Julia Regan - Co-Founder and CEO of RxLightning: Female Founder Advice, Leveraging Your Network, and Growing as a CEO

Julia Regan  00:00

There's so much that goes on in someone's thoughts. And if you've demonstrated success before, believe that you could do the same thing again. And don't put the self doubt in your mind, because the only thing that the self doubt does is make you spiral and delay the potential success that you could have.

Callan Harrington  00:20

You're listening to That Worked, a show that breaks down the careers of top founders and executives and pulls out those key items that led to their success. I'm your host, Callan Harrington, founder of Flashgrowth, and I couldn't be more excited that you're here. Welcome back, everyone to a another episode of That Worked. This week I'm joined by Julia Regan. Julia is the co founder and CEO of RxLightning. RxLightning digitizes, automates, and streamlines the historically manual specialty medication onboarding process. Julia has over fifteen years of experience delivering innovative healthcare solutions that disrupt the status quo, and remove friction for patients, providers, payers and pharmaceutical manufacturers. She is an Endeavor Entrepreneur, listed on the Bizwoman 100 list, the 2023 Healthcare Hero list, and an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year winner in the East Central region. We had great conversations about what Julia did to survive financially in the early days and what she does to continuously grow as a CEO. She also broke down the very real challenges of being a female founder and gave great advice out there for other women that are looking to start their own business. One thing that was consistent throughout the episode was how Julia leveraged her network, whether it was to get those early clients, develop as a CEO, or to find investors for RxLightning. I'm a big believer in this. And she gave great examples of how anyone can build and lean on their network. So with that, let's get to the show. Julia, welcome to the show.

Julia Regan  02:16

Thanks for having me.

Callan Harrington  02:17

I'm excited to have this interview. And a lot of that comes with this story. Tell me about the Mira Awards.

Julia Regan  02:25

Mira Awards are our long standing technology awards in the state of Indiana. And we were privileged for two years in a row to be very successful at the awards. So last year, we won two awards, and we had this experience of receiving the awards, and after the awards, they recorded like an interview. And after we won the first one, they were backed up on this interview process. So I didn't- they were like "we'll come get you when we're not backed up." And I was like, okay, never thought anything of it. Well, we won a second one, so they waited to do the interview until after it. So we went into the Mira Awards this year, and my team and I really don't like to lose. We're very competitive people. So we were nominated for three awards. We know how challenging they are to win. I was a judge this year. Everybody that's nominated could win the award. And we won the first one. And we were super excited. And afterwards, they did the recording. So I was like we didn't win any other awards, because they did the recording this year. So my COO was in the recording with me, and we tried to cheat. So I'm like telling him to turn around, like while I'm being recorded and miked up, "look at the awards!" like we leave and he's like, no RxLightning on any of the awards. So we didn't win any more. So I started, you know, drinking pretty heavily, because I was celebrating. We just won, and I'm with my team and their spouses, and we're celebrating a great year. And it's important to do that. And I might have been double fisting at the time. So the last award comes up, and I'm not even paying attention really, because, you know, we didn't win it. Well, then we hear that we won, and I'm like, oh, shit. I'm yelling at my COO, like you didn't cheat well. Like did you lie to me and not tell me, because I had to go up on stage now in front of like a thousand people and give the speech, and I had nothing prepared at this point. So I got up there, and I was legitimately speechless. I looked back at my team just laughing because I had nothing to say, which is not usually like me. I've usually a ton to say, but I pulled it together quickly and was able to give a speech. But I learned a good lesson then: don't cheat, because there are smarter people around you trying to prevent you from cheating, but it was it was a fun night with the team.

Callan Harrington  04:47

Totally get the lesson of don't cheat. My favorite part is the okay, so we've got- you know, when you've got that moment, like oh, I don't have any other plans. I can have fun now. And then that just gets derailed. What was going on in your mind as you're walking up to that stage?

Julia Regan  05:05

I swore my COO was messing with me or, you know, and he seriously didn't know. So I'm walking up there like laughing, super excited, because it was a disrupter of the year. There were ton of amazing organizations. And I knew that we were the first organization to win two years in a row, two awards, which was kind of history in the making, and so extremely excited, but not composed at all because I was celebrating, and then it's like, okay, now I'm up there receiving this award. And I need to represent my team, and the company, and what we're doing, and graciously accept this thing, and I definitely did not look prepared for it.

Callan Harrington  05:46

My question is, how hard did the team go after that moment?

Julia Regan  05:51

Oh, yeah, pretty hard. It was- I think in the startup journey, like it takes a special person to start a company, but also a special person to work in a startup world. There's so much fast paced movement, there's no structure, and decisions are being made on the fly. There's a lot of long hours that sometimes happen, and being able to step back with the team and the spouses, because there's a lot of sacrifice on the families and the spouses of people that work within startups, especially your more senior level individuals that are making things happen. So to be able to step back, and really, we were celebrating anyway, the team, but to be able to do it with the awards, and the win, the wins behind us was just really exciting. So there's a lot of funny stories, there might be an elevator story with one of my employees that got caught in the service elevator and couldn't get out afterwards. There's some good memories that happened.

Callan Harrington  06:48

And you have to celebrate those wins. It's just what you said, because sometimes you're so heads down, you never come up for air, it never feels good enough, where it's something I didn't do early on in my career, and as I got later in my career, I was like you got to take those wins, and you have to celebrate those because you just don't know. One of the things I'm curious about is you were not always what I would call a startup person, is that correct? I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but you weren't setting out to be an entrepreneur, this wasn't like a lifelong dream for you. Is that right?

Julia Regan  07:17

Yeah, that's exactly correct. I started my career off in big pharma. I was a sales rep and fell in love with health technology in the infancy of when drug manufacturers were looking at it. And I look back on my career, and I've always kind of been a, intrapreneur, I guess, from that moment, but never thought I'd actually start a company and be leading a company, especially not one that is growing the way we've been growing and being able to have the impact that we're having. So it was in the beginning of my like, founder journey, it's filled with a lot of imposter syndrome. I had wanted to do this, I think I could do this, I have no clue what I'm doing. Luckily for me, I had a lot of amazing people around me that were able to give me good counsel and helped me through some of the stumbling blocks that founders go on when they don't know what to do and what's next.

Callan Harrington  08:09

Let's talk about that a little bit. This has been a pretty common theme on the show, just in general, is kind of that imposter syndrome of especially when founding a company, what were some of the big ones for you? What were some of those big roadblocks of I'm not the right person for this? What were some of those leading ones there?

Julia Regan  08:23

I think for me, I've always been in product innovation. So I knew that my co founder and I could see a problem and solve the problem with the technology. The components that I really was challenged by was I never raised capital, I never really fully owned revenue generation and commercialization. I realize now today, I'm really good at it, and I've actually done it my entire career. I just didn't label it as commercialization or sales. I've looked at it more as like a CME support role. But those were two components. So like the financial and the revenue component was, I don't know anything. Like I remember when I first raised our capital, I didn't know what a note, or safe, or price rounds actually meant, and trying to make decisions around well, how much capital am I going to raise? Or why am I going to- what method or vehicle am I going to raise the capital under? And will it get me to where I'm able to raise more capital or get to profitability? And not having any knowledge on what the right direction is or support around that, because I started the company right before the world shutdown with COVID. So I was cut off from the startup ecosystem until I got into two accelerators, the vote accelerator locally and then Accelerate Health which started shaping some of those thoughts. But it's really easy to just go back and say like, I don't know what I'm doing right now. And I'm faking all of this. And luckily, I think I faked it pretty well and- but today I look back and I was like so clueless. But that's okay.

Callan Harrington  10:01

How did you get over that? How did you- Because a lot of things that you're talking about right is how is this capital going to affect the cap table or the ownership situation? What did you need to do to learn? How did you start to figure that out?

Julia Regan  10:14

I think I just kind of ran towards the goal. I knew I was personally funding the business, my co founder, and I wasn't getting any money. My co founder took a huge pay cut, we got a grant up front of $25,000, we had our first contract that was $25,000. So we had fifty grand of money. And most people aren't independently wealthy when they start a company. So we had timelines that we set that we needed to raise capital for. And I just kind of picked a number. I decided to raise a million dollars in the form of a convertible note and price debt. And luckily for us, I had great people around me that started doing introductions to their network. And I had other successful founders and advisors in the industry that knew me. So I was able to start getting some angel investment. It also helps that our product launched and we had large revenue contracts in the works. So when that happened, we were able to secure our first strategic investor who actually they have a venture fund. It just kind of worked out. But going through it, I just knew I had that end date of if I don't raise capital by this date, it doesn't matter the idea or the thought we have, because I'm not going to be able to execute on it, because I have a family and need to go make money to support the family. So it was like I had no option but to figure it out and fake it like I knew what I was doing. And fortunately for me, people believed in me and saw that I could learn some of the aspects that I didn't know.

Callan Harrington  11:49

Talking about that little bit and the runway that you had. Did you have, I'm going to do this for x amount of months, and at the end of that, I'm done? If somebody else wants to take the silver, great, but I can't do it. I know for me, I did something very similar. I'm so bad at jumping. If I try to go into the shallow end and walk out to the deep end, I can't do it. I've got to jump straight in the deep end, otherwise I'll never do it, and that was for me starting a business to the tee. For you, how did you establish what that runway was going to be? Was it more, here's my cashflow, here's my family expenses, I've got until x date, if I don't do it by then, show's up. What did that look like for you?

Julia Regan  12:27

I had a consulting gig, I guess that was originally six months. And then it ended up being extended to nine months. And I knew that I had between six to nine months to raise capital from starting the business. And we raised the full million in about thirty days, once I knew what I was pitching and raising the terms of. And we luckily raised that right at that eight month mark. I also knew that we had revenue contracts being executed too. So as we went through that end goal like that could have shifted a little bit without giving up the company. But there would have been nobody to sell the company to or the business, because there was no business or an idea and a concept and the technology was being launched. And we incorporated in January of 2020, and we launched our first product in January of '21. And we signed our first customers in October of 2020. So there were lots of moving parts that probably would have pushed it. And I didn't realize how scary it was until looking back on how actually scary it was. Because you're in it. You're just like, okay, I've got to move, and I've got to figure this out. And luckily, we were able to figure it out. And it's the foundation of who we are today and a lot of the success that we've had.

Callan Harrington  13:44

That's been one of the most interesting things for me. The first week, I'm like, what are you doing? This is the stupidest idea you've ever done. I need to go get a job. And then for whatever reason, that just dissipates every day. You know, it is the risk hasn't changed. It's just every day, it's been alright, well, I don't know, I guess if worst case scenario is to get a job if this thing fails. One of the things that I'm super curious about is, you got clients fairly quickly before raising any capital or anything else like that. How did you get those first couple clients?

Julia Regan  14:15

Dumb luck. I've been in the industry for my entire career. So fortunately, our product was going to hit product market fit, because I never would have left my cushy job to start a company if it wasn't going to potentially work. And because of that, a lot of industry relationships that I had and connections just kind of fell into place. And because of it, we were able to demonstrate, hey, here's a really big need. This is what we're doing. We think we could solve it this way. And people believed in us and were willing to take a chance on it with us. And I look back and we secured those contracts very quickly and they're still customers and clients of ours. Things have evolved since then. And we've grown and expanded what we're doing pretty quickly. It was a very exciting, early journey. I remember our first contract. In healthcare you've got to have a lot of security assessments and certifications. So high trust is one of them. There's a SOC 2 and ISO that you could do. And you usually when a large company's partnering with you, you have two weeks to give the assessment and answer the security questions to see if they'll approve you as like a vendor or client. And our product wasn't even in market. Luckily, my co founder, Brad, and I have been in the industry forever. So we kind of built our platform with these parameters and framework in mind. But I remember scrambling like okay, we have two weeks to submit this, but we don't have anything we're starting with. And I had to literally in two weeks, develop our whole security framework and implement it, and then respond to these questions. And somehow, we passed it with flying colors, because of the background and the experience that we both brought into the organization.

Callan Harrington  16:00

That's such an advantage. Because otherwise, because- So for- if people aren't familiar with it, especially any any kind of enterprise deal, or if it's in healthcare insurance, fintech, something like that, financial services company, you get these ridiculous security questionnaires. They're all different.

Julia Regan  16:14

200 questions.

Callan Harrington  16:15

Yeah, one healthcare company's security questionnaire looks like is totally different than somebody else's. There's some overlap. But they all want it in a different way. And you answer- you can answer yes or no, but they want an explanation on most of these. And if you don't do what you just did, you put N/A. They don't love it when you put not applicable on those security questionnaires. So that's one that people, I think- what was it that led you to really start to think about that from the beginning? Was that just the industry experience? And it's like, you've dealt with this, so you knew it was coming? Or what did that look like?

Julia Regan  16:49

It's a standard that you need to go through. So we knew very early on, we had to go get high trust certified. Now, the crazy thing is, for perspective is we started basically, building our security framework in October of 2020. We just officially got certified, I want to say within the last sixty to ninety days, because it takes a ton of time to go through it. It is a beast. God love Brad. And it is very expensive, because a company can't go do it on their own, and you've got to work with consultants, and then you've got to get an auditor. And it's a very costly thing. I think we've spent over $200,000, getting to the point. It could even be more. I don't want to look at it. But getting to the point to have that certification to say yes, your technology is secure, and you're going to protect your patient information. And nothing's going to happen to that because it's privacy and security parameters.

Callan Harrington  17:42

Do you think that was probably one of the biggest benefits of coming from the industry into this? If not, what were some of those other ones? If I understand it, you were at big companies, and then you kind of progressively went to smaller companies, before finally going out on your own? I guess the follow up question to that is, how did that help you to then start your own company?

Julia Regan  18:03

There were a lot of challenges. I think the benefit is, of course, we knew the framework from a security perspective, the relationships I had in the industry were extremely helpful, because I can make phone calls and get connected to people that I really wanted to connect to, both on the angel investment side as well as early clients. So that was helpful. Also my co founder and I being in the industry and working with people, especially as we went smaller and smaller. We had other like minded team members that were willing to come join our crazy mission and our crazy company, and were willing to put the risk on their job and their position, and they put the belief in both of us that this was going to be something. So I think there was lots of benefits from being in the industry. I think that when I look at my career and go from like, the big company down to the smaller to the founder, as I progressed to the smaller companies, I just gained more and more responsibilities. But the big company gave me the structure. So I graduated college, went to work for a large pharma company, where I got schooled in healthcare and the industry in a formal way, along with process and growth structures, and I had that formal component of structure. But as I kind of progressed, my career actually grew more rapidly, because instead of just doing one job at one function in a large organization, I had the opportunity to get my hands wet across multiple different things that I never would have experienced. So my career, as I kept getting smaller, went from doing one thing to really managing a whole P&L, which I never would have had the opportunity in a large organization to do that. So when I look at being a founder and a CEO, in the beginning, yeah, you're a founder and a CEO, but you're doing every function. So you're doing everything from incorporating the company and doing legal stuff, to creating a financial plan, to building a product, and you've got your early team members that help pick that some of those responsibilities up. But it's really like, you got to do everything. If you don't do it, nobody else is, it's not going to get done. And then now as we've grown, I've been able to really hone in on what am I really good at? What can I delegate to the team? And how do we hire and staff people around me to make the company successful? And let me stay in my wheelhouse of what is going to drive the company forward to our growth milestones, versus doing everything that I do not need to get into, some of the operation execution components, because I've got a great customer success team that could go do that. But I've got to be with our investors and our big BD commercial deals in order to hit the growth revenue structures we're trying to hit.

Callan Harrington  20:26

So what I'm hearing there is the big company structure, it was great that you had that from day one, took on more responsibility as you moved into smaller companies and had higher up positions. So there's a couple of things I want to come back to, but I might have an opportunity here to spicy hot take. What do you believe- you have the experience in the company because of the founders, and because of the early team that you had came from the industry- do you believe that, and do you try to hire people that have industry experience? Or are you hiring more, this is a super high character person, we can teach them the industry at this point of the company stage?

Julia Regan  21:29

I think it's a combination of it. We definitely tend to lean towards healthcare experience, if we have it. The healthcare industry, specifically what we're in, is very nuanced. So being able to have that expertise come in is beneficial. But it also depends on the role. We have roles where we're hiring right out of college. And obviously, we're not looking for healthcare experience. Like we don't care if you did your internship at a healthcare organization or not, we're looking more around character and aptitude, willing to learn, what is their passion and desire, and like are they going to... Do we think that they could grow quickly within an organization because they have that desire and aptitude to be able to pick anything we give them? It just depends. As we're scaling, we went from, at the end of 2020, it was my co founder and I, and maybe like, two or three employees after we raised that original capital, and then we're up close to fifty now. So if you think about that, in two and a half years, we've more than doubled every year, our team and our revenue. And you know, that's just the current members, like, obviously, there were individuals that didn't work out through the journey that we've brought on. So when we're starting to look at our growth rate for '24, we're not gonna always be able to bring in people with the exact expertise that we would need in the niche of healthcare that we're in. So just depends.

Callan Harrington  22:58

Let's talk a little bit about that growth. So in 2020, as I understand it, you took off. It seems like it was the exact product for exactly what was needed. One of the things that I'm super curious about is, you were able to jump into this quickly in a very outdated process, where a lot of the industry was paper based. How did you handle the change management to get these companies to think about this in a totally different way, to grow at the rate that you did? Because I have to assume that was totally different. Did COVID help in that? Or was this going this way anyway? And regardless, what was the process for managing that?

Julia Regan  23:35

So I definitely think COVID was an accelerant to what RxLightning was solving for. I think, for a couple reasons. So first, during COVID, a lot of people, even in healthcare, that, if they didn't need to be in an office, they were working from home. So when you're working from home, and you're using paper, it brings up a lot of those same security issues that you have around PHI and paper information, disclosing confidential info to people that shouldn't have access to it. So that was one. The second one is when you're working from home, now you're not centralized with your other stakeholders in the office. So when you're doing paperwork, and you need a patient to sign it, and you need the doctor to sign it, and you're all dispersed, how are you going to get those signatures with paper? You're going to do snail mail, or you're going to do faxes, and people don't have fax machines. So you revert to snail mail. So when a technology solution is coming and saying, hey, we have a process that you don't need to use this paper, and you could communicate in real time with multiple people across this journey that are needed to gather something that would potentially take weeks in minutes, it becomes helpful. I think that we built the product mostly that first year of COVID. The '21 is that time where we were starting to reintroduce of the world what is the new normal in this COVID world, and people were still fragmented and decentralized, which helped our technology be a solution point to it. Now, I think that there's healthcare systems and providers because of COVID are in a position that they're not necessarily generating a ton of revenue. So they're looking at cutting costs and saving money. And when you're doing things manually, you just have to staff it with more people. So when you have a technology solution that's free, that providers could use, that makes their people more efficient. It helps with their cost reductions. And there's some of that that kind of happens.

Callan Harrington  25:40

It feels very much like this is almost kind of an Uber situation. And what I mean by that, specifically, is, nobody liked riding in cabs. Like I've never heard anybody like, oh, that was really good cab ride. And Uber comes around, it's like, oh, this is 100 times better. What I'm hearing, when you describe that, trying to get multiple signatures from multiple different parties that are not all in the same office? To get that and do that via paper? That sounds terrible. Was this just kind of this situation where everybody was, we got to do something different, but nobody wanted to do anything about it?

Julia Regan  26:10

Yeah, I think that that's similar. Like when I started the company, specialty meds, I knew that it was paper processed, I knew it was a mess. I knew it was a growing market. And there were other organizations that took manual paper based processes and solved it. So CoverMyMeds is a terrific example of a organization saying, hey, there's a manual process that we could solve for PA across all types of medications. And when you look at CoverMyMeds, especially being in the healthcare technology, it's a huge success story. It's a beautiful unicorn, but even more than being a beautiful unicorn, it solved a major problem, and it works. And now it's part of McKesson, and it's a huge staple organization, especially in the Midwest. So similar things have been done. RxLightning has kind of taken other paper processes around what CoverMyMeds did, and said, if they could go do this, there's still a need. And with the specialty medications growing so rapidly, we were able to create this end to end process that took all these different paper based processes and make it in into one platform. So I think that there was a lot going on. We were going to start- COVID kind of accelerated the need for some of these processes to be put into a technology solution, but we would have tackled it anyway. And I think that the growth potentially would have happened regardless, because who likes to fill out paper forms? In healthcare, there's probably so many more components that could be automated and made digital. And I think that's one of the reasons why I love healthcare technology. It's in such an infancy in its career, and it's so complex, and there's so many things that you could go solve for. It's just, what are we going to solve for? And then really, what's the right commercial model to create rapid growth? Which is why we don't charge our providers to use our platform, and why we partner with the pharmaceutical companies, and the specialty pharmacies, and different destinations, to drive the revenue because they're really benefiting the most from it.

Callan Harrington  28:16

So if I'm hearing what you're saying is, this problem was going- it was already coming to a head anyway. But COVID was like, okay, now we don't have a choice. Like we already know we need to do this. Now it's a must. We don't have a choice, we have to do this. But regardless, the company grew like crazy. And you were in the best position to take advantage of that. But still really tough to have that type of growth that quickly. One of the things I'm interested to hear is, how did you have to grow as a founder and CEO to help continue to take the company in the right direction?

Julia Regan  28:53

I learn something every day new about running a company, and what it is to be a founder, and being a CEO. I think that with the rapid growth, I was forced to accelerate the openness to learning and growing. I'm really transparent with the organization about everything. With that, I'm also really transparent with myself and my advisors and the network of people that I've surrounded myself around. What am I good at? What am I not good at? What do I need to grow in? How do I grow in these things right now? Because we're growing up as an organization and I'm really trying to hone in on how am I as the leader, and what do I need to do differently now that we're going to be a fifty person company versus a twenty person company? It's very different. And how do I come off from across the organization? And just for me, it's really been network. Luckily, I've been involved in a lot of networks, so like in the Endeavor network has been phenomenal. Just the local startup community has been terrific. We have amazing investors that are willing to help coach and mentor me and put me in contact with other founders that could have been there and I could learn from. And then I'm a big proponent of reading books. There's so many good books out there. And some books I'll read cover to cover. And I'll be like, okay, that was a quick read, it had good information, but it's not something that I really going to implement. And then there's some books that I'm like, this is a book that I'm going to take probably a month or two months to read, because it has so much information in that I really need to digest, and you don't take everything from it. But if you could start kind of layering in learnings from other people that have been successful, and then create my, who I am as the CEO and founder and what my brand is, and hopefully, it could get us to the next level in the organization. But I think for me, I'm always really looking at the company and the growth and what we're trying to do in the industry and putting that above myself and making sure that I'm the right fit, to continue to lead it into the next evolution of growth and being open to whatever feedback I need to get us to that next level. Luckily, with that approach, I've been able to continue to grow and evolve as leader.

Callan Harrington  31:09

I think that's excellent advice, right? Is to have that self awareness to say, okay, here's where I need to improve, do everything you can to improve, and see, am I still the right person to be able to do this? Am I enjoying this? Am I having fun at what I'm doing? I think that's such good advice. What were some of those big challenges that you faced? I mean, you did all of this very quickly, and raised all this in a smaller market in Louisville. And then you talked a little bit about some of the challenges that you have just being a female founder and going on this journey. What did that look like? What were some of those challenges that you had faced?

Julia Regan  31:41

I think female founders in general, if you look at the statistics, not just females, it's female and minority founders, I think have very similar statistics. But there's just not as much opportunity to raise capital. Most female founders, maybe two or 3% of the population of founders that have been able to raise capital. And when you start looking at multi million dollars of capital, it's even less significant. But on the flip side of it, a lot of the female founders are the most successful too, when you look at the numbers, and the exits that occur, and the amount of capital that they're able to raise. And I think that some of that has to do with a lot of women just aren't going to take the challenge of starting a company because the odds are kind of stacked against them. I think I was probably too naive when I started the company to know that fact or to actually believe it's true. But when I think back around the journey, fortunately, I have amazing investors and advisors and organizations that are supporting me that do not care if I'm a female, if I'm white, if what my demographic makeup is they just look at me for the skill set I bring, the knowledge I bring, and the way RxLightning is. But that's not everyone. There's been investor meetings that I've gone into, or that you very well could feel that I was being judged for being a female and a mom. I had one conversation that I recall very vividly. And the question basically was posed to me, "Julia, you started a company during COVID. And you know, you're a CEO, and a founder, and a mom, and a friend, and a sister, and all these things... like how'd you do it?" And I was like, would you frame up a question like that to a man? No, you wouldn't ever think to frame up to a man that you're a dad. So why is that acceptable that you're framing up to me as the a woman that I'm a mom? Yeah, we have children, we should be able to be a founder and a parent at the same time and manage appropriate balance for success. So there's been lots of challenges with that, which I think is really unfortunate. I think people get discouraged early on when they hear that and then just think the odds are too stacked against them. My advice to other female entrepreneurs or women that would like to be entrepreneurs, they're not all like that, go find the people that don't care and will support you and advocate for you. And you'll be successful.

Callan Harrington  31:41

How do they find those people?

Julia Regan  31:41

I think that it's a lot about network. I look at it- early on, I got into those first accelerators, and I had so much community support around me and everything has extrapolated from that. So we raised our first million dollars, there's angel investors that met me through those accelerators in it, and then I ping ponged with some of my other network. But when I did our first round of equity financing, which I raised the million dollars in 2020. And then I did my first priced round in April of '21. I met them on the demo day with the one accelerator, and then they introduced me to another one of my investors, and another investor, and our current lead I met through the network of investors. So once you find, whether it's from your advisors or your entrepreneur network, there'll be people that could connect you to those other people. And you just have to- it's a network game. Every conversation that you have, you don't necessarily know what the outcome will be, but if you approach the conversation of genuine interest and exploration, you just don't know what's going to come out of it. So I was very fortunate, because I don't know if I set out to methodically do that, but I got plugged in. And then because I was plugged in, people plugged me in with the right people that had that right mentality. Now you find people that are bad eggs through that too, but I think that's the biggest advice, tap into the network, be open and listen to them, and then it's up to you to run that network through, because you can't rely on the person making the intro, then you've got to do the legwork on the next step.

Callan Harrington  35:57

Yeah. And so many people don't. And it's one of the biggest misses. Because I get asked all the time, I'm looking for kind of my next position, or I'm looking to whatever, start a company, doesn't matter, it's network. If you're gonna start a consulting company or anything like that, like you're going to get your first clients from networking, period. I love the way that you started out your career, or your founder journey, of consulting while you're building more of this long term goal. It's such a good way to manage cash flow, because not everybody can take this risk and have zero dollars for- Most people can't. I would say most people can't operate on zero dollars for a very long time. Either they're previously rich, or they're super, super young. And great if you're in those positions. But if you're not, that consulting and using services revenue to fund kind of that bigger goal is such a great way to do it. What comes next for yourself? What comes next for our RxLightning? What does that look like?

Julia Regan  36:59

We just closed our Series A, so we're really focused on getting the board and the next generation of our strategy and growth, not only set up and formed, but executed on. I think that for us that comes really down into two things, deployment of capital to hire the best talent to help us execute on what we've already been able to achieve, and two is driving our provider footprint as well as our commercialization. So really taking our growth to the next level to make sure that we could achieve what our mission is. At the end of the day, we are very mission oriented. The fact that in health care, people can be prescribed a hundred thousand dollar medication, and it could save their life, and they have no clue what's going on, and it could take them weeks to get on it, we as an organization find very, very unacceptable. So for us, we're staying rooted, and how do we achieve our mission and to help patients get on these therapies as affordably as possible, as quickly as possible? And that means hiring the best talent, building the best products, working with multiple stakeholders in the industry, because one organization can't achieve that, because it's so complicated. So forming those relationships and partnerships that we need to take us to the next level. And then for me, I'm just trying to really enjoy it, and focus on what I'm really good at, and what I need to do to take the company to the next level, and get out of my team's way. Because I've hired some amazing people that they could do the role much- something that I was doing before- much better than I could do. So just focusing on leaving them to do their job and me take the company to the next level by doing the things that I'm really good at.

Callan Harrington  38:50

The biggest theme that I heard in all that was just that laser focus. And when you talk with any of the companies that are just beyond successful, that's probably the biggest theme. Doesn't matter how big they are. They're just laser focused on what that goal is. And it's been such a big one. So not surprised to hear about the success that you've had. Last question I have for you is: if you could have a conversation with your younger self, age totally up to you, what would that conversation be? And what advice would you give them?

Julia Regan  39:21

I don't necessarily know what age I'd go back to. But it's probably a theme at any age and something I probably still need to tell myself today. I think the biggest thing is, if I'm focused on a goal and want to achieve it, just to believe that you could achieve it. There's so much that goes on in someone's thoughts. And if you've demonstrated success before, believe that you could do the same thing again. And don't put the self doubt in your mind, because the only thing that the self doubt does is make you spiral and delay the potential success that you could have. So I think a lot of people, not only don't they celebrate successes, but they don't acknowledge the successes that happen. So acknowledge them, believe that they're gonna happen, and don't do the self doubt, and don't do the negative thought. I think that's the biggest thing I tell myself. And you know, I still tell myself it, because it's very easy to naturally be like, oh, well, I had all this success, but am I gonna have the success to take it to the next level? Like, you have to have the belief that you're gonna do it, or you're gonna just spiral in that, or you're just gonna waste time.

Callan Harrington  40:26

So many of those roadblocks are totally artificially put from our own minds and our own self limiting beliefs. So I love that advice. Julia, this has been a blast. I appreciate you coming on the show. This has been so much fun.

Julia Regan  40:39

Yeah. Thanks for having me. It's been a great hour of my day.

Callan Harrington  40:47

I hope you enjoy Julia and I's conversation. I loved hearing all the examples of how Julia leveraged her network. It's a cheat code, if you want to move fast. If you want to learn more about Julia, you could find her on LinkedIn in the show notes. Also, if you liked this episode, you could find me on LinkedIn to let me know. And if you really want to support the show, a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify is very much appreciated. Thanks for listening, and I'll see everybody next week.