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Lost the Biggest Account of His Life, Then Grew 40X: $750K on the Shelves, Survival Mode, Holy Hour

Breaking the Barrier

==== Breaking the Barrier is Sponsored by US Digital Partners (founding sponsor). Find out how US Digital Partners helps chip away at your goals by delivering a customized roadmap of marketing tactics and methodically at www.usdigitalpartners.com ==== ABOUT Phil Berry sits down with Nick Madden to break down how a distributorship doing $400,000 a year, bought on a cashed 401(k), became a health company running near $100 million. Berry spent his first five years in survival mode, juggling payables and coaching his kids in the afternoons, before winning the biggest account in his company's history — 50 clinic sites, roughly six times his annual revenue, landing all at once. Forty-five days later the client was acquired, he went to Milwaukee to re-sell it in his best suit, nailed the presentation, and lost it anyway. That left $750,000 of inventory on his shelves and a staff he had to lay off. He stopped surviving deal to deal and started moving with intention — naming the self-funded employer market, bootstrapping a mail-order pharmacy, and coming to hold the company as something he stewards rather than owns. Northwind has since grown 40X in seven years to roughly $100 million in revenue, serving about 200,000 people. Along the way Berry lays out why American healthcare costs keep climbing while people get less healthy, why nobody in a $5 trillion industry is paid for the outcome everyone claims to want, what he tells his team about using AI without outsourcing their own thinking, and the 4:30 AM holy hour that orders the rest of it. Chapters 0:00  $750,000 on the Shelves 0:53  Meet Phil Berry 3:06  Sales, Branch Offices, and a Restless Start 15:38  Telemedicine, Leverage, and Buying a Business 23:28  Five Years of Survival, and What the Family Felt 36:03  The Biggest Account He Ever Won, and Lost 42:44  Moving With Intention 48:21  Not Yours to Own: Becoming a Steward 58:54  Why Nobody Is Paid to Make You Healthier 1:16:47  AI, Agency, and Human Flourishing 1:38:48  The Holy Hour and the 4:30 AM Routine 1:48:22  Rapid Fire and the Closing Word About the guest Phil Berry is the founder and CEO of Northwind Health, which helps companies with self-funded health plans control costs by producing health in their members and reducing waste in plan design. ______________________ ► JOIN THE MOVEMENT: #BESENT Learn More - https://www.sentventures.com ______________________ ► SUBSCRIBE TO BREAKING THE BARRIER iTunes - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-the-barrier/id1886035329 Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1k5gtLQcde9ihmOjpVhYnD/ ______________________ ► FOLLOW SENT VENTURES https://www.linkedin.com/company/sententrepreneurs https://www.facebook.com/sentventures https://www.instagram.com/sentventures https://x.com/SentVentures