RND Medical Supplies

Chris Schaefer is the owner of RND Medical Supplies, a medical supplies manufacturer and distributor located in Marietta, Georgia. RND Medical Supplies is the parent company of e-commerce stores QPS Medical and Wholesale Medicals, and Chris was spending advertising dollars on Google Ads with little to zero success. After some time drawing blanks on how to market his business online, Chris reached out to Pacific Community Ventures by way of our partner Inner City Capital Connections (ICCC), seeking advice on sales and marketing from an expert advisor in the healthcare industry. 

In January 2020, we introduced Chris to Luke Whitburn, a seasoned consultant and entrepreneur with years of professional experience in the healthcare field. We matched Chris with Luke because we were confident that Luke could take a holistic approach at Chris’s overall business operations, determining areas that needed improvement and identifying strengths that needed to be emphasized. 

Luke’s skills in recruiting and HR, operations, sales, and marketing were on full display in their partnership together. Chris and Luke agreed to meet once a week, sometimes even twice a week, to debrief on the prior week, discuss what action items were on the table, and what they needed to work on for the following week. Their first project was to revamp Chris’s online presence, starting with his entire website. 

They changed the design, content, and functionality of the website. Luke also helped with the visibility of his website by creating a presence on Google search results using Google Adwords and SEO optimization. Chris took his website from making $0 in revenue to an online store making $5,000 in revenue in June alone! Luke also helped Chris take his LinkedIn page to the next level. Together, they corrected typos, aligned language from the website to his LinkedIn page, got his employees to create LinkedIn profiles, and connected with people and trade associations in his industry to get plugged into a variety of decision-makers. Luke also had Chris register his business to be listed on the Better Business Bureau directory.

Luke helped Chris streamline processes by having him eliminate all faxing orders and switch to electronic invoicing and web-based portal ordering. This allowed Chris to not waste time on paper documents. Chris said, “Conversations with Luke have helped me set aside intentional time to focus on the business, instead of being in the business, and think about the bigger picture.”

Luke was instrumental in the expansion of Chris’s team. Chris was able to hire a warehouse employee to replace a previous warehouse employee that retired. Chris also found a developer in an IT networking group to support his website makeover to make it a properly engineered, modern shopping design. Luke even reached out to his contact at Chattahoochee Tech to help set up an internship program and continues to teach Chris how to engage with universities to expand that internship program, helping him hand off smaller day-to-day activities and allowing him to work on his strategy to grow the business. Luke suggested for Chris, his employees, and all new hires to take a DISC personality test, a tool for business owners to understand people’s traits to see how each employee fits into the business.  

Chris came to PCV’s Business Advising program without a marketing strategy. Now, Chris has a confidant in Luke and they continue to connect weekly to strategize on how to pivot RND Medical Supplies, Inc. during the COVID-19 pandemic. Chris originally planned to go to several conferences, but they are now rethinking their plans for 2020, and even beyond to 2021. They are examining their marketing approach taking into account the challenges of marketing in this new environment and coming up with creative ways to reach people.

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