What Healthcare Means To Us
By Jon Eggleton, Co-Managing Partner
Let’s begin with an admission. When Ryan Woolley and I started Traktion Partners in 2017, we weren’t planning to focus on the healthcare sector. With a combined 40 years of experience that included a lot of overlap in retail e-commerce and consumer marketing, our initial plan was to start there. However, as many business founders can attest, sometimes serendipity has a different plan. With many of our early client engagements coming within healthcare, it became apparent that our personal experiences in the consumer world were valuable to clients looking to modernize marketing initiatives in a sector that was still in the early innings of embracing technology. From that, a new direction and focus for Traktion Partners was born that has guided our growth ever since.
Fast forward to 2025. We’re grateful to have the trust of some world-class healthcare providers across a wide spectrum of specialty healthcare, including in senior care, behavioral health, orthopedics, dental, and many more. As a kid I remember reading about notable athletes like Bo Jackson and Michael Jordan having surgery under the care of Dr. James Andrews, not realizing that one day the clinic he founded would one day become a client of a firm I’d co-own. Nor did either of us realize, as parents ourselves, the full extent of the challenge parenting a child with autism must be, until we started working with Autism Learning Partners shortly after our inception. Eight years later, ALP remains our longest-tenured client that has taught us so much about the importance of early intervention.
Healthcare just hits different. When we were successful with retail e-commerce programs, we might’ve convinced someone to buy a new outfit, or maybe a new piece of furniture. In our business today, success means a young family getting connected to autism therapy early enough to have a profound impact on their son or daughter, or a grandparent finding the right surgeon for joint replacement, so they can continue chasing around the grandkids and live out their golden years with an active lifestyle.
In the years since we launched Traktion, Ryan and I have had our own share of experiences with healthcare that shaped not only our own perceptions, but our perspective on the work that we lead. We've each experienced plenty of urgent care visits, pediatrician appointments, and middle of the night Dr. Google searches when something felt off. I had my own health scare in 2021 that altered my thinking of what health and wellness means, and how I want to pursue it for the rest of my life. As anyone who has navigated the healthcare system for themselves or family members (in other words, all of us) well knows, our healthcare system is far from perfect. And with an aging population where it’s projected that 1 in 5 Americans will be 65 or older by 2030, there’s never been a more critical time for the industry to become more efficient.
Despite the challenges ahead, we’re more excited than ever about the possibilities that exist in improving healthcare for everyone. And we’re grateful every day to continue the work that gives us our “why”.