Gone in 60 Seconds: The Day Everything Changed

We were living the dream.
I was at our barndo, chainsaw in hand, clearing brush. We had just finished building our dream home on 15 acres out by the Brazos River. Life felt full. The plan was to move out there full-time once our youngest finished middle school. Everything was lining up. Business was good... so good, in fact, we were discussing how to work less than 30 hours a week. What new investments might we make to enhance our future even more? Could we leave a serious financial legacy for our kids and grandkids?

Then the phone rang.

“Dad… the DEA just raided the house. Mom’s under arrest.”

I’ll never forget that call. My son’s voice was shaky. My brain went foggy. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

My wife, the sweetest, most kind-hearted woman I know? How is she handling this? What in the world is going on?

We’d built a successful online, cash-pay (no insurance) telehealth clinic focused on wellness, hormones, weight loss, and peptide therapy. Every patient saw a licensed provider, had lab work completed, received a medical evaluation, and medications were sent from a licensed pharmacy. We had medical director oversight, attorneys, compliance protocols. We were structured just like thousands of others across the country.

As Dr. Marty Makary describes in The Price We Pay, clinics like ours are often misunderstood because they don’t fit the mold of traditional healthcare. He calls it “a system that punishes those who innovate outside its preferred channels.” We had a tagline “Convenient, Comprehensive and Progressive” Meaning we had processes to have your lab work, a call with a provider and medication delivered to your door all in 72 hours. Not your typical healthcare experience. We did all of that at a cost that was traditionally less than you would pay if you used insurance.

We also ran an MSO—Management Services Organization. That meant we handled the business side of the doctors’ offices. Think business development. We did this for three clinics while running our own telehealth clinic with a hired medical director and physician assistants. We had legal contracts that made it clear we were the consultants, not medically responsible inside these offices.

But that day, none of it mattered.
They didn’t call us in to learn more. Didn’t ask for our side or clarify our involvement. They made a scene at my house, at the doctors office… guns drawn in the faces of staff members.

When I arrived at the federal courthouse that afternoon, they walked me in cuffed. My wife was already seated, cuffed, hands and feet. And somehow, through the chaos, she smiled and blew me a kiss.

That day, she saw angels all around the courtroom. Something she’d only seen once before at a ministry event just a month prior. (More on that moment in future blogs and in the book.)

That’s when I knew we’d survive it. Not without pain, not without cost, but we would survive. God was with us. My wife has always had a unreal faith.

Was this an attack from the enemy? (We had been faithful in our giving—personally and through the business. We were bold in our faith with employees and clients.)
Was this a test from God?
So many questions.

What you have to know is that before I walked away from my corporate job, I had prayed diligently about the opportunity to run clinics and bring all my education, training and skills into our own business. I was a VP of Sales for a diagnostic laboratory. My wife didn’t love the travel, and my son was entering high school baseball. I didn’t want to miss his games and we had previously had a word spoken over us years ago, that some day we would own a business together. One night, just before I called my boss to tell him I was not going to be interviewing for a promotion that he had asked me to apply for, I laid my hands on my wife and asked God, “What do you want me to do?”
What felt like an audible voice answered: “I just asked you to love her.”
I knew instantly—He was calling me to leave my corporate job and go all-in on what we had built.
So He was in this… but if He was, what were we doing here?

Around the room that day were familiar faces. Everyone connected was called in. But why? Then came the charges:
Conspiracy to manufacture and distribute controlled substances.
Money laundering.
Up to 20 years if convicted.

I remember thinking: What are they talking about? Do they even know who we are or what we do?
Turns out, one of the doctors we worked with separate from our telehealth clinic. had been on the Feds' radar long before we ever got involved. (More on that in the book and later blogs.)

In that particular office, we had helped them move to a cash-pay model, cleaned up operations, added policies and processes, invested in marketing, layered in GLP-1s and peptides, and revenue skyrocketed from $60K/month to nearly $500K in a short time.

But as Dr. Makary puts it, “In the current system, scale equals suspicion.” They didn’t ask how or why things improved, they just assumed the worst. Instead of understanding how and why that happened, they assumed guilt. A wide net... bring in everyone and figure it out later.
They didn’t see our sales training, marketing systems, patient database, compliance procedures, ad spend, or patient education strategies. They just saw massive growth and made their own assumptions: It must be shady.

In the book, I’ll share more about the questions we later answered, ones that opened my eyes to how little they understood how a provider’s office works. That doing cash-pay (no insurance) does not make a medication illegal.
To them, if it scaled that fast, it must be dirty. And if you're connected to it, you must be too.

That night, after we were released, we stopped for gas. None of our cards worked. Accounts seized.
The only access we had was to one small personal account—and that wasn’t going to last long.
They took my wife’s car. The one that was fully paid off, of course.
They freeze everything. They block your access to funds.
They make you guilty until proven innocent.

Makary warns: “The legal system isn’t always seeking justice, it’s seeking leverage.” We felt every ounce of that leverage.

It’s not about justice—it’s about pressure. That’s what an indictment is.
My reputation? Gone. Or so it felt.
(But if my life belongs to Him, doesn’t He own the pen?)

What I would learn over the next year and a half is God is more concerned with making me like Him than keeping me comfortable.
My business? Destroyed. (But was it ever really mine? I had “given it over to God”… or so I thought.)
My future? Unknown. (But do we ever really know what is around the corner? I have learned that God does not give you the entire story, he will show you a chapter at a time.)

We still had three kids, one in college, one in flight school, one starting high school.
I had faith, but in that moment—and in the months ahead—I yelled at God more than once:
“Where are You?”

That night I laid in bed, the weight of it all pressing down on my chest.
I thought: What did I miss? What have I done to my family? How can this be happening? Where will I make ends meet while we fight?

Thousands of patients depended on us.
Now we couldn’t help a single one—and we owed vendors and employees.
No pharmacy.
No ability to process credit cards.
No staff.
No options.
And no credit when you’re under indictment for money laundering.

Somehow, I slept.
Probably because I was too tired to panic.

I also knew my God.
The One who promised never to leave or forsake me.
I knew He would move.
But how long would I have to walk in this valley?
And what would I have to go through?

I knew this:
I couldn’t let this beat me.
I had to fight.
I had to rebuild.
I had to survive.
For the woman who blew me a kiss in that courtroom.

This wasn’t the end.
Even if it felt like it.

We had been faithful givers to the Kingdom.
And His word never returns void. But dang, He was about to ask me to walk this out and I was so comfortable.

For the first time in my life, I was really being put to the test.
What took place over the next year and a half is a miracle
and I’m going to tell it all. Here is what is most important to know. I had taken our staff to an event called Kingdom At Work on 2 different occasions. This is a workshop where you and your staff learn how to not be a Christian business, but a Kingdom business. More on that later, but for now, just know there are minsters there who prior to you coming write you a letter. They know nothing about you, just your name. The letter I opened was powerful and had some real raw and concerning messages about the future. Talk of a season of pruning and a season of rest. For months I would read this letter from God and think, wow, I am supposed to pull back and rest in the season. I sort of avoided the part about the pruning. What I would learn over the next year and half and still learning, is God word is true and he is the author of it all. I am going to share this letter in the hopes that it will help others faith and trust in whatever He is doing in your current season and the one ahead!

Clay,

“Like your name, I see the Lord has been molding and shaping you. He has been transforming you into a new creation. I looked up the process of making pottery and during the shaping and forming phase, the clay is thixotropic. This means that as you work with it, the clay first gets sloppier and wetter, before it begins to dry in the atmosphere. After the shaping, the clay requires resting to keep the work clean. You must let the clay rest and dry before you can begin to trim and clean up the design. When you reach this stage that clay is called greenware. At the greenware stage, it is the most fragile. You must be soft and gentle with the clay, but you also use a wire and knife to smooth the work. After the scraping, you lightly use a damp sponge to wipe over the clay that helps soften all the edges.

I know this is more was probably a little more information on pottery making that what you were expecting, haha. But I believe the Lord is calling you into a resting and trimming season. He has been molding and shaping you, which has been a lot of work. Do not forget to rest in Him, Take time to just be with the Father. Yes, there will be pruning in this season, However, you can only prune something that is abiding. He is calling your heart into a different posture. You are not just a servant, but a son, A beloved son. A son does not just sit at his Fathers feet, he crawls up in his Father’s lap. “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say to the Lord. “My refuge and my fortress,my God, in whom I trust”.

The Lord wants you to rest and dwell in Him during this season. Not everything is up to you and on your shoulders. Apart from Him you can do nothing. Take comfort in that! There is so much freedom in it. See Him in the secret place. He wants to pour out His love out on you, and that overflow will be the biggest impact on your sphere of influence. Pruning is never comfortable, but the Lord will soothe and comfort where He has cut things off. New growth is coming. Rest. Trust. you are loved.”

I would read this letter many days before I could get out of the house and put one foot in front of the other.

Here is a link to a song that might help you though the valley. More next week.

https://music.apple.com/us/song/flowers/1766659744

I