In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with John, founder of CoreSpeed, a 22-year-old technology company that has built enterprise platforms, SaaS products, and marketing automation tools, several of which were taken public or divested. John explains how a personal experience during an IVF fertility journey, where his wife was told to buy random supplements online, revealed how little training doctors receive in wellness and how unregulated the supplement industry really is. That frustration led him to launch CoreSpeed Health, a business-to-business platform that lets physicians quickly build a branded storefront offering engineered, evidence-based supplement protocols, plus a direct-to-consumer brand called PharmaBuilt. The conversation also covers John's earlier career, growing an industrial machinery business from 3 percent to over 34 percent market share through technology and customer training, and founding MedServe Global, a medical travel company that connected self-insured employers with accredited international hospitals until Affordable Care Act uncertainty stalled the business. John closes with advice for CEOs about embracing constant change and eliminating organizational bureaucracy.
A serial entrepreneur explains how he built an easy button letting doctors prescribe engineered supplement protocols in minutes.
Can you tell everyone about CoreSpeed and what you're working on there?
CoreSpeed is a 22-year-old company that has helped enterprises adopt technology, built multi-tenant platforms and marketing automation tools, and taken some companies public through M&A. After a period of semi-retirement, I decided to help physicians recommend nutritional supplements more effectively. That became CoreSpeed Health, and we also run a direct-to-consumer brand called PharmaBuilt.
What actually pushed you into focusing on nutritional supplements and physician recommendations?
My wife and I were going through IVF, and the fertility clinic handed us a list of about 30 supplements and told us to just buy them on Amazon. I knew from my own research as an endurance hiker that roughly 80 percent of supplements online are mislabeled or fake. It bothered me that doctors weren't equipped to guide patients on something this important.
Doctors are usually risk averse and worried about their licenses. How do you get them to recommend supplements, especially yours?
Supplements aren't well regulated in the US, and I actually believe they should be, because regulation weeds out people who aren't serious. Doctors want evidence-based information and they don't have time to explain much to patients, so we built a platform that lets a doctor generate a fully branded site in about six minutes with engineered, research-backed protocols they can recommend in seconds.
How does the CoreSpeed Health model actually work for doctors and patients?
We give doctors a branded brochure with QR codes linking to their own site. Patients scan the code, add the protocol to their cart, and check out. Every 30 days they get a box with 60 daily packets in the mail, so they just open one packet morning and night. It's easy for the patient, and it creates passive recurring income for the doctor without needing more staff or facilities.
You studied economics and interpersonal communications at the University of Georgia in the late 70s. What pulled you toward that combination?
I was good at it. I originally wanted to be a wildlife biologist, but my future wife pointed out the low pay and time away from home, so I stuck with core classes in economics and added communications as a second major. I've never directly used economics in my career, but the underlying principles apply to every business I've built.
What led you to build MedServe Global in the medical travel space?
Our healthcare system is expensive and messed up. We built a network of 50 Joint Commission accredited hospitals in 11 countries with US board certified physicians, offering concierge care and saving self-insured employers 65 to 90 percent on surgeries. It was working well until the Affordable Care Act debate created two years of uncertainty that froze new deals, so we eventually sold the technology.
If you could put a billboard in front of every CEO in America with one piece of advice for the next decade, what would it say?
Change will be constant. If you don't change, you're going to die. I've taken many companies through digital transformations, and the ones that succeeded embraced change and stripped away outdated systems, while the ones that failed clung to old processes just because that's how they'd always done things.
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