Joel Swider: Hello, and welcome to the Healthcare Real Estate Advisor podcast. I’m Joel Swider, and I’m an attorney with Hall Render, the nation’s largest healthcare focused law firm. I’m joined today by Matthew Ghanem, the CEO and co-founder of National Breathe Free Sinus & Allergy Centers. Matt, thanks for joining me today.

Matt Ghanem: Thanks for having me, Joel. Much appreciated. Looking forward to it.

Joel Swider: Likewise. So before we delve into Breathe Free and your business model, which has been very successful, I’d like to hear a little bit more about your background and the experiences that prepared you for where you are today. I know you grew up in the DC suburbs in Rockville, Maryland. Did you ever think at that time that you’d end up in the healthcare industry?

Matt Ghanem: That’s a good question. Rockville’s a good 20 miles outside of DC. And no, I didn’t. I didn’t have any family members or anything like that in the healthcare industry. And we interview mid-level providers, meet with doctors, nurses, things like that, and we say, “Hey, how did you know wanted to be in healthcare?” It’s almost always I’ve known since I was five or I’ve known since I was a kid, my mom’s a nurse or whatever that looks like. For me, that wasn’t it. When I was a kid, although I’m 5’11 now, I was 5’11 in middle school, I thought I was going to be an NBA player, clearly not in the cards unfortunately. And then after that, after I blew my knee out in high school, I actually wanted to be an attorney.

I interned at a law office, I did some mock trial stuff in the summer, and my minors in political science, I thought I was going to go to law school and then probably midway through college I had another internship in a law firm, and I don’t know, it didn’t seem like a great fit for me at the