In this episode of the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast, host Steven Schwartz interviews Jonathan Dunn, CEO of Cerbo, a software platform designed for concierge and direct pay medical practices. Jonathan shares his journey from an oil and gas engineer to leading Cerbo, emphasizing the importance of flexibility and customization in healthcare software. The conversation covers Cerbo’s unique offerings, pricing model, and the target audience, highlighting the growing trend of direct pay practices in the healthcare industry. Jonathan also shares success stories and encourages providers to pursue innovative healthcare solutions.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Jonathan Dunn and Cerbo
06:21 Understanding Cerbo’s Unique Offerings
12:11 Customer Insights and Success Stories
18:11 Closing Thoughts on Healthcare Transformation
20:35 Introduction to Concierge Medical Marketing
20:36 Strategies for Growing Your Practice

Steven Schwartz (00:24)
and welcome to the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. I’m your host, Steve Schwartz, and I’m so glad to have Jonathan Dunn from Cerbo. Jonathan, thanks for being here today.

Jonathan Dunn (00:36)
Thanks for having me on the show, Steve.

Steven Schwartz (00:38)
Truly, truly my pleasure. It’s been great getting to know you off camera, learning a little bit more about your business and your story and getting to meet your bride and kiddo and just family man. I love it. Let’s do this. Why don’t we get into let’s get into our discussion today. Please tell us about first of all, tell us about yourself, where you came from, your studies to get to where you are now as the CEO of Cerbo.

Jonathan Dunn (01:07)
Yeah, thank you, Steven And once again, it’s a pleasure to be on the show today and really excited about the opportunity to share my story, learn a little and share with the community. Part of what I do as a CEO, which I’ll talk to here in a moment, is just making sure that we’re being additive to this growing industry that’s happening here and this changing health care for the better and just really appreciative of this opportunity. But to answer your question directly about my background, historically, prior to my time here at Cerbo,

I was an oil and gas engineer for 10 years working on oil rigs. My wife worked on oil rigs. I was more in processing facilities. I’m an electrical engineer by background, so very much process-oriented numbers type of person. Went to business school with my wife and we thought we were going to do something different post business school, working at a big consulting firm or a large Fortune 500 company. But always had this entrepreneurial itch that we had scratched prior to business school together, but really learned about an opportunity for us to

bet on ourselves and go find a small medium sized business to acquire. And so that’s what we ended up doing was raising some money from investors to go out that go out and pursue that path ourselves and have the unique opportunity of running across servo and not just servo as the software product, but also just this industry of direct pay cash pay and learned a lot about that doing diligence had the opportunity for servo reached out to the sellers was able to make that transaction happen where

with our group, we purchased Cerbo and inserted myself as CEO and my partner and wife, Courtney Dunn as president. So we’ve been doing that since April, 2022. And we’re not just 10 toes in, we’re 20 toes in, maybe even 30 toes in with our daughter all in this space. And I could talk a little bit more about Cerbo, but that’s just a high level about my background.

Steven Schwartz (02:56)
Yeah, I think it’s helpful to know where our guests came from, right? It’s not like you just woke up one day and said, hey, I want to start a new business that provides EMR systems or payment systems for cash pay medical practices, right? You came from somewhere. You did schooling. You tried a 10-year career in oil and gas industry. We all have stories that gets us to where we are today. And I think that makes

It’s so much more rich getting to know the backstory, right? Even watching a TV show, when you have the backstory, it’s so much more interesting and so much more real as opposed to, hi, my name’s Bob. So it adds the depth. But thank you for sharing that. Tell me right now, share with our audience about Cerbo the company and the specific distinct products that you offer to cash pay medical practices.

Jonathan Dunn (03:56)
Sure, for those who are unfamiliar with CERMA, we’re an electronic health records practice management and patient portal software platform. So if you are in the direct pay space, whether that’s concierge, direct primary care, or integrative functional medicine, you have more of a root cause approach to working with patients, we’re likely the best tool for you. The other caveat I’d say there is if you have very limited insurance reimbursements, we’re even better for you.

because if you’re familiar with working with hospital grade systems or urgent care systems, there’s a lot of workflows that are predefined for you because those systems are more geared towards insurance reimbursements or third party reimbursements because Cerbo is, that’s not our strong point, but it’s our, it’s our competitive advantage when it comes to serving this industry because we don’t have the limitations of those workflows that come through revenue cycle management oriented systems. Ours really allows you to practice medicine the way that you want to.

whatever that may look like. And there’s a lot of different solutions and answers as to what that workflow would look like for your practice. As far as some of the people that use our product, some of the things they really are excited about are how our labs are integrated fully within our systems. We have a lot of labs that are outside of the big diagnostic labs that you’re more familiar with. If you have more into precision medicine and some of these more integrative functional medicine approaches of labs.

We integrate with many of those in a bi-directional manner. We also have a lot of the workflows that we have to allow you to really just do things in a way that make you the most efficient, whether that’s with our integrated patient portal where you can do communications and scheduling. If you have a marketing website that’s your front end, well, we can do some customizations to make that mirror your main marketing website for the patient portal. And your patients can see labs and documentations. You can share.

educational material with them. And there’s just a lot of, the list goes on and on with a lot of ways that we help try to help our providers be successful in starting their businesses. One of the things that’s really core to Cerbo and I’ll this last little point is that we recognize that many of the providers that we support are also entrepreneurs. So they’re learning a lot of things out on their own. Many of you have gone to medical school and are fantastic patient facing doctors. And you’re looking for a system that allows you to really focus on the patient and the outcomes of the patient.

And that’s really where our product shines, suppose.

Steven Schwartz (06:21)
Right, so what I’m hearing is you have predefined workflows built into the software, but it’s also customizable and flexible for particular unique usage.

Jonathan Dunn (06:34)
Said another way, not necessarily predefined workflows, but the workflows are not necessarily as strict and allows the providers to determine a workflow that works best for their practice and their style of practice and their team that they have.

Steven Schwartz (06:46)
Very cool, very cool. It sounds like there is a lot of flexibility. And one thing I’ve discovered in working with Concierge physicians is that everybody wants it their own way, just a little special here or just a little custom there. One size does not certainly fit all. And so it sounds like your product is perfect for those folks.

Jonathan Dunn (07:11)
Yes, another reason that you’re absolutely right, Steven, and another reason that our product is perfect for this community is that we’ve been around for 10 to 12 years and this is the community that we serve. This software was built with a lot of feedback and perspective from the cash based community. And so that’s really why we feel like that’s a perfect fit for us. That’s what we hear from new customers coming to us. Many of them often say, where have you been my entire career? I’ve been looking for a solution just like yours.

And they generally end up being pretty pleased working with us along the way.

Steven Schwartz (07:42)
That’s awesome. Do you find that you work more with single practitioner practices or the two to three physician, physician assistant or with big groups or all of the above?

Jonathan Dunn (07:53)
Yeah.

We’re more in the medium size. So I’d say two to three providers, patient facing providers with a company staff, maybe four to five on the back end, whether you have a scheduler, admin, maybe a nurse practitioner. And depending on what other services you have, whether that’s a health coach on staff, a nutritionist and such. So that’s more of our sweet spot. We do have a lot of solo providers who work with us and they’re with us long enough that they tend to grow over time. So they may start off.

This is the beautiful thing about this community. More than likely, from my observation, so you may not see this written down anywhere, most of our providers are women. And when I meet a lot of entrepreneurs who are out there deciding to go practice medicine this route, it’s usually the wife who’s patient facing and the husband is doing all of the other back end stuff. And they tend to, after they’re doing that for a while, understand how to grow their business. They may add staff to their clinic or their practice and end up growing over time.

That’s usually the story that happens a lot when they come in as a solo provider. They tend to typically grow over time. And I won’t say that Cerbo is the reason that they grow, but we do allow them to focus on other parts of the business and we’ll take care of the EHR side of things.

Steven Schwartz (09:07)
that’s very cool. As far as your pricing model, I’ve spoken to other folks that have multiple solutions, there may be one price for everything per month or one price for part A if you just want part A and then another price for part B if you want part B. You don’t need to share what the investment is, of course.

Can you explain generally how your pricing model works for a physician who may be considering your service?

Jonathan Dunn (09:39)
Sure, so our pricing model scales as you grow. So it is a per license, per employee at your clinic. There are some base setup fees. So if you have a patient portal, if you have a fax line, some of those are just consumable type products that we also have. But as far as the licenses to access our product, that will be determined by the number of people at your clinic. And as that scales up and down.

The way that our pricing model is today is you’re adding clinic, so adding providers or staff at your practice that you’ll just add those additional licenses as you grow. So we can scale right alongside with you as your clinic is growing or practice is growing.

Steven Schwartz (10:15)
Right, and so

for each new person, a new staff person that’s added to the seat license, they get access to essentially everything that you offer as part of it.

Jonathan Dunn (10:28)
No,

no, it’s not everything. So of course, if you’re a provider patient facing, there’s a provider license that comes with if whether you need e-prescribing or not, or if you don’t need e-prescribing. But then we have several different flavors of what access other people at your clinic may need. And there are different prices for those. So it’s not one price gets all the same access. It depends on the role.

of the person at that clinic. And we can go through that on a sales call to break that down, depending on what your clinic looks like today and what it may look like in the future. And then scope out what the pricing would be for a clinic of your size.

Steven Schwartz (11:01)
Excellent. So what type of data would a prospective customer physician have to bring with them in order to have an effective sales call or strategy call with you?

Jonathan Dunn (11:16)
Yeah, that’s a great question. it depends. There’s two different people who come to us. One is if you’re an existing clinic. So if you have an existing EHR, most of the information you’re going to know how many active patients you have, how many total patients you have active and active, what integrations are you currently using, how many employees you have, what are the roles of those employees, and then what type of practice you’re doing. So of course, you’re going to know all of those things that come in. So if you’re an existing practice, most of that you know. If you’re a new practice or planning to open up your practice right now,

as we’re recording this, it’s into November going into December. So we’re seeing a lot of people who are trying to make the push to making a decision on an EHR to start the new year with. So we’re going through that cycle right now, which is very seasonal and very typical. Those, it’s a lot of it you don’t know yet. Some of them don’t even know the business name yet, which is fine. We can work with you on that. That doesn’t have to be defined upfront. But really, if you are coming as a brand new practice,

there’s not a whole lot that you need to come with because you don’t necessarily have patients or you may be migrating patients from somewhere else if you’re breaking off from another clinic. You would want to know about what EHR are you coming from, how many active patients that you have there. And then we can, a lot of this could be defined throughout the implementation process, but what labs are you interested in being integrated with? Do you want to have an E-fax lab? Do you plan on doing E-prescribing? Some of those common things that we can definitely clean that, assess out during the

during the sales process to get more details and understanding more about what you’re trying to accomplish.

Steven Schwartz (12:45)
Yeah, it sounds pretty straightforward. I’m sure you have some calculator program and sort of fill in the numbers and the details and come up with a number and explain how as the cash pay practice grows and as staff is added, either physician or support staff, how much additional it’s going to be per month and so that there’s no surprises.

Jonathan Dunn (13:08)
Absolutely, absolutely. We try to make it as simple, as transparent as possible. And that’s our goal and that’s what we strive for.

Steven Schwartz (13:16)
Very cool. People love stories, and stories allow us to really get a good feel for a product or a service or a situation. Do you have a story that sticks out in your mind as something that you’d like to share with our listeners?

Jonathan Dunn (13:33)
Yeah, I could share one and I’ll share part of one story and I’ll show where other people, where you can go learn more stories about how specifically there’s a couple of doctors who are DPC doctors, all amazing women who use Cervo and they talk actually leading a podcast or webinar about that. And it really talked about how they use Cervo to gain efficiencies at their clinic. But one of the things really has to do around the integrated labs.

That’s one thing that in my view is really powerful. Some other EHRs have it. They may not have it in the same way that Cerbo does it, where we’re pulling information off of that lab so we can have trackable lab data results and have that in a way that makes a lot of sense for the providers to provide. That’s one thing we hear over and over again that sets us apart from some of other EHR systems where you can get a PDF of a lab and that’s helpful to get that information in.

Where is that information showing up in my EHR? Can I pull that into a soap note and make that part of my charting exercise or creating my default charts where I can pull in those lab results and not have to click in multiple different places to get that information to come in? And that’s just a small way of how we’re using our product, but I’ll make sure to follow up with you afterwards where you’re anyone who wants to hear more specifically about DPC doctors or using servo.

to gain efficiencies at their clinic, I’ll follow up afterwards where they can see that information.

Steven Schwartz (14:58)
Sure, I think that sounds great. And can you please share with our audience the website address and phone number, whichever way that you would recommend people to get in touch with you if they want to learn more about Cerbo.

Jonathan Dunn (15:11)
Absolutely. So you can go to cer.bo, that’s C as in Charlie, E as in Echo, R as in Robert, that B as in Bravo, O. And you can go there to look at some case studies if you have more questions that you want to of poke around there. We have an interactive demo that if you don’t, if you’re not quite ready to speak to someone yet, but you want to kind of navigate the own, an interactive demo, you can sign up for that as well. And then if you are ready to make the jump or talk to someone on our sales team.

We have wonderful sales team that’s more than really excited to talk with anyone. You’ll be able to schedule a demo call there with our all on our Cerbo, cer.bo website.

Steven Schwartz (15:51)
Nice and that’s obviously a no obligation discussion with your sales team to see if this is the right fit for their practice and if it is great, let’s get started and if it’s not nice to meet you and no pressure, correct?

Jonathan Dunn (15:54)
Absolutely.

Well, yes, it’s not even that if it’s not most of the time is maybe it’s not right now. Once again, I feel very convinced that if you are a direct pay practice, we’re likely the best tool for you. And that’s just for me talking to customers, seeing customers who’ve been able to grow using our solution. And a lot of times it’s just I’m not there right now or I’m thinking about it or I have a contract with my current HR provider that I can’t get out of. So, I think it’s definitely.

no commitment, it’s more of an educational, letting you understand is provided what options are out there, especially if you’re unfamiliar with Cerbo, just to let you know what’s there.

Steven Schwartz (16:43)
Very, very cool. I’ve really enjoyed our discussion today, Jonathan. Thank you. One thing I wanted to mention is that through our podcast, we want to offer the services and products and connections that Concierge medical practitioners, direct primary care, the folks in this industry have a chance to meet the other people who are involved.

so that everyone can succeed, everyone can win, and everyone can grow to whatever their goals may be for their family and for their practice, for their business. Through my company, Concierge Medical Marketing, our goal is to help these physicians to grow their practice to the panel level and income level that they desire to help generate, obviously, the best patient outcomes with the least amount of stress

and burnout for the physician and their staff as possible. And as far as resources goes, I wrote a book called The Definitive Guide to Winning with Digital Marketing for Concierge Medical Practices. And this book is available as a digital download absolutely free from our website, conciergemd.marketing. Simply go to the website, scroll down the page, look for the picture of the book and put in your email address and click the submit button.

our system will send you a link where you can download that book with my compliments. Again, free of charge. It’s over 100 pages and there’s tons and tons of actionable information in there to help a physician and or their office staff to grow their practice to whatever size they wish to grow using effective digital marketing. So again, that’s my gift to you. Obviously, if there’s any questions that someone has about the content of the book,

or content on our webinar, people are welcome to reach out to me directly, Steve Schwartz. My phone number is 772-304-2420. And I’m happy to accept those calls and answer any questions that may come up. So hopefully that resource can be available and accessible and helpful to whomever wishes to download it.

Jonathan Dunn, it’s truly been my pleasure interviewing you today for the podcast. I wish you and your family all the very, best with your business and growth and helping many, many physicians grow their companies and be super successful. Is there anything else you’d like to add before we call it a day here?

Jonathan Dunn (19:23)
Steve, once again, I appreciate the opportunity for this. Once again, even if Cerbo is not the best solution for you, which it may not be for everyone, I just want to give a shout out to all the providers who are pursuing this path, changing healthcare for the best. I always want to give you a pat on the back and just say, we support you whether you use Cerbo or not, because it’s all for the greater good of changing healthcare for the better.

Steven Schwartz (19:45)
I love it. So many people I’ve talked to are frustrated with the standard insurance based medical model, not enough time with their physician, frustrated with co-pays and keeping track of all this stuff, surprise billing. There’s a lot of stuff that drives people crazy. And the more I learn about concierge and direct pay medical as an industry, the more I love it. And the more I think

that the fact that it’s growing as fast as it is, we’re truly making a difference and gonna make healthcare for all Americans so much better in the long run. I absolutely believe it.

Well, again, Jonathan, thank you for your time tonight. And it’s been my pleasure. Steve Schwartz with the Concierge Medical Marketing Podcast. We’ll sign off for now and wish you all a very pleasant day. Have a great day.

Jonathan Dunn (20:34)
Thank you,