Dr. Lewis Gold on Medical Entrepreneurship and Taking Risks

In this episode of Uncorked: Wine-Business-Life, hosts Bill Green and Jerrold Colton sit down with Dr. Lewis Gold—a visionary entrepreneur who pivoted from a successful medical career to building healthcare empires. Dr. Gold shares his remarkable journey from practicing anesthesiology to co-founding Sheridan Healthcare, a leading provider of hospital-based services that expanded to 23 states and ultimately sold for over $2 billion.

After retiring from Sheridan Healthcare in 2012, Dr. Gold co-founded Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS), a company dedicated to treating substance use and mental health disorders. As Chairman of the Board, he continues to make a difference in the behavioral health sector.

Listen in as Dr. Gold discusses the mindset behind leaving a lucrative medical career to build something bigger, taking calculated risks, and partnering with private equity firms. Plus, the hosts and Dr. Gold enjoy some top-tier wines while discussing their passion for wine and entrepreneurial spirit.

Whether you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or a wine lover, this episode offers invaluable insights into seizing opportunities and savoring life’s best moments. Cheers to reinvention and success!

Introduction and Guest Welcome

Welcome to Uncorked: Wine, Business, and Life with Bill Green. I'm Jarrett Colton, your host, and we are here in a beautiful setting with a very special guest. We are with my good friend, Dr. Lewis Gold. Lou, thank you for being here. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Lou lives in my neighborhood here in Boca Raton, Florida. He has an amazing business story, and he's also, so far to date, our best wine person. I'm really excited to talk to Lou, but I want to provide a little bit of a backdrop first.

Connection to Leon Rose and Pine Forest Camp

I met Lou probably about 10 or 11 years ago. I tell this story because I think you just have to give people chances. I was not a big Lou Gold fan the first night at dinner. I don’t know what it was. I came home that night, got in the car with my wife, and said, "I don’t know about that guy. Something’s a little off."

Then I realized he had to be a great guy because when we were doing the whole "Who do you know? Where are you from?" routine, I saw he was a Philly guy. He’s been in Florida for over 40 years, but he told me he went to Pine Forest Camp. I know a lot of people that went to Pine Forest Camp. He asked who I knew, and I mentioned Leon Rose, who is the president of the New York Knicks today.

Lou, tell me what your role was at Pine Forest Camp and your connection to Leon Rose. Leon and I go way back. I was a counselor at Pine Forest Camp during the time Leon was a camper—a homesick camper.

The interesting thing is that the camp offered me big money at the time, $250, to take care of Leon for the summer. Leon was a basketball player, and I was also a basketball player. He was a little kid, and I was probably 10 or 12 years older than him.

Every night after dinner, it was my job to grab Leon and play basketball with him for an hour or an hour and a half so that he wouldn’t be homesick. From that point, Leon and I have remained great friends and continue to stay in touch.

With Bill’s friendship and others, it all comes around. I don’t know if we’d be sitting here together today if you hadn’t told that story about Leon. It really didn’t take much past our second dinner together for me to know you were going to be one of my closest friends. And you are one of my closest friends today.

From Medicine to Business

Lou, you've had such a diverse career. You went to the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University and started out in medicine. Tell your medical story and why that was short-lived.

I went to med school in Philadelphia. I’m from Philadelphia, but my brother was living in Miami, so I decided to come down there for my residency in anesthesia. I arrived in 1982 and did my residency at the University of Miami. I went into private practice as an anesthesiologist and pain doctor.

That was big money even back then. Honestly, I came from nothing. I had lovely parents who never went to college. My brother and I were the first people in the family ever to go to college. Making a six-figure salary in 1982 was something I never dreamed of.

However, I had a bigger goal to develop something on the business side of healthcare as opposed to just staying as a practicing physician. Talk about the Sheridan Healthcare story, which is such an amazing business story for someone who never really had practical everyday business experience.

The Growth and Sale of Sheridan Healthcare

We know doctors are smart, but not every doctor is a successful business person. Those are very different skill sets. I had zero business background. My partner and I decided there was a bigger play than just being a practicing physician. I enjoyed the work, but I wanted to create something different.

At the time, Sheridan Healthcare had 17 partners. We sold to private equity, specifically TA Associates, a well-known entity out of Boston. They made my partner and me the two key executives to develop a roll-up of hospital-based services.

This included anesthesia, radiology, neonatology, and emergency room services. Hospitals would contract with us to provide services, and we would provide the physicians, PAs, and nurse anesthetists.

As we created this, there were many positives and negatives. Building a business is not easy. People ask how I even knew how to use a spreadsheet or what an EBITDA was. I just learned it and surrounded myself with high-end people as our executives. I had to really learn the business of business.

It’s interesting how this was not where Lou intended to go after med school. You were making a nice living and probably living the life you felt you could live forever. But it’s the ability to recognize opportunity, pivot, and put your skill set to another use.

Think about the entrepreneurship in his DNA. The man was pinching himself over a six-figure salary as a doctor. He hit nirvana and then threw it all out the window to be a business person. He took all that skill and used it for something he wasn't even familiar with. That’s the most interesting part when I look back at it or mentor people.

At the time we sold, I was making about $500,000, which was huge. This was around 1992 or 1993. That is a lot of money in that world. It was a great living. But the real story is that when they brought in private equity, the 17 partners cashed in for around $2.5 million.

To me, that was incredible. I thought, "$2.5 million at capital gains. I'll put $2 million in the bank and I'm set for life." That was my belief. Then the private equity group came to me and said they wanted me to be president of the company.

There was a catch: I couldn't keep any of the money they were giving me. I had to roll it into equity in the company. My new salary was going to be $250,000. I was going to drop from $500,000 to $250,000 while my partners kept their money. I was moving on to hopefully create something very valuable.

I came home to my wife—Bill and his wife are very close to us—and I told her the good news and the bad news. I told her it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. If it creator-ed, I could always go back to being a physician. But if it hit, I would change the trajectory of my life.

That is what entrepreneurs do. They take risks. He went from a "set for life" moment to a pay cut and giving up his nest egg. Obviously, it led to a whole other story.

During my time with Sheridan Healthcare, we grew unbelievably. We started in Florida, and by the time I exited, we were in 23 states with 5,000 providers. We took the company public, then went private, and did three private equity transactions.

We worked with TA Associates, J.W. Childs Associates, and finally Hellman & Friedman. Eventually, we sold Sheridan Healthcare for north of $2 billion to a public company and exited at that point.

Wine Appreciation and Kosta Browne

Goldman Sachs was not involved in that company; they are involved in my present company. But before we talk about that pivot, it's amazing that it's never just one move. After Sheridan Healthcare, you could have just sat and played golf.

What happened with your partners who cashed out? That is a long story. Very quickly: they cashed out and were supposed to go away. They saw that what we were creating was really growing and they ended up suing us.

They claimed things weren't disclosed, but everything was handled by big New York lawyers and the private equity firm owned the company. We ended up prevailing, but for two or three years, it was very messy.

I love talking about business, but there's nothing I love talking about more than wine. Let’s try the one with the tag. This is a 2000 La Mission Haut-Brion. You’re going to love it. It has that typical Bordeaux earthiness and is rated 100 by Parker. It’s a fantastic wine with colors like artwork. Cheers.

Lou has had good wines in his life, mainly through Bill, though his own collection is okay. Lou was also part of an investment group that bought Kosta Browne, a large winery in Napa.

I was a healthcare operating partner and an investor with J.W. Childs Associates. We were one of his best investments ever, so he asked me to help with healthcare assets. Their portfolio included retail, and they had acquired Kosta Browne. They held it for four or five years and then sold it.

I didn’t even know these wineries could make money. Trust me, they really can. Those guys are really good operators. We ended up selling that to Duckhorn around three or four years ago.

Founding a Substance Abuse Treatment Platform

Talk about your next move. It’s fascinating because it was so different from what you had done before. Your medical background was less important than your experience operating multi-unit businesses focused on health.

I sold Sheridan Healthcare and sort of went out to pasture. I had some health issues and decided enough was enough. My wife asked what I was doing, so my partner and I started a family office for investments. About 80% of the portfolio was in healthcare.

Someone approached us about a substance and alcohol treatment center outside Orlando in a small town called Umatilla. I had never heard of it. I visited purely as an investment. Unfortunately, society has issues with substance abuse, and if these centers are done legitimately, they are an interesting business.

As physicians, it seemed like a good business to invest in, but we had no intention of operating it. Long story short, there were seven investors. We each put up $700,000 for this one facility.

As soon as we closed, it became clear that no one knew what they were doing. They didn't realize a patient would come in but you wouldn't get paid for 90 days. You had accounts receivable but no cash flow. My partner and I had to engage more and more.

Word got out on Wall Street that Lou Gold was back in business. We had a lot of private equity firms interested in partnering with us on a substance and alcohol treatment platform. We chose Goldman Sachs Private Equity, specifically their partnership fund called Broad Street Principal Investments.

They partnered with us about nine years ago. Today, we have approximately 1,000 to 1,100 beds in multiple states. They are inpatient facilities, averaging about 80 to 100 beds each. We have about 13 or 14 facilities across the country right now.

The fact that Jarrett and I drink so much wine because we're shooting these episodes... I hope you’ve got a bed for me. A discounted bed! It’s hard to come by, but we have to have a discount, right?

It must feel so good to have a business that’s doing so much good while still being successful. There are a lot of bad actors in this space who are only out for the money. Being physicians who care about people, we wanted to do this the right way.

We developed a relationship with the International Association of Firefighters, which has 400,000 union members. Firefighters have significant substance and alcohol issues. Many are ex-military and they live in firehouses for 24 hours at a time. They often have that college mentality of grabbing drinks after a shift.

We were chosen as their preferred provider and opened a 30-day treatment facility for them in Maryland. You have to be a union firefighter to access it. That project really warms my heart.

Reputation and Professional Relationships

The idea that word got out on Wall Street is interesting. It really is a small community. It’s not too different from what happened to me in 2003 when I was 43 and wondering what to do next after selling my first company. My phone started ringing from private equity shops wanting me to sit on boards.

Lou has been a benefactor of his reputation. When you do business with someone for years and have successful exits, the same players come back. That tells you everything. In many deals, they never want to see the person again because something went wrong. Lou is a stand-up guy and an amazing family man.

Lou is also a much better golfer than me. We don't spend as much time on the course as we used to, but I did beat Andrew Gottsagen in nine holes straight up the other day. I shot a 45, which was my best.

Lou, you have two amazing kids. We’re going to have the opportunity to talk to Stuart soon as a guest on Uncorked. That’s another awesome entrepreneurial story. Your son left the law to go into business and moved to England. What an amazing role model he had. Just don't tell my wife that!

Napa Wines and Colgin Tychson Hill

Lou is more of a Napa wine guy than a Bordeaux guy. You have a beautiful cellar and like Italian wine, but Napa is your go-to. You know the reputation Colgin has, so we’re going to taste that next.

This is a 2013 Colgin Tychson Hill. It is so different and awesome. I would say the profile of this wine is similar to that of Realm The Beast. I have Colgin in my winery and think they are very similar.

I would tell you Realm is probably—as you always accuse me of being—too bold and robust. Bill and I have these discussions all the time. I think Colgin may be a more sensitive wine. It’s almost a Bordeaux style. It’s a blend, which is what we drink all the time.

Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame

I tie in a little to your past as well. We intertwined through Philadelphia. I was from Cherry Hill, and the Leon Rose connection involved a lot of basketball. We wound up living together after law school and playing for a team named after Pine Forest Camp in the Jewish Basketball League.

We were inducted into the Philadelphia Jewish Sports Hall of Fame together. I couldn't be prouder of him. I'm sure you did a great job as his counselor because he grew up well and overcame that homesickness.

I love Leon. My wife and I were staying at Bill’s place in Longport a few years ago, and Leon came over to say hello. Bill was there with a few other friends, including Artie Grossberg, who is a die-hard sports fan.

Leon comes in, gives me a big hug, and says I’m one of his favorite people in the world. Artie says, "You represent LeBron and all these guys, and you’re saying Lou Gold is one of your favorites?"

Leon has never forgotten that relationship. It’s all about family for him. His father, Zev Rose, still gets to the Knicks games. Leon is still driven by what’s going on with the team.

Conclusion and Closing Remarks

Regarding the Pine Forest history, the Black family is unbelievable. Mickey Black, the founder, just passed away recently at over 100 years old. To Mickey Black and all the connections he made.

Lou, I really want to thank you for joining us on Uncorked. I know this is going to get a million likes. Thank you, my brother. Dr. Lewis Gold: invent yourself over and over again and make it all work.