How Two Real Estate Pros Built a Private Pay Ride-Generating Machine NEMT Experts Podcast, Episode 112, with Mackenzie Andrews and Raymond Damitio of The Doctor Ride
Most NEMT startups chase broker trips first and figure out marketing later. Mackenzie Andrews and Raymond Damitio did the opposite. The owners of The Doctor Ride in Charlotte, North Carolina built their online presence before they owned a single van, walked into 75 healthcare facilities before spending a dollar on insurance, and eight months in, they are running a private pay NEMT business where roughly 60 percent of rides come from individuals who found them online.
In Episode 112 of the NEMT Experts Podcast, Bambi CEO Nirav Chheda sits down with Mac and Ray to unpack exactly how they did it. Watch the full episode on YouTube or listen on Spotify .
It started with a grandmother and seven appointments Mac and Ray spent five to six years grinding in North Carolina real estate, running a sales team of 13 at its peak. They wanted a service business but had not found the right one. Then Mac's grandmother had a month with seven doctor's appointments, and he could not get a single transportation company to answer the phone or respond to a form submission.
That experience exposed the gap. In real estate, you never assume you are the only one making an offer, so answering the phone and following up fast is survival. In NEMT, Mac saw companies dropping the ball on those exact basics.
"If we can just take the hustle and the sales aspect that we've been applying to real estate and apply it to this business right here, there's no way that we're not going to win." — Mackenzie Andrews
Proof of concept before the van Here is the part most aspiring operators get backwards. Before buying a vehicle or taking on insurance, the pair built their website, started marketing the business as "coming soon," and pressure-tested demand.
Mac personally walked into 75 facilities, no branded polo, just brochures and his Sunday best. One facility had just been burned by unreliable providers and was actively shopping. Mac was honest: he did not even have a van yet. The facility liked the brochures, liked the website, and agreed to wait a month. That account is still their best facility relationship today, producing rides every single day.
One reality check from the conversation: facilities will not sign your contract. Expect a partnership agreement that makes you a preferred vendor, on their terms, with your insurance documentation in hand. The Doctor Ride's first facility account was also net 60, which meant floating two months of rides before the first payment landed.
The 60 percent: private pay individuals who find you online While Mac worked the facilities, Ray built the inbound engine. The Doctor Ride invested heavily in SEO, blog content, Google Ads, and their Google Business Profile. Today about 35 to 40 percent of rides come from facility relationships and small contracts, and around 60 percent come from private pay individuals in the Charlotte area, often a son or daughter booking for a parent.
Ray is also already winning the next channel: AI search.
"I know for a fact we are booking rides from people that are finding us through asking AI who should I use for this, which I just think is pretty crazy." — Raymond Damitio
That is worth pausing on. Patients and families are asking AI assistants who to call for wheelchair transportation in their city, and the companies with strong reviews, clean websites, and consistent online presence are the ones AI recommends. The Doctor Ride has 46 five-star Google reviews in roughly eight months, fueled by an automated post-ride text that thanks the rider and hands them a direct review link.
"You got to spoon feed people, man. If I don't send them a link and make it as easy as possible for them to do it, the chances are they're not going to do it." — Mackenzie Andrews
Why they built their own CRM: One NEMT Ray's biggest surprise entering the industry was the software gap. Dispatch platforms crush the operational side of a confirmed ride. But nothing handled the sales process before the ride exists: the form fill, the missed call, the quote, the follow-up, the conversion.
"The dispatch softwares crush the execution of that, but there wasn't really a ton of features as far as the actual sales process for taking someone submitting a form on your website or calling your business and converting it into a booked ride." — Raymond Damitio
So they built One NEMT , a phone and CRM system with visual pipelines that they use in their own operation daily. Every call and form submission gets captured, quoted in writing by SMS and email, and dropped into an automated follow-up sequence. Ray noticed quoted leads were going silent, so he added a light automated nudge. It regularly recovers bookings without anyone lifting a finger.
The tracking data drives real decisions. When the metrics showed they turned down 22 rides in one month with a single van, and their average booking runs a little over 200 dollars, the math for a second vehicle made itself. They run separate pipelines for private pay, facility, and broker rides, and they can see projected revenue for the month in five seconds.
They are also building an integration with Bambi, so One NEMT handles the lead-to-booking layer and dispatch stays where it belongs.
Documenting everything: YouTube, and a community of private pay operators What makes Mac and Ray unusual is how publicly they share all of this. Their NEMT Growth Machine YouTube channel documents the journey raw: what their vans cost, what they like about them, what they regret, even footage of cold facility walk-ins.
They also run the NEMT Guerrilla Marketing Skool group , a community of around 65 operators focused specifically on growing private pay revenue: facility outreach, Google Ads, online presence. The five dollar monthly fee is intentional. It filters for operators serious enough to invest in their own growth, and the group runs monthly calls where members trade what is working.
Staying boutique on purpose Asked where The Doctor Ride goes next, the answer was refreshing. No 40-vehicle broker fleet. The goal is five to seven vehicles dominating the Charlotte private pay market as the premium option, with possible franchising later.
"Anyone you hire only cares half as much about your business as you do. I want to keep it small, tight, and really just serve a handful of people really, really well." — Mackenzie Andrews
Key takeaways for NEMT operators The episode is a masterclass in treating NEMT like a sales business, not just a transportation business. Validate demand before you buy the van. Walk into facilities relentlessly, because one yes out of 75 can anchor your revenue. Build your online presence early, including for AI search. Quote in writing, follow up automatically, and make leaving a review effortless. And track everything, because the data will tell you exactly when to buy the next vehicle.
Watch Episode 112 on YouTube , listen on Spotify , and catch every episode on the NEMT Experts Podcast page .
The NEMT Experts Podcast is brought to you by Bambi , the NEMT software that helps providers run smarter dispatch.
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