Unscripted with Versique · 2026-04-15 · 39 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
51 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
John Hutchinson, CEO of Hutchinson Enterprises and founder of Care Counseling, traces his path from managing sporting goods inventory at age five to building a mental health provider group that grew 70% annually for a decade. Raised in his parents' Montana Sports retail business on Madison's State Street, Hutchinson developed an early obsession with finance, cash flow, and systems thinking - insights he credits with understanding why most businesses fail from cash flow mismanagement rather than lack of revenue. After stints at Best Buy (where he automated his own job), a commercial real estate brokerage, Nielsen as a consumer data consultant at General Mills, and graduate school at St. Thomas, Hutchinson and his wife Andrea - a doctoral psychologist - identified a market gap: behavioral health organizations forced employees to choose between pay, culture, benefits, or work-life balance. They couldn't have all four. By buying a 1901 Victorian home in Uptown Minneapolis for $227,000, renovating it themselves while working full-time, and refusing to take personal income for eight years, they built Care Counseling into a provider group with a waiting list of clinicians wanting to join - rare in mental health. Hutchinson emphasizes effort as the only controllable success factor and positions systems thinking and deep cash flow understanding as competitive advantages often overlooked by operators chasing precision at the expense of accuracy.
Benefits, salary, work-life balance/flexibility, and culture. Hutchinson argues that most organizations excel at two of these but fail at the other two, whereas top employees want stability across all four dimensions.
They noticed that four of fifteen psychology graduates from Andrea's cohort left the mental health industry within a year. After analyzing the three primary employment paths (large health systems, nonprofits, and private practices), they realized each sacrificed two of the four key compensation buckets, so they built an organization designed to perform well on all four.
They purchased a 1901 Victorian home in Uptown Minneapolis for $227,000 in 2012, renovated it themselves while working full-time jobs, rented parking spaces, took on roommates, ate ramen, and took no personal income for eight years to avoid debt.
Hutchinson attributes it to understanding why clinicians struggled elsewhere, communicating that mission clearly, focusing relentlessly on hiring and retaining good clinicians, and accepting that good clinicians would naturally attract better client outcomes - they became one of the few mental health groups with a waiting list of people wanting to work there.
He wrote a computer program that automated his demand planning job in demand planning, reducing four hours per month of work, which made him realize he was too entrepreneurial for a large corporate environment where he couldn't move fast or change things.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
There are genuine nuggets - cash flow vs. P&L, the four-bucket compensation framework, the behavioral health employer landscape analysis - but they are buried in long biographical passages, water-preference tangents, and corn-detasseling stories. The insight-to-filler ratio is low for a 39-minute episode.
most people, when they think about finance, they forget about cash flow... It's what kills most businesses. It's like second leading contributor to businesses closing is growing too fast and running out of money
each one of these organizations would do really well at two of the things and really poorly at the other two
The 'precisely inaccurate' framing and the thesis that doing adequately on all four compensation dimensions beats excelling at two and failing two are genuinely fresh. However, the rest - effort over luck, take care of your people, entrepreneurship changes the world - recycles familiar founder-podcast tropes.
I think most people fall into this trap where they become precisely inaccurate
if we could go start a company that did well on all of them, but not the best on any, we would actually have better performance because we wouldn't be letting people down
John Hutchinson is a genuine practitioner who built a behavioral health company from a single Victorian house to ~100 clinicians and sold it to UnitedHealth - real operational depth. He is not massive scale and is a regional figure, but he is emphatically not a career thought-leader; he has done the thing.
we grew 70% volume a year every year for a decade
we went from being a private practice to how to get employees. We lost almost our entire staff through that, but we still grew
The episode earns credit for concrete figures - $227K purchase price, 70% annual growth, 15 - 20% EBITDA margins, 40 - 50% COVID acceleration, $1,500 for an H2O for Life water system - but many claims about culture, leadership transitions, and M&A nuance remain at a conceptual level without supporting data.
we bought this Victorian home for $227,000. It was like 5,500 square feet in Uptown
my forecast was behavioral health will grow somewhere between 8 and 12% volume for the next 15 years
The hosts lean heavily on 'and then what?' biographical sequencing and rarely press for mechanism or evidence behind claims. There are a few decent probes - asking about operational stressors during 40% growth - but no intellectual pushback, and side conversations about water preferences and sports eat meaningful minutes.
operationally, what did you guys see as issues
So your book is about the nuances within leadership
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
A true entrepreneur will admit that you have to be a dreamer and often ignore the status quo in your quest to disrupt an industry and change the world. In this episode, Kathy & Dardy invite John Hutchinson to share his journey from growing up in the family sporting goods business to founding and selling CARE Counseling. John proves that perfectionism can hold you, your teams and your company from achieving your goals.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
John Hutchinson: Unscripted presented by Versiq. Sharing inspiring stories from local business leaders and learning how their experiences and the people involved have shaped them along the way.
Kathy Rabadoux: Am I kicking off, sir?
Chris Dardis: You know what? Why don't I say the title today?
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, oh, oh, wow. Hey, ladies and gentlemen, look who's standing.
John Hutchinson: Stepping up his contributions.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yes.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Thank you.
Kathy Rabadoux: Thank you.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Contributions. Speaking of contributions, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the latest edition of, uh, Unscripted with Forsiq. I am Chris Dardis and with me is my co host, Kathy Rabadoux.
Kathy Rabadoux: And you said Rabadoux because you used to always say Robidoux.
Chris Dardis: Yeah, Robado.
Kathy Rabadoux: I said Rabado even a year after I worked here.
Chris Dardis: So sorry, Rabadoux. There's a little panic as I was
Kathy Rabadoux: getting closer to you.
Chris Dardis: Oh, my gosh.
Kathy Rabadoux: And who cares? You know, I don'. I'll listen to anything.
Chris Dardis: And I'd love for you to introduce our guest because you know him.
Kathy Rabadoux: So I am super excited today. Thank you for doing this. To introduce John Hutchinson, who is CEO of Hutchinson Enterprises, amongst all the other things we're going to get into today, someone that is just super kind, giving, and really just a great human. Like, you think about people and who they are, but really a good human. And I'll give Andrea a shout out to your wife because she, too, is another great human. So thanks for joining us today. Really appreciate it.
John Hutchinson: Well, thanks for having me.
Chris Dardis: Yeah, I was doing a little research. I'm really excited for the story. I'm really excited to hear this journey.
Kathy Rabadoux: What we want to do on Unscripted is we will talk about Hutchinson Enterprises and how all that came about and, you know, when we met, when you were at Care and all the things. But we want to start out and hear more about you. Tell us where you were born, where you grew up.
John Hutchinson: Oh, man. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
John Hutchinson: So I grew up right outside of Madison in a little town called Sun Prairie.
Kathy Rabadoux: Sun Prairie. Okay. Siblings.
John Hutchinson: One sibling. I have almost an Irish twin, so I have a Sister Elizabeth, who's 15 months older than me.
Chris Dardis: Oh, that's great. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: It always kills me when people say Irish. Like, oh, I have Irish twins. I'm like, yeah, yeah, as a twin mom, it's still a little different.
John Hutchinson: Oh, it's much.
Kathy Rabadoux: But yes. And then tell us a little bit about growing up. Like parents. Tell us about what your parents did.
John Hutchinson: So my mom and dad owned a sporting goods store in Madison, like, right on State Street. So I grew up, like, sort of in the business.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So I'm A small business kid.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay. And what was the name of the sporting goods store?
John Hutchinson: Montana Sports.
Kathy Rabadoux: Why the name?
John Hutchinson: Are you familiar with like Geneva?
Kathy Rabadoux: I am a little bit, yeah.
John Hutchinson: So my grandparents actually started a army navy surplus store called Fontana Sports.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay.
John Hutchinson: Way, way back, like 70, uh, years ago.
Kathy Rabadoux: No way.
John Hutchinson: And so yeah, they had a giant frog and a golf course. Like a mini golf course. It was quite the setup for young John.
Kathy Rabadoux: So. And both, both. So both parents run the business end.
John Hutchinson: Yep.
Kathy Rabadoux: Tell us a little bit about school. Elementary school. School. What were your interests in school?
John Hutchinson: I went to a school called Sacred Hearts. So like little parochial school. Class size of like 15. Two classes. And I mean I was just drawn to business from day one. So like we grew up talking about work and finance and so like. Yeah.
Chris Dardis: And it was a true sporting good sport in Madison.
John Hutchinson: Yes.
Chris Dardis: So were you inundated to become a uh, Badger fan? Like early. Early. No.
Kathy Rabadoux: Who wants to be a Badger fan?
John Hutchinson: Everyone wants to be a Badger fan if they're from Wisconsin.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. It's true.
Chris Dardis: As Kathy sits here with her Ohio State bracelet on.
John Hutchinson: I mean like, like when you think about things that cheer for in Wisconsin, it's like we've got cheese and beer and then the Badgers. True backers are pretty good. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: You're in school. Did you play any sports in school?
John Hutchinson: Yeah, I played a, uh, whole bunch of sports. Like really got into football because I was big in sixth grade and then I stopped growing. So like the line did not work out. I'm five ten. And then. Yeah. Like did some M track, so that was pretty fun. Did basketball again, uh, stop growing. So.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, I was no longer good at post fun.
Chris Dardis: Similar.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: That classic five foot ten post.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. In sixth grade.
Chris Dardis: Yeah, in sixth grade.
Kathy Rabadoux: What about first job?
John Hutchinson: Oh yeah, first job. I mean there was the Fontana sports stuff. So I was like sweeping the sidewalk and selling sporty goods stuff at five, six years old.
Kathy Rabadoux: Wow. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Started working the floor when I was seven. Started sweeping. I wrote my first purchase order when I was eight.
Chris Dardis: Nice.
John Hutchinson: And then my first like third party job was corn, uh, detasseling. Oh, for rinks, food. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Corn detach. I don't know if we've had a corn detachline.
John Hutchinson: I would uh, be surprised if you had a lot of corn. Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Tell me the, the science behind it. Were you inside Detass Link corn?
John Hutchinson: No, I was outside the tasseling corn. This was actually like great. So like my friend Victor Hinderliter and I would get up at like 4:30 in the morning. This is in like fifth grade, the summer between 6 and 15. And we would go into the field and basically you take a little bag and you rip off the tassels on some and you put the bags on a, uh, different part and you're making seed corn.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yes.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Right.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So I think it was a great example of just like you got to watch how unmotivated all the other teenagers and adults were that were in that environment.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: And yeah, it was interesting what led
Chris Dardis: to that job where you said, mom and dad, I'm sick and tired of being in the sports store. I want to get outside, I want
Kathy Rabadoux: to be a corn shop.
John Hutchinson: I wanted to work for somebody that was going to pay me when I worked. Ah, it's like feast and famine. Tons of money around December. But like, sure, yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh yeah. Because that's how, um, Black Friday actually came about was the retail business. Because that's when they finally got out of the red, was around the holidays.
John Hutchinson: Exactly. Yeah. So we were rich in inventory.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. Do you remember, you know, I think about as my father was an entrepreneur too, and I have so much respect for entrepreneurs. But did you see that stress in your parents? Like when you think about at a young age, did you see the stress of, you know, the summer months or
John Hutchinson: the months, I would say, like I have a couple of superpowers and one is being able to like connect finance with like human behavior.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: But most people, when they think about finance, they forget about cash flow. So I've always thought really deeply about the relationship between cash flow and a P and L. And so a lot of times when I'm advising, I'm focused more discreetly on that. Mhm. Because it's what kills most businesses. It's like second leading contributor to businesses closing is growing too fast and running out of money.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: As you were growing up, you're in the store, you see your parents who are entrepreneurs. As you're progressing through school now, how did that shape your drive and interests going into college?
John Hutchinson: So going to college, I mean, I did deca, uh, fbla, Student council, all sorts of programming like that throughout high school. And I just kind of followed that into college. I actually originally was going to go to school to be a dentist, so. Really? Yeah. Which is part of like the care counseling thing fits pretty neatly in my desire. I wanted to do a dso, so like a dental service organization. And you can't own a dental practice without being a professional. Right, right. So, uh, that's why I picked the schools that I applied to and then I Got into, like, organic chemistry, physics 3, calc 3, and a few other courses one semester at the U. And I was like, you know what? That's a terrible reason.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah, Yeah.
John Hutchinson: I was no good at those classes. Then I switched.
Chris Dardis: Uh, I'm curious. Backing up. You're in deca, which is a business program. I'm a deca. Former deca dad. So I'm going to test your memory. Do you remember what your kids, that whole deca. You're the best. Thank you so much.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, look at this guy. He said my name right today. He got a compliment on how young he looks. Just a stallion, this guy.
Chris Dardis: Do you remember one of your DECA projects?
John Hutchinson: Yeah. I did a team project with a good, uh, friend of mine, Ryan Borer. And we were basically doing marketing in banking. And so we won state. We went to nationals, actually. So we got the assignment, and we forgot to read the rest of the directions, which is why I always wanted integrator around. We did, like, eight different projects instead of the one. So we were supposed to pick one of the eight things with the banking. We did all of them. So we were like, that was unbelievably hard. And everyone else is like, we just did this one.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, my gosh.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, that was, uh.
Chris Dardis: That's good.
John Hutchinson: That was pretty good.
Chris Dardis: I love it. So you've always been an overachiever?
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Yep.
John Hutchinson: Uh, ask for one.
Chris Dardis: I'm going to do eight accidentally.
John Hutchinson: I believe you can succeed with, like, four different ways. Right. There's four paths to success. It's like, you could be smarter, you could be more talented, you could work harder, and you could be luckier. And I think you can really only impact, like, one of those today, which is effort. So I'm a big effort guy.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
Kathy Rabadoux: I love that. So you're at the U. You're like, okay, I'm not taking Cal 3. Getting all up in people's, you know, business.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. I don't want to be in people's mouths.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: I don't really.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. I'm not sciences. And people don't really love. No offense to all the dentists out there, but, you know, I don't. Nobody loves going to the dentist. So you decide what you're like. I'm gonna get into business.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. I decided I was gonna get into business. I did retail merchandising and management, so I was like, I'll go into retail.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: And did you have at that time where you like, I wanna be at Target or I wanna be at Gap.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Or I wanna be at maybe Benetton.
John Hutchinson: Who doesn't wanna work at Target Superstore? Yeah, you know, it's the early 2000s. They were in their heyday.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Ah, I went to Best Buy, Demand planning there, took over computer hardware.
Kathy Rabadoux: So that was your first job out of college, was Best Buy. Okay, so tell us a little bit about that stint.
John Hutchinson: You know how like sometimes you realize you're not made for an environment?
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: That was one where it's like I'm way too entrepreneurial for a large organization. So I wrote a computer program that did my job at about four hours a month
Chris Dardis: back then.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay, so right away, first job, you're like, you know what, I'm more of an entrepreneur. I'm not gonna do well in this big. Nothing against the company, but you're just not gonna fit into that.
John Hutchinson: I just kind of want, want to move fast.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah, yeah.
John Hutchinson: And I want to change things and that's not like the purpose of a large organization.
Kathy Rabadoux: Right, right.
John Hutchinson: So I'm a big fan of like process. It's just I like to set the process of systems or advise on them. I, um, don't really like to do the same thing every day.
Kathy Rabadoux: So how long are you at Best Buy?
John Hutchinson: I was there for like a year and a half.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay, and then what?
John Hutchinson: I went in and started a brokerage company. So did, uh, commercial real estate brokerage in Madison. And basically we focused on like patient capital. So like we went and worked with franchisees after the market crashed and helped them go from like class C, class B to class B, class A real estate. So like Papa John's, Anytime Fitness, those kind of clients. So that was great. I did that for a few years and then Andrea got into her doctoral program and I decided I wanted to marry her. So I moved back and sold, uh, my portion of the company, which paid for grad school.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay, and where'd you go to grad school?
John Hutchinson: I went to St. Thomas. They did their full time program.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay, great.
John Hutchinson: Which was awesome.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah, go ahead. I see you staring at me with a question.
Chris Dardis: I'm just, just because I'm a Johnny doesn't mean I have to make a comment. Everybody says St. Thomas.
John Hutchinson: I mean rivalry, but we have had
Kathy Rabadoux: a lot of guests, very successful guests that attended St. Thomas.
Chris Dardis: That's true.
John Hutchinson: That is true, that's true.
Chris Dardis: We had one guest.
John Hutchinson: Did you have a successful alum?
Chris Dardis: Uh, Dan Schwartz, early earlier this year. Like you're spinning.
Kathy Rabadoux: We did have one.
John Hutchinson: Thank you very much.
Chris Dardis: That's so good.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay, so you go to grad School.
John Hutchinson: Yep. Went to grad school.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay. And then tell us about that experience at grad school. St. Thomas.
John Hutchinson: Oh, man, that was so fun.
Chris Dardis: And you went for brand marketing.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, I did, uh, marketing and management. Uh, basically, like, I wanted to be a consultant.
Chris Dardis: Very good. So you're at St. Thomas, graduate from St. Thomas, and then you land at Nielsen.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Is that right?
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: And explain to everybody what Nielsen is, because they're probably thinking, oh, man.
John Hutchinson: When you think about like consumer data, they have the absolute best.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So they collect a bunch of point of sale data. Uh, they, uh, have like, if you think about ratings at tv, they have that kind of information. So that Nielsen.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah, you always hear on Nielsen ratings.
John Hutchinson: Exactly. They're a commonly footnoted thing, but within cpg, they're used pretty heavily.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
John Hutchinson: I went and got placed. I was at General Mills. I sat a bunch of their divisions full time for four or five years.
Chris Dardis: Okay. Growing up in retail with mom and dad, now you find yourself away from dentistry into retail, and now you're at Nielsen and you're a consultant leader over there and you're at Nielsen for about four years, is that right? Yeah. What prompts you to leave Nielsen?
John Hutchinson: Effectively? We were starting care, so we had bought a small condo, refinished that, leased it out. Then we bought this 1901 Victorian home to start care counseling it.
Kathy Rabadoux: Tell us a little bit about that. So, yeah, don't.
Chris Dardis: Yada, yada, yada.
Kathy Rabadoux: You and Andrea, you get married, she had been gone. Right? Yeah. So tell us, how did that conversation start? I mean, did you just one day be like, hey, maybe we should start a company?
John Hutchinson: So this is actually like a really wonderful story. So While I'm at St. Thomas in this cohort model. Right. So I'm with the same 60 to 80 students.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: For two years. Andrea's also at a cohort model with like 15 other professionals that are studying to be psychologists. So after school, a couple of nights a month, we would go out as cohorts. So all the MBA people and all the psychology students would go and have drinks at an Indian place right by there. So the Dancing Ganesha.
Chris Dardis: Oh, yes.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, yes. I actually know that.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. They had like the best happy hour. We were in grad school. I got to know all of these professionals. They were exceptional at their craft, really good people, motivated for all the right reasons. And then we get done with the program and you hear that this person has left the field like six months after they graduate. And it's like 10 years to get this kind of degree. Right. To get a doctorate in counseling, psych. And then it was like three months later you hear about another person falling out. And within like a year, three of the 15, four of the 15 people had already left the industry. So Andrea and I started talking about why and ah, we kind of alighted on this idea that there were sort of three job opportunities that existed broadly. So I'm a big systems guy. We're thinking about like, why is this happening? And you could work like at a large health system, at a nonprofit, or at a private or group practice.
Chris Dardis: Right.
John Hutchinson: Each one of those have these astronomically huge trade offs. So when I think about how you compensate someone, there's kind of four buckets benefits, you have salaries, you have work life balance, like flexibility. And then you have culture. And each one of these organizations would do really well at two of the things and really poorly at the other two. And typically with white collar employees, they want good performance at all of those things. Or said another way, they want stability.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: They want to be treated well. That's why like large accounting firms have historically done well, big law firms, et cetera. So we thought if we could go start a company that did well on all of them, but not the best on any, we would actually have better performance because we wouldn't be letting people down. M. So like having high pay and no cultures, no good.
Chris Dardis: Right.
John Hutchinson: Just like you want to get paid when you have a baby. Shocker.
Kathy Rabadoux: Right.
John Hutchinson: And like those are the kind of things people are trading off where it's like you go to a nonprofit, you have great culture, everyone's there for the same reason. You have good benefits, but you get paid like half of what you would in another setting.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Ah.
John Hutchinson: And like you don't have work life balance, that's that good. Because it's really easy to convince a group of professionals that are engaged in helping children to work nights, but then they don't see their kids.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So that's not healthy.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So we circled around this and talked to a wide variety of like consultants, advisors, industry professionals. And then we decided we wanted to start something to sort of address that need.
Chris Dardis: So what was the first move? What was it like, the first big commitment you guys made to start care counseling?
John Hutchinson: The first big move was buying the house. So this is 2012. Ish. Right. And so the real estate market had been pretty torn up by that point. Right. I had familiarity there. And the cool thing about behavioral health is you could like actually position it in a home.
Chris Dardis: Right.
John Hutchinson: And a lot of professionals like when they envision going to a psychologist or being a psychologist or a psychiatrist, they picture like showing up in the home with a big grand staircase and like, uh, a suite office off to the side. M. It's funny, you see that like shtick play out in so many TV shows. So we bought this Victorian home for $227,000. It was like 5,500 square feet in Uptown. And as we were doing all of that, the prep work for paperwork, insurance contracting, et cetera, we went through and we, we did all of the renovations basically with our hands.
Chris Dardis: Really?
John Hutchinson: Yeah. Like I said, efforts are thick. So we would do our normal jobs, which were pretty like they were significant, like 50, 60 hours a week. And then we would come home and we would work together and fix up the house or go out to debtor and work through paperwork or figure out, um, whatever the problem of the day is. And so that was kind of the big step. Yeah, we did that whole renovation basically out of pocket, so no debt. This place had like a 16 car parking lot, so we rented out parking spaces. We had roommates, even though we were like adults. We ate a lot of ramen.
Kathy Rabadoux: Like a lot of ramen. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: And then we had our first hire and we had our first kid two weeks after we saw our first client.
Chris Dardis: Oh, my gosh.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, we just pushed through.
Kathy Rabadoux: Wow.
John Hutchinson: And then we grew 70% volume a year every year for a decade.
Chris Dardis: Do you attribute that to obviously having professionals like your wife providing that to people? But what helped you guys step on the gas like that? Was it.
John Hutchinson: I mean, I think like one, we really understood like the why, why people were in that industry, why they were struggling with other employers, et cetera. So, like, being able to communicate with the team, that was a big piece. And then we were just laser focused on, uh, our mission was building a community to strengthen the community. We were laser focused on clinicians. We believe that if we got good clinicians and treated them well and kept them around, clients would have better outcomes.
Kathy Rabadoux: Take care of the people and they'll take care of the business. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: We were one of the only mental health provider groups that I've ever heard of that's cash flow positive or has a waiting list to hire people. So we wouldn't hire people. We would tell them bad news during the interview. Right. Like, we'd say, like, hey, the first six months is the worst six months. Like, you're going to learn all of our paperwork. You're going to have to do diagnostic assessments, you're going to have new Clients, which are the hardest because they surprise you.
Chris Dardis: Right.
John Hutchinson: Like, we're Americans. We're good at symptoms. We're not good at diagnosing.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah, yeah.
John Hutchinson: Uh, we can say I feel sad pretty accurately. We can't say, like, oh, I have bipolar.
Kathy Rabadoux: Right, right, right, right. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Uh, so, yeah, we just stayed focused on that. And then we were like, Andrea and I didn't take money out of the business for, like, eight years.
Chris Dardis: Wow.
John Hutchinson: And then we would pair it with real estate so that we could do winding, et cetera, and. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: So smart. Tell us a little bit about, you know, because this is just me, someone who's not as familiar with the industry. So when I think about mental health and things like that, I think Covid, like, to me, that's when.
John Hutchinson: Oh, such a big.
Kathy Rabadoux: When Covid happened, that's when it really became. It was more talked about openly. You know, people openly talked about it. And, you know, everyone's on teams and zooms and all these things. And you can see into people's homes, or all of a sudden you don't see somebody, then you see them six months later, you know, they appear different. And I know you had a lot of growth prior to that, but is Covid something that you feel like, really opened up the floodgates to mental health?
John Hutchinson: Oh, for sure. I would say There was an earlier thing M. That made me really interested in getting in the space, like, from a business perspective. And that was the aca, so the Affordable Care act happened. It pulled behavioral health in as part of healthcare. So prior to that, it was treated more like a vision or a dental or chiropractic, like a supplementary piece.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: The ACA forced health care to have parity. Oh, I didn't know that with behavioral health. So that was like, a big thing for me because that meant it was covered. Right. So.
Kathy Rabadoux: So it couldn't be just like a nice to have, like, yeah, I would like to go to therapy, but I can't afford it or it's not, you
John Hutchinson: know, I mean, suddenly the insurers had to take behavioral health into.
Kathy Rabadoux: What year was that? 18. 17.
John Hutchinson: 9.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, okay. Oh, much earlier.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay.
John Hutchinson: So a couple years.
Kathy Rabadoux: So before you guys, like, that was kind of an aha moment.
John Hutchinson: M. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: As you're getting ready to start care,
John Hutchinson: I'm pretty good at forecasting, and my forecast was behavioral health will grow somewhere between 8 and 12% volume for the next 15 years.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: Which is huge. Those are absolutely gigantic.
Kathy Rabadoux: That's without even Covid. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. Covid accelerated that for sure. It ah, actually like the industry is kind of coming back from that right now because we grew a little too fast. But yeah, so like I think of ACA as the first big thing. And then when 2020 happened, like that absolutely accelerated it. So we went from like this 8 to 10% growth rate up to like 40% in 2020 and then like another 40 or 50% in 2021. And I think part of the reason why the industry's been struggling lately is people expected that to continue, but like there's no way those kind of growth rates will.
Kathy Rabadoux: How many companies through Covid grew 20%, 30%?
John Hutchinson: Like let's talk about Black Swan event.
Kathy Rabadoux: Well, that's just not going to happen year after year after year forever.
Chris Dardis: So our best years ever were 21, 22 coming out of COVID What sort of operational kind of stressors or like when the space shuttle started shaking? Because you guys are growing at 40% like operationally, what did you guys see as issues?
Kathy Rabadoux: Well, and your people, you're in the business to help people. Uh, and that's one thing I've heard. Not I. We want to answer your question, but one thing I've heard from a lot of people is how people that are in therapy need to make sure they are getting therapy or.
John Hutchinson: Oh, like the therapist. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Chris Dardis: So you're growing 40% operationally. Like what was the, what was the
John Hutchinson: hard thing to solve? 40%. We're growing at 70.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
John Hutchinson: So like part of the reason why we would always taper our growth to that 70% mark is. Which sounds crazy, right? Like we're pulling back to 70 is because we thought we would be able to learn how to grow. We could set quarterly goals and we could hit it. Like, we could achieve them and we could continue to support the team. And that's where cash flow works, I would say. When we got to 25 professionals, that was like a really tough growth point. Somewhere between 15 and 25, because we went from being a private practice to how to get employees. We lost almost our entire staff through that, but we still grew.
Kathy Rabadoux: Wow.
John Hutchinson: Just because like they had signed up to be part of a private practice, which is totally fair. And we wanted more control because we wanted paperwork, compliance, et cetera. But we had to build all these systems around it. That was painful. Then somewhere around 2021 was like another really hard point. So we like, we're just getting around a hundred professionals full time and that causes all sorts of like incremental deeds. You need more of a professional HR department Basically you're building systems within uh, systems. So instead of having like a person that does uh, a thing, you have a team that's doing a thing and you start instead of leading like doers or managers of doers, you're leading leaders of leaders. So that was, I would say like a challenge that we continued to just push against. Yeah. For the next four years.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
John Hutchinson: Every time you figure something out, another thing breaks. It's like watching a car go down the road. You can see one of the wheels are getting wobbly.
Kathy Rabadoux: But yeah, 2023. Tell us about that.
John Hutchinson: About selling Care.
Chris Dardis: Mhm.
Kathy Rabadoux: Had you and Andrea talked about, I mean was there a conversation about like where we can take it? You know, can we take it to where it needs to go? Because you are such a community focused, both of you are. I mean was that a conversation like, you know, maybe we should sell?
John Hutchinson: Yeah, we were talking about that for the entire time. Okay. Renticare. Because so many people are taking out investments through private equity. Like we just always thought that was like exiting would be a good thing to do. This is, I would say health care is not a thing you usually make intergenerational. Right. I'm not going to give it to my kids.
Kathy Rabadoux: Right.
John Hutchinson: And honestly it's so operationally difficult to make money in that kind of industry because best case scenario you have like a 15 to 20% EBITDA. So like pretty tight margins. So that had always been top of mind. But I got really sick in 2021 so like I had a bunch of GI issues. I was hospitalized for like 14 days.
Chris Dardis: Uh, wow.
John Hutchinson: Throughout the year. And I mean Basically I worked 12 to 15 hour days in the hospital every single day. Like I got out of surgery and I started working. Right. Well I'm still drugged up and I was like, this is just not a good way to live.
Kathy Rabadoux: So it's one of the reasons you started the company, right? To have something to show people like
John Hutchinson: yeah, what we built at Care is beautiful and I think the team is great and like the purpose is good. And we were like, it was a wonderful time to exit and to continue that growth. We would have had to go multi state, which is far more complex than it sounds because you're working with rules inside of rules for each of these states and ah, Wisconsin and the Dakotas do not have a good Medicaid environment. M so realistically if we were going to open another site, it would have been like either in Illinois or Ohio, which just sounded like, hey, shout out,
Kathy Rabadoux: shout out to Ohio.
John Hutchinson: Uh, but yeah, so that kind of made sense. And so when we opened a process and worked with Piper, we identified two strategics that we were willing to work with, one being UnitedHealth. And they were interested. We had a really good relationship with them, and our hope was that they would pick us up and use some of our tools because everyone copies UnitedHealth.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mm.
John Hutchinson: And if we could get them to change the way they compensate employees or the way they think about treating providers, and that would be a waterfall outcome. So, yeah, I love that they were interested. We took a lower price to work with them, and it was great.
Chris Dardis: Wow. Awesome. Uh, and some of the things that you're doing now in your current company is built upon the experience that you went through selling that company.
John Hutchinson: Oh, absolutely.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Ah.
Chris Dardis: So let's talk about that. 20. 24. You guys sell care?
John Hutchinson: 23.
Chris Dardis: Yep, 23. Now what is it? Is it a big deep breath and a high five between you and your wife? And then what do you do? What?
John Hutchinson: Like.
Chris Dardis: Oh, man.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. So, like, we continue to go to work. So we started working, uh, at UnitedHealth, like, the very, you know, same day that we sell. And I was very quickly like, okay, I remember why I don't want to work at a large.
Kathy Rabadoux: I was gonna say, um, back to my. Your Best Buy date.
John Hutchinson: Back to that first point.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: No. So I, like, I could tell that I was going to be, like, the wrong kind of disruptive for that kind of organization just because. And I didn't realize UnitedHealth was struggling with some of the other things that have come out since then. So I stepped away pretty quickly, became a real estate professional, which just basically, like, dealt with. We had a decent real estate portfolio by that time. We took minority investments in a number of other organizations. So I was doing coaching with them. And then I started doing more board work.
Kathy Rabadoux: Okay.
John Hutchinson: Which has been just awesome. So I do a lot of board work with healthcare companies, a lot of advising those. And basically I just preach good.
Kathy Rabadoux: I love it.
John Hutchinson: And finance.
Chris Dardis: Right. On some of the boards that you're a part of. You're a part of. Um. Is it. How do you pronounce it? Is it Rizo?
John Hutchinson: Yeah. Riso is a commercial real estate brokerage firm.
Chris Dardis: Okay.
John Hutchinson: That I've been involved with since they started four years ago.
Chris Dardis: And then YPL Young professionals. M. And then I'm really interested in hearing about H2O for Life.
John Hutchinson: Everyone should donate to H2O for Life.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yes. Tell us a little bit about it.
John Hutchinson: Net. Net for 11 cents a year, they can give clean water Systems to kids around the globe. So what they do is they raise money to teach philanthropy in Minnesota and nationally. So they raise money to teach philanthropy kids in third through fifth grade about clean water and non profit systems. And then those kids raise funds and those funds are matched by an NGO and they put up wells. So I love that for like 1500 bucks to the H2O for Life organization, they can put in a clean water system.
Chris Dardis: Oh my gosh, that's great.
John Hutchinson: Uh, so the outcomes are great. Like my daughter Charlotte, my daughter Sophia are both like really engaged in this organization. They love it. And so yeah, it's just I think Doug and the team do a great job.
Kathy Rabadoux: I love that.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: And who doesn't like clean water? I mean like let's talk about a basic human.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh my gosh. If when my kids and husband hear this, I'm a water well, you know, I always have my water with me but I do not like anyone touching my. I am very picky. I am um, I know I am very picky.
Chris Dardis: You don't share your water.
Kathy Rabadoux: No, I don't. It angers quickly, quick and I'm not in one easy anger. No, I like I certain amount of ice. I am very picky about my water.
John Hutchinson: Like how much ice do you want it to melt by the end?
Kathy Rabadoux: Uh, no, I like it with a little extra. So I like the ice to still be there and I like a certain amount and it's. I'm very picky. It has to be filtered. It sounds terrible. But I like good water.
John Hutchinson: I want purified ice. Like. Yeah, Yeah.
Chris Dardis: I think you guys are weird.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: No, I'm kidding. I love uh, it.
John Hutchinson: All right.
Chris Dardis: And then lastly we mentioned you went through the sale of your business.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: And it looks like you're working as an advisor at ARC Malibu.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, so I work as an advisor with ARC Malibu. I basically help small mid sized companies exit. I would say I'm on the very front end of that process. But it's such an emotional journey.
Chris Dardis: I can't imagine. Yeah.
John Hutchinson: That uh, I help people through that. They actually just had their largest sale ever earlier this week. So that's exciting. Peter Kubisak and the team are exceptionally well healed and so it's just fun to be part of the deal making process.
Kathy Rabadoux: Cool. Warren, you're right because it is emotional. You know, when you I'm sure is excited as you were. And like you said you even took a, a lesser amount to work with uhg. You wanted to work with them. But still even you get in there Day one, you're like, and I can't be here because it is.
John Hutchinson: Well, I took it less because I wanted my company to work with you.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yes. I don't know.
John Hutchinson: I. Yes.
Kathy Rabadoux: And that's what I meant. So you wanted your company to work with them, but you also, I would think, as an entrepreneur, you know, I've said to someone before, it's kind of like you go in, you know, as a mom, and you have the baby, and then you just say, okay, now you raise my baby, but I'll be right here in the same room with you. That is an emotional thing. Or that would be a difficult thing.
John Hutchinson: Like, you have the baby, and then the baby grows up and the baby meets their spouse.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: And you go to the wedding and they get married, and you're like, and I'm moving in.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: So.
Kathy Rabadoux: Well, because you got to let go of that. It's not your decision anymore. Uh, you know, you can't make decisions, and you gotta kind of be on the outside. So I love that you're doing now helping people along that journey, because I'm so interested in this kind of thing, because I bet people are like, oh, no, I don't care. It's fine. It'll be fine. And then they get in there and they're like, what the hell are they doing? What's going on?
John Hutchinson: Yeah. Why? We learned about this.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: You can't do that. It's wrong. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, uh. Especially when you go into a large, strategic. Like, you're not going to change all their processes, and you shouldn't.
Kathy Rabadoux: Right.
John Hutchinson: But also, like, you should come into that prepared so that, like, you'll notice. I'm not upset about UnitedHealth having its own business practices. It should. A lot of them are better than ours. But there's a reason why most founders are kind of salty after they sell their business. So I'm actually writing a book right now called the Nuance Effect. That's what my podcast is about. I'm interviewing, like, 30 to 50 professionals nationally who have built these really cool companies. And I think a lot of times when companies get purchased, there's these small things they do that get missed in diligence and get deleted. And that leads to a big decline in the business because you take away, like, they're sort of like, special substance, whatever that is, the special sauce.
Kathy Rabadoux: Why someone wants to purchase something M.
John Hutchinson: And I think a lot of times that special sauce is focused on, like, one significant group within the organization, like a department. For us, it would Be therapists. Like, you should stay laser focused on the things that keep therapists around because that keeps clients around, that keeps billing going, et cetera. For you, I'm guessing it's recruiters. M. Right. M. Which if you ever exited, like I would say whoever purchases, you should be really focused on understanding why the recruiters want to work at For Seek.
Chris Dardis: Yeah. I keep going back to the four things that you said in starting care. Like these are the four basic elements. And oftentimes when companies fail, it's because they're missing one or two of them.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. They don't think about total rewards in a sense of like, you really want to set up the incentives of those four things to match whatever makes the business profitable.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: M which sounds simple, but it's easy to forget that like the money you spend on healthcare could go into something else.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
Chris Dardis: Yeah. So your book is about the nuances within leadership.
John Hutchinson: Yeah. So it's connecting basically the idea of those reward systems with finance.
Kathy Rabadoux: I love that.
John Hutchinson: Yeah, it's really good. Like I've had a number of like public company CEOs, like founders of huge organizations come on and I'm just basically doing testing against like, I would think of it as like secondary research.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. So what's next? You've made it past the sweeping the floors, writing your first purchase order at age 8. Like when you think about now, where you know where you are today and you think about that, what do you think early on you felt, you know, being a part of your parents business with them, that has kind of, uh, led you to be the entrepreneur that you are or that you have been.
John Hutchinson: The things that lead me to be an entrepreneur is like, that's how you change the world. That's how you can make things better. You go and create it. And if you can create something that makes money and makes the world a better place, people will flock to it.
Chris Dardis: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: Mm. So yeah, uh, there's a reason why the first thing I bring up about H2O for life isn't clean water. It's the fact that they can do clean water in a way that's so affordable that we should do it for every kid in the world. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: Ah.
Chris Dardis: I was looking on your LinkedIn before you showed up and I would love the story behind a video that's out there. It looks like it's you and your daughter and you're walking and you say life is short and sometimes the coolest parts are completely unexpected. And so a, as a systems guy who is good at forecasting it feels, uh, like you have a lot of plans and you always know what's going to happen and this is the itinerary and this is what we're going to do.
Kathy Rabadoux: You got to have the cash flow.
Chris Dardis: So the fact that you're also able to have a quote like that and recognize, hey, some of the coolest stuff is completely unexpected. Walk us through the story behind that video.
John Hutchinson: Oh, man, I'm such a big believer in planned happenstance. Right. So like, if you leave yourself open to good things and you get yourself positioned correctly, like, they're more likely to happen and you're more likely to participate in them. So we were in Italy for the last three weeks. We took both sets of grandparents. It was just fantastic. Right. And our kids. And we were on this tour and I thought, hey, this is kind of boring for an 11 year old. So I had Charlotte wear her running shoes and we took a three mile run. And as we were running, we ended up finding this incredible phone. So we crossed the street, looked at the phone, and there was a tower. And so we went and ran to the tower. We realized that this tower was part of the wall that surrounded Florence. And then further up we saw another thing. We ran up this hill and we ended up finding this amazing artist who was playing music on the side of a, uh, hill where Michelangelo is buried.
Chris Dardis: Wow.
John Hutchinson: And we're looking over this countryside and it's just like this would never have happened if I had taken a nap or if I had followed the regular path and the fact that it was happening. And I got my 11 year old Kent to go for a run, which she totally did not want to do.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: But she did want to spend time with me. I think those are the best parts of life. That's great.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh, I love that. Makes me tear up.
John Hutchinson: Mhm.
Kathy Rabadoux: I love that.
Chris Dardis: Are you ready for lightning?
Kathy Rabadoux: Rapid fire, lightning round, lighting round.
Chris Dardis: I love it.
Kathy Rabadoux: I'll, uh, do first question. Okay. Where would we find you on a Saturday morning? So it's Saturday morning. What are you doing?
John Hutchinson: Probably taking a run.
Kathy Rabadoux: Taking a run?
John Hutchinson: Yep.
Chris Dardis: What's your path?
John Hutchinson: I live out by Excelsior, so I'll do the lrt.
Kathy Rabadoux: Cool.
Chris Dardis: Yeah. Love it.
John Hutchinson: Same path every time. I'm kind of boring. I want to zone out to a podcast.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: All right. Another, uh, quote that you put out on LinkedIn. It's a Winston Churchill quote. Perfection is the enemy of progress. I want you to riff on what that means to you in 30 seconds.
John Hutchinson: Oh, man. Remember in Stats where they would draw that Bullseye.
Kathy Rabadoux: Mhm.
John Hutchinson: And then there was accuracy versus precision. I think most people fall into this trap where they become precisely inaccurate.
Chris Dardis: That's really good.
Kathy Rabadoux: I like that. If you could play any sport, if you could be an athlete on any team, what team or who would you be? What position? What would you play?
John Hutchinson: Am I good at it?
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. You're like. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like if you.
John Hutchinson: I mean, I'd love to be like the quarterback for the packers, obviously.
Kathy Rabadoux: Oh my God. We've had a couple of those now. I'm, um, getting a little disappointed.
John Hutchinson: Oh, I'm sorry. I mean, I. I would be quarterback for the Vikings, but they would fire me every year.
Chris Dardis: Too real.
Kathy Rabadoux: So you quarterback then. Sure.
Chris Dardis: I love it. I'm going to move my life quake question into rapid fire. What is life quake? Is something that happens within your life either. And we like to, uh, set it up professionally.
John Hutchinson: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Like when it's almost a sliding door moment, but a lifequake is. It happens professionally. You think, oh, my gosh, I might not recover from this and. But now, as a former business owner who was able to sell your business, you look back on that life quake moment and say, huh? But for that happening, I don't develop into who I am today. So thank goodness that life quake happened. Do you have one?
John Hutchinson: Yeah. I mean, I would say, like, when I got sick in 2021, that totally changed my perspective around, like, what I could do as a human. And it made me slow down, like a lot, maybe think about what's important, which has allowed me to be a much better leader. I would say wiser. And that's. Yeah. I mean, I focus on a few things now.
Chris Dardis: Yeah.
John Hutchinson: Like, I have running, I have my kids, I have Andrea, and I have work. Yeah. Uh, and anything that's not in that group falls to the back if I need to do something for those first four things.
Chris Dardis: Boundaries. Therapy.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah.
Chris Dardis: Boundaries. Yeah.
Kathy Rabadoux: This was awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Chris Dardis: I really enjoyed this great story.
Kathy Rabadoux: Yeah. Thanks, John.
John Hutchinson: Thanks for downloading. Unscripted Presented by versiq we see people, each as versatile and unique and each with a capacity for greatness. Whether you're looking for interim solutions, direct hire or executive leadership for your business, we're here to help, subscribe or share unscripted on, um, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform. Copyright 2026 Verse.
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