Here’s a Glimpse of What You’ll Hear:
- [2:05] Chanie Gluck recalls launching a jewelry business as her first entrepreneurial attempt
- [5:11] How the Six Working Geniuses model reflects Chanie’s entrepreneurial mindset
- [7:33] What was the foundational idea behind creating the medical billing company?
- [13:22] How pounding the pavement and offering free analysis turned prospects into clients
- [14:20] Why Chanie sold her billing company to focus on 4D Global
- [17:30] Challenges of managing remote teams and the rationale behind offshoring
- [22:41] Transitioning from webinars to podcasting to create community and thought leadership
- [27:40] How COVID-19 catalyzed growth and innovation at 4D Global
- [30:42] Impact of AI on the medical billing industry and how it is changing the landscape
In this episode…
Starting and scaling a business is tough — doing it while raising four children is even tougher. Entrepreneurs in demanding industries often face isolation, overwhelm, and uncertainty around how to grow sustainably while balancing personal responsibilities. So how do you create a thriving, people-first company that scales globally without sacrificing your family or sanity?
Chanie Gluck offers an inspiring answer. With nearly 30 years of experience in the medical billing field, she shares her playbook for solving these challenges. Chanie emphasizes the importance of curiosity, problem-solving, and self-education — crediting her early library deep dives on sales and operations as foundational. She discusses how taking bold risks, like pitching herself to doctors and embracing offshoring in India years before it was trendy, enabled her to scale with efficiency. Chanie also stresses building trust with clients through free value-added services and fostering community among introverted industry professionals through podcasts and webinars.
Tune in to this episode of the Smart Business Revolution Podcast as John Corcoran interviews Chanie Gluck, CEO of 4D Global, about scaling a medical billing business while raising a family. Chanie shares how she transitioned from local services to global operations, along with insights on offshoring, thought leadership, and adapting to AI in healthcare. Listeners will also learn why podcasts are powerful marketing tools and the importance of community-driven leadership.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- John Corcoran on LinkedIn
- Rise25
- Chanie Gluck on LinkedIn
- 4D Global
- Leaders in Medical Billing
- Entrepreneurs’ Organization
Quotable Moments:
- “You make money by creating value. The bigger the problem you solve, the more money you’ll make.”
- “I didn’t graduate college, but I spent hours at the business library learning everything I could.”
- “When the cat’s away, the mice will play; remote team management taught me a lot.”
- “If you want people to know, like, and trust you, be vulnerable and share your story.”
- “There are seasons to step on the gas and seasons to cruise; know when to do each.”
Action Steps:
- Embrace seasonality in business and life: Identify when to focus on growth and when to prioritize family or recovery. This helps prevent burnout and supports sustainable entrepreneurship.
- Leverage podcasting for thought leadership: Launching a podcast builds credibility, opens doors to new relationships, and positions you as an industry expert. It’s especially effective in niche sectors like healthcare.
- Explore offshoring to scale efficiently: Consider global talent as a strategic move to increase capacity and reduce costs. Clear communication and infrastructure are essential to making this work long-term.
- Use adversity as an opportunity: When COVID-19 or a crisis hits, look for areas to innovate and fill unmet needs. Staying calm and resourceful can lead to unexpected growth.
- Stay plugged into peer networks: Join masterminds, industry forums, or EO groups to stay ahead of trends like AI. Collaboration accelerates learning and opens access to cutting-edge tools and ideas.
Sponsor: Rise25
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Episode Transcript
John Corcoran: 00:00
Okay today we’re talking about how to be a mom and an entrepreneur at the same time. My guest today is my friend Chanie Gluck. I’m going to tell you more about her in a second, so stay tuned.
Intro: 00:12
Welcome to the Smart Business Revolution Podcast, where we feature top entrepreneurs, business leaders, and thought leaders and ask them how they built key relationships to get where they are today. Now let’s get started with the show.
John Corcoran: 00:29
All right. Welcome, everyone. John Corcoran, I am the host of the show. And you know, if you’ve listened before, which hopefully you have every week, we have smart CEOs, founders, entrepreneurs from all kinds of companies. And if you check out the archives, we’ve got Netflix and Grubhub and Redfin, Gusto, Kinko’s, YPO, EO, Activision Blizzard, lots of great episodes for you to check out, so go check that out.
And before we get into this, this episode brought to you by Rise25, where we help B2B businesses get clients referrals and strategic partnerships with done-for-you podcasts and content marketing. And you can learn more by going to our website, Rise25.com. Or you can email us at [email protected].
All right. My guest here today is Chanie Gluck. She’s the CEO of 4D Global Medical Billing Services. She has, believe it or not, 28 years of experience in the medical billing industry. She began her career back in the mid 90s, working the billing department of a medical center, and she started her first business back in the early 2000 out of Brooklyn, New York.
And she has been in that industry all this time and parenting for young children, which I have four kids as well. So I’m a bit fascinated by entrepreneurs who’ve got four kids who are crazy on both sides. But Connie, great to have you here today, and I love to know about what people were like as a kid. And I think that informs who we are as adults so often. And you were a babysitter, and you also had a great idea to start a jewelry business.
You grew up in Brooklyn. You go to the heart of Chinatown and load up on a bunch of jewelry and decide to make a jewelry business about it. So tell us about Young Custom Creations by Connie. It was called.
Chanie Gluck: 02:04
Oh gosh. Great way to start with my biggest failure. First of all, before I tell you the story, John, I have to say it is amazing to know you as a person. You are such a connector. In the couple of years that I know you, you have just been such a great connector for me.
So I just want to say thank you for that. And I’m I’m excited to have this conversation with you. Okay. So yeah, born entrepreneur I would say I always want to be in charge of my destiny. So 18 years old in New York at the time, everybody had a little business in their house and they would have these, you know, cool things, and women would come over and buy stuff. So I yeah, I did. I went to Chinatown one day and saw all these cool, like, Cartier knockoffs and different cool jewelry, bought a bunch of stuff, thought I was going to sell it that failed miserably and.
John Corcoran: 02:59
I had trouble selling it.
Chanie Gluck: 03:01
I just, I think I yeah, I think I, I didn’t master the art of sales and marketing. So I thought if I bought it they would just come. But then at 19 years old, a year later, I had the idea to start this medical billing company, and I really worked in medical offices for a couple of years to learn what I needed to learn. And then at 24 years old, I launched my first company, 4D medical.
John Corcoran: 03:30
So I think kind of the wise thing you did there was you didn’t launch it right away. You took some time to learn the industry you were working in, in billing offices at the time. And so it was difficult to have this idea of, oh, I want to start this company and then to wait, you waited five years to learn the industry that requires a lot of patience.
Chanie Gluck: 03:51
I think it was more about, you know, I was single at the time. I was just trying to get on my feet. I was just trying to pay my rent and like, you know, just survive. And so although I had the idea, the, you know, sometimes things have to happen serendipitously. So I was working in this medical center.
I found out one of the doctors was having trouble with his billing, and I just had the chutzpah to go over to him and say, look, I’m starting a company. Do you want to give me your billing? And he said, yes. Would I have had the chutzpah to do that like a year or two before? Maybe not.
Right. So I think the timing was right, the moment was right. And I just took the opportunity and just went with it. Thankfully, he said yes. That one client turned into many clients and just things kind of, you know, went from there.
John Corcoran: 04:44
But no, I want to ask you about what you said. You grew up in an upper middle class family. And sometimes when people grow up in that kind of environment, they don’t have this drive to start a company. This drive to buy jewelry and sell it to other people because their needs are provided for and their parents give them money. What do you think drove you to be more entrepreneurial to start a company? Having come from that background.
Chanie Gluck: 05:11
So I think it’s more of a personality. Like if you have something inside you like, I don’t know if you heard of the six, the six genius, the the working genius, six working genius, where you figure out I’m like a wonder person and an invention person. That’s just part of the way my brain works. I’m always thinking about it. I wonder what it would be like if this existed, or I wonder what it would be like if I could make money doing this.
And so I sit in that place of like, wonder and invention a lot. And maybe because I spent the first 13 years of my life being an only child and being with myself the entertainment of what was happening in my brain, mostly. I think that motivated me. And I just look at the world through eyes about what life would be like. And so I think that’s one of the qualities that you need for entrepreneurship.
I also think about my parents. Saw potential, may have seen my potential, or may have seen this about me and told me to pay for stuff. So when I was a teenager where my friends had credit cards and would just go to the store and buy whatever they wanted, we would just take the train, go into the city and go shopping. My parents would say, well, you’re babysitting, like use your babysitting money. Like, why are you asking me for money?
And so that drove me to just want to have the money to not have to ask anyone for money, but to be able to just buy whatever I wanted. And I knew that if I put in the effort, I could make the money. And, you know, you make money by creating value. And if you do things of value. And that’s really what I’m trying to teach my kids also, is that the bigger the problem you solve, the more money you’re going to make. So just think about that, how you’re going to improve society, how you’re going to make the world a better place. And you’ll end up being successful.
John Corcoran: 07:16
And when you created the medical billing company originally, did you have an idea of, oh, we’re going to improve this process. It’s very inefficient. Did you have new ideas or was it just I want to own and control the clients that I serve? You know, what was the idea behind it?
Chanie Gluck: 07:33
So at 18 years old, I was working for a doctor and I was working the front desk, and they taught me how to do billing. And then one day I was like, you know what? This is ridiculous. I’m making, I don’t know, whatever it was, the hourly wage I was earning. I said, you know what?
If I can do this for tens or hundreds of doctors and earn a percentage of what I collect for them, I could do very well for myself. So initially it was very enterprising, just trying to see how I can make the most money in a short amount of time, and leveraging other people. But as I got into the business, I had that business for 13 years. I just continued to innovate. I understood, you know, I learned a lot about customer service.
I didn’t graduate college. I only took like two college classes. And so my college, my education, I spent a tremendous amount of time at the library. And there’s actually a business library in Brooklyn. I would be there and take out every single book I could about marketing, sales, client services, operations. So as I continue to grow the business, I like learning a ton. And that’s when I started innovating.
John Corcoran: 08:46
And you mentioned that your idea was to take a percent of the amount you collected. Is that the business model now or has that evolved over time?
Chanie Gluck: 08:55
So that was the business model of that company because billing companies generally charge a percentage of collections. You can’t do that with Medicare billing. But overall that’s the premise. You get a percentage of whatever the doctor collects in this company. It went from like, you know, this company is an offshore operation in India, like more of a of a labor type of company.
Yeah. Right. A BPO which has now turned into a tech, you know, more of a technology company. But. You know, we’re constantly trying to figure out ways to innovate. But that percentage model was just for the billing company. This company is like FTE pricing like full time employee or transaction type pricing.
John Corcoran: 09:47
And I want to get to that. Why that shift in model? Before we get to that, though, for the first company that you had, what are some of the challenges of starting that? First of all, I think you started in 2002. Is that correct? Correct. So this is, you know, right after nine, 11 in, in and you’re in New York, the economy takes a nosedive after that. What was it like starting a company during that atmosphere?
Chanie Gluck: 10:17
So, you know, I’ll never forget nine over 11. I was working in this multispecialty practice. But I’ll tell you what made me start it. At the time, my boss was being investigated for something they thought he was doing. And I came to the office one day with a bunch of people in FBI jackets. I thought I was in a movie.
John Corcoran: 10:39
Wow.
Chanie Gluck: 10:40
Some Miranda rights and I had already started this thing on the side.
John Corcoran: 10:44
You. They read you, your Miranda. All of us.
Chanie Gluck: 10:46
The entire.
John Corcoran: 10:47
How old were you at the time?
Chanie Gluck: 10:49
I was 24, 23, 24 years old.
John Corcoran: 10:53
How traumatic was that?
Chanie Gluck: 10:55
Yeah, it was crazy. They took my license. You know, they took my ID, and I’m like, what the hell am I? So I was waiting for a sign, I actually prayed.
Chanie Gluck: 11:05
That’s that one right there. Like I said, you know, because I was doing this, I was like, at my full time job, 9 to 5, I’d come home, I would do this client on the side from six to midnight. I was working on my apartment doing his billing. And this went on for like nine months, like straight. This is what I was doing, like a lunatic. And then one day this happens. And I was like, okay, there’s my sign. And I’ll never forget, like, I packed up my stuff. I said, I can’t. I came to work the next day, my co-workers.
John Corcoran: 11:32
Before 911 or after 911.
John Corcoran: 11:35
When was after. Right.
John Corcoran: 11:36
After night after night you. Have 911 and then you have this FBI. Raid drama. Yes. Wow.
Chanie Gluck: 11:41
The trucks came. You know, we had those zip drives like they took all our hard drives out of our computers. My coworkers were saying, they’re tapping our phones. I’m like, I can’t do this. Like we’re done here.
John Corcoran: 11:52
Yeah. This is not.
Chanie Gluck: 11:53
What I want to be doing. So I remember I took my stuff at 11:00 in the afternoon, the morning. And I remember driving in New York. I was like, wow, this is what it’s like to drive around during the daytime. It was like a novel concept.
I haven’t like, you know, been driving around during the daytime for many years, but that was really the sign that, you know, started the business. But back to your question. Ask me again.
John Corcoran: 12:18
Let’s see, where were we? Oh, I think I was asking you about the vision behind the company, why you started it. What oh, what the environment was like after 911 with the economic downturn.
Chanie Gluck: 12:29
So that was my environment of what was going on in my life. And then I had this. I was doing this in my apartment. Then I moved the company to my parents house. Then my parents were like, you can’t be having employees in our house. This is ridiculous. Go get yourself an office, which I did. But you know what the good thing about healthcare is? It’s really recession proof. You know, no, 2008 911, like none of it mattered. People are getting sick.
Doctors still need to get paid. And it was, you know, the New York doctor world is very small. And when people are happy, they just tell their friends. And so the business really grew a lot through word of mouth. We started getting hospitals and it was really great.
John Corcoran: 13:16
So you weren’t, you didn’t have to knock on doors then to get your early clients. It was just kind of word of mouth.
Chanie Gluck: 13:22
I did, I did, I did. I definitely got out of my comfort zone. There were days that I would myself canvas. I had this like a web MD. I like, you know, the times of Google Maps where you would just print out, you know, a sheet of like, show me where all the doctors are. I would go down and I would just see how many people I could talk to in a day.
John Corcoran: 13:43
And what was your pitch? Give me your billing. I’ll. I’ll do a better job than the woman who’s sitting right there.
Chanie Gluck: 13:49
Yeah. Let me do it now. Let me do an analysis for you. Let me tell you where your money’s at. I always felt like you had to give away something to build trust. And so I would do this analysis for them.
They would see, oh, this. They really do know what they’re talking about. And that’s really how I grew the company.
John Corcoran: 14:08
Wow. Cool. So and then what led you to sell? Because you decided I think mid 2015, 2015 I think is when you decided. Yeah.
Chanie Gluck: 14:20
So I had my third kid and I had a client, a client in New York that really wanted to meet with me. I was in Arizona. My office was in New York.
John Corcoran: 14:33
And how did you manage that, by the way? So you moved to Arizona? I can’t remember, I remember. I think it was because of my family. Because your. Husband. Okay.
Chanie Gluck: 14:40
I got married, moved to Arizona, and I was running the business. All my.
Chanie Gluck: 14:45
Clients were in. The northeast. And that was quite challenging, actually. But my husband really loved Arizona. We already had a house in Arizona. And so it was pretty much a given that we were going to live in Arizona for a while.
I had cameras set up and I had my office there, but I also had my offshore operation in India, so that was fine. But you know what? When the cat’s away, the mice will play and it really didn’t work. I moved my people to Arizona. I built an office there, but I was also thinking about having kids.
I had, you know, these four kids in five years. So during that time, I was really trusting that my team was running the company, and I would kind of oversee things. But I remember walking into my Arizona office one day and seeing we had two computers. They had Netflix up on one screen and like, so, you know, it was quite challenging those years. But anyway, when they asked me to fly down to New York in December, when I had just had my baby like two months ago, I was like, this is crazy.
And I was talking to one of my 4D Global clients who was using my offshore people, and I said, you know, I, I don’t want to go to New York. I was complaining, and he said, and he owns a building company in New York. So he said to me, would you consider selling? I said, yeah, for the right price, I’ll sell. And then 30 days later, I had sold the company to him, and it was the best decision I made. And I went all in on 4D Global, which was my offshore operation at the time, and I started in 2015, before Covid, before offshoring was even a thing. And that really took off.