators to realize increased efficiencies, productivity, and cost savings. The Xevant enterprise solution provides the industry’s largest independent collection of analytics and automation comprised of daily prescription claims data feeds powering 10 core modules across over 300 dashboards and over 3,000 reports and reporting measures supported by a team of client success personnel focused on client results.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I got my start in the pharmacy benefits space by taking a job to get through college nearly 30 years ago. The part-time job quickly turned into a career as I was given many opportunities to climb the ladder within a fast-growing company and an even faster growing market. By the time I graduated I was managing national sales for a Fortune 500 company and identifying a number of problems within the pharmacy benefits industry that needed to be solved. From 2000 to the day Xevant was founded, I made it my life’s mission to focus on solving industry issues through start-up businesses.
Fast forward to a business I co-founded in 2016 where we had several dozen clients coming on-board at a small consulting firm, we needed to solve for the decades-old problem of managing costs through data analysis, but we didn’t have the resources to pull it off. Instead, we got to work on a new internal solution to automate the process of running and analyzing dozens of reports while simultaneously automating the process of identifying problems facing each individual client.
By end of 2016 we had created a solution that automated client performance analysis and began rolling it out with each client. Nearly immediately, payers, PBMs, TPAs, and other consultants took note that our internal solution was doing things that had been on their wish list for years and they asked if they could purchase the solution. Instantly, we knew Xevant would be deployed within days. We had revenue before we had a business plan but quickly worked through marketization, business planning, and staffing for what became Xevant in early 2017.
What are your plans, how do you plan to grow this company?
With Xevant’s foundation established, our growth is achieved by replicating the foundation exponentially. Our recent round of investments gave us the resources to expand by adding key new leaders, a robust sales and marketing team, and resources for our product team. This is expanding our reach to a complex and mature market seeking solutions that we can provide today. We have remained hyper-focused on market penetration and product expansion.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business and what did you learn from it?
I wish I listened more! Early in my career it seemed I was overly focused on solving the world’s problems, therefore I didn’t give my predecessors the respect they deserved by listening to their stories more closely and seeking their counsel. The old adage that “if we do not learn from history we are doomed to repeat it” holds true for entrepreneurs. It is difficult to innovate and develop if your foundation excludes the failed or successful experiments of those that have forged the path before you.
What are three books or courses you recommend for new entrepreneurs?
Outward Mindset! This book and course has helped set the tone and culture for Xevant. It has helped transform the thinking instilled by corporate America to work towards one’s own goals, towards thinking that focuses on helping each other’s goals and objectives.
Second, Value Selling which emphasizes that sales are the king in any start-up business, and how to maximize sales production by value selling which has helped accelerate our own company’s success.
Lastly, Crossing the Chasm is a required reading for any technology or SaaS play. Achieving mass distribution is brutally difficult without the tricks found in this book.
What are the top 3 online tools and resources you’re currently using to grow your company?
In a nuanced business world of delivering results among a diverse team who are nearly all working remotely, our team has remained highly productive and collaborative through the use of these crucial online tools:
Monday.com: We use over 300 “boards” that automate critical business process across every functional area of the business. We eliminated over $100K in future expense by deploying Monday.com and combined several other tools into one. This is one of the secrets that any early-stage business owner should evaluate today.
Nectar: a relatively recent discovery for Xevant is the power of automated employee recognition and incentives. This powerful tool enables all employees to immediately recognize the work of others while giving employees points to buy company swag or cash out to spend on personal items.
Teams: although not ground-breaking, Teams transformed our business. Now that we all work remotely, Teams gives us the ability to connect and see people in real-time as if they are at the desk right next to you.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
One of the best lessons learned throughout my career happened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, the world was confronted with the new reality of nuanced work environments. For Xevant, we had previously remained committed to a near-strict policy of an in-office work environment where all employees were expected to work from Xevant offices. This policy existed because we valued the productivity that resulted from connecting in-person with teams of co-workers. After being forced to change to a work from home environment due to COVID-19, we were shocked by the improvements to productivity, morale, and employee satisfaction! We saw over a 20% increase in productivity and a 100% employee satisfaction rate after just 3 months of completely changing the work environment. This taught me that conclusions made in years past need to be re-evaluated and questioned on a regular basis to prevent missing out on previously untapped improvements and results.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
At Xevant, we’ve found that engaging our clients as distribution partners has proven to be the best method for marketing our solutions to the broader health benefits market. Our solutions enable our clients to provide additional value to their end customers, all while creating revenue opportunities resulting in a distribution channel of highly motivated industry-leading organizations distributing our solutions to the masses. Seeking and obtaining client references and case studies help us to effectively connect with our target direct market, augmented by a diverse set of traditional marketing approaches supported by a direct sales team of industry experts.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
Buy a cheap set of golf clubs and learn how to play golf. I learned more about myself, my competition, my customers, and my employees during the 5 hours hitting a ball around the course than I ever did inside the 4 walls of our office. It was while playing golf that we picked up our first customer before we even knew we had a product to sell.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Strike a balance. It is very easy to be enticed by the business opportunity itself, that you find yourself spending every waking hour actively engaged in the success of your enterprise. After starting 10 businesses over 20 years, the best advice I could give myself would be to maintain balance between work, personal life, family relationships, health, and community. Taking time away from work has given me fresh perspective that doesn’t come when you don’t afford yourself time away from your business. More importantly, if time isn’t given to these other areas of your life, they will likely not be there when you finally break through and exit from your successful business.
What is your favorite quote?
“Your level of success, will rarely exceed your level of personal development, because success is something you attract by the person you become.”
– Jim Rohn
Random Bonus: With the game on the line and 5 seconds on the clock, who takes the last shot? Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, or Lebron James?
MJ. No questions asked, every single time. No one delivers under pressure like MJ. He didn’t always make everyone happy and he had plenty enemies, but if the game is on the line and you needed a “must win”, you always give the ball to the one player that delivers.
How can we get in touch with you?
I am a big believer in staying connected. I can be contacted by phone, email, text, DMs, and shockingly, if you clearly state your purpose – I will respond.
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