Latest / King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights / How to Scale a $7B Global Legacy Using High Level Business Growth Strategies with Dr. Vivek Eranki

Transcript

How to Scale a $7B Global Legacy Using High Level Business Growth Strategies with Dr. Vivek Eranki · King Dems Podcast | Growth Mindset, Leadership, AI and Business Insights

• 0:00
  People are there for the painter, not the paint.
• 0:02
  So the painter is the one that gives you the result, The paint
• 0:06
  isn't the one that gives you the result.
• 0:08
  And once clinicians understand that rather than investing in
• 0:12
  pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals, they invest in their skills and
• 0:16
  the more hone their skills, the better the result.
• 0:19
  I mean, if you look at all the agents of Melbourne, Australia,
• 0:22
  so there's seven different boat offices and there's some 30
• 0:25
  different types of pillars available in Australia.
• 0:27
  Objectively, there's very minimum difference between them,
• 0:30
  right? If you speak to every pharma
• 0:31
  company that they think that their one is the best thing in
• 0:34
  the world. But objectively, they're all
• 0:36
  exactly the same. What makes a difference is a
• 0:39
  clinician that's injecting the agent.
• 0:42
  I mean, sure, some of them are more expensive, some of them are
• 0:44
  a little less expensive, but you're looking at, you know,
• 0:46
  plus -1020% nothing that is material.
• 0:49
  So that's one thing that I tell clinicians is to understand
• 0:53
  their value and their were. Hi there.
• 0:57
  Are you a professional or business owner teaching
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  If you want to present like a pro, Sign up today using the two
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  stack link in the description below and start creating smarter
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  the camera app Realise that. Ladies and gentlemen, you once
• 1:40
  again welcome to the Kingdom's podcast and diary of a CFO.
• 1:45
  And today we've got a very, very special guest all the way from
• 1:50
  the world down under. Beck.
• 1:53
  Welcome Whiten out of Perth, Australia.
• 1:59
  Doctor Vivek. Ranking.
• 2:04
  And when the action begins in the Octagon, is the Prime
• 2:09
  Minister of Australia Are you ready?
• 2:13
  Aussie, Aussie. Aussie.
• 2:14
  Introduction. Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
• 2:18
  especially. Only before, especially before
• 2:23
  the Australia Day long weekend. We got Australia Day coming up
• 2:26
  on the 26th of January, so it's a very patriotic time in
• 2:29
  Australia here. So yeah, it's a great
• 2:31
  introduction. Thank you very much.
• 2:33
  Thank you very much. So and of course I'm really
• 2:35
  pumped to that the UFC is is coming back.
• 2:38
  We've had any event this year and we are having a really,
• 2:41
  really milestone event on Saturday.
• 2:44
  It's a new era in the UFC. So they now have a new TV
• 2:49
  licence deal with Paramount Plus and it's a $7 billion deal, $7
• 2:55
  billion contract. It's massive, It's massive.
• 3:01
  They would easily make the money back on that.
• 3:03
  They would easily make the money back because the amount of
• 3:05
  people that watch UFC, the amount of people that enjoy UFC,
• 3:08
  even just having you in the background, you're going to have
• 3:10
  a lot of eyeballs on yeah on the show.
• 3:13
  So yeah, I think that's a great deal for Paramount Plus.
• 3:15
  Exactly. Fantastic.
• 3:17
  Wow. I'm a very, very big fan of the
• 3:19
  UFC. And of course, you know, I
• 3:21
  sometimes don't. the Champions jersey went on the show.
• 3:24
  I'll show you. the Champions jersey is black and gold.
• 3:27
  This is black. This is black and gold for the
• 3:30
  Champions. OK, Thank you very much.
• 3:33
  Ladies and gentlemen, you once again, welcome to the Kingdom's
• 3:36
  podcast. And we have Doctor Iveka Ranki.
• 3:40
  He is the CEO of Cosmetic, Australia's first accredited
• 3:44
  cosmetic clinic and one of the fastest growing names in non
• 3:48
  surgical aesthetics. Under his leadership, the brand
• 3:51
  has expanded to nearly 20 clinics nationwide, launched a
• 3:54
  national franchise model and empowered nurses and clinicians
• 3:59
  to become confident business owners.
• 4:01
  But this conversation is not one just about beauty.
• 4:06
  It's about mindset. It's about business discipline.
• 4:09
  It's about leadership under pressure.
• 4:11
  It's about creating trust in an industry where trust is
• 4:13
  everything. Doctor Vivek operates at the
• 4:16
  intersection of healthcare, entrepreneurship and scalable
• 4:20
  systems. His work challenges outdated
• 4:22
  standards and raises the bar for safety, transparency and
• 4:27
  performance across the industry. This is a conversation for
• 4:30
  founders Schnals. There's Mitchen and anyone who
• 4:34
  believes their work should carry impact, not just about income.
• 4:38
  Doctor Vick, welcome to the Kingdom's market and Daria, the
• 4:42
  CFO. How are you doing today?
• 4:44
  You're doing very well, Doing very well.
• 4:46
  Ed Muller, thank you so much for having me on.
• 4:48
  It's an absolute pleasure being on your show, especially from
• 4:51
  Perth where it's 40° outside today.
• 4:53
  So yeah, it's looking forward to the show from the.
• 4:57
  World's down under the Aussie the Aussie versus the Kiwis.
• 5:01
  Wow. Yeah, that's age-old rivalry.
• 5:05
  The yeah, the age long lifelong rivalry.
• 5:08
  Let's dive into your origin story and of course the identity
• 5:12
  shift. So let's take it back to the
• 5:14
  beginning. Who was Doctor Vivek before
• 5:17
  cosmetic existed? And what personal moment shaped
• 5:20
  the decision to build something bigger than just a clinic?
• 5:23
  Yeah, I, I started off as a, as a doctor, wanted to specialise
• 5:27
  in trauma surgery, actually orthopaedics and trauma.
• 5:30
  And I spent many years in the hospital system and great job.
• 5:34
  I have a lot of respect for people who do their job, but it
• 5:37
  is a very difficult job, especially working in the
• 5:40
  surgical field. The lifestyle is, does
• 5:44
  absolutely take a hit. So there'll come times when you
• 5:46
  spend more time in the hospital than you do at home.
• 5:50
  And So what happened concurrently is my wife is a
• 5:54
  dentist and she opened a dental clinic and I enjoyed the
• 5:58
  business side of healthcare a lot more than I enjoyed the
• 6:02
  hospital of healthcare. And what happened is we scaled
• 6:05
  that business to three dental clinics around the Perth and it
• 6:09
  got acquired by a corporate. And simultaneously we also
• 6:13
  purchased AGP clinic and that got acquired by corporate as
• 6:17
  well. That's where I got started on
• 6:20
  the healthcare and the business aspect of healthcare.
• 6:24
  And that transitioned into the cosmetic industry because
• 6:28
  cosmetics is one of the one of the only fields in healthcare
• 6:31
  where you do treat people that are coming to you already
• 6:34
  healthy, that are coming to you without any pathology.
• 6:37
  And you are putting your skills in place to make them feel
• 6:41
  better rather than trying to fix the problem that they have.
• 6:46
  So you're not starting off from a net negative position, you're
• 6:49
  starting off from a positive position and trying to improve
• 6:52
  the outcome of these people. And that's the only part of
• 6:54
  healthcare where you could do that.
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  And that's what drew me towards towards the cosmetic industry.
• 7:00
  And we started off with one clinic in person.
• 7:03
  Overtime, we scaled to clinics around the country.
• 7:06
  And recently, last year, we opened our franchise channel.
• 7:10
  And currently, we've got 4 franchise clinics and another
• 7:14
  six about to open shortly. So there's a lot of interest on
• 7:19
  the franchise side. But one of the things, one of
• 7:21
  the decisions we've made early on is to limit franchising
• 7:25
  exclusively for doctors and nurses.
• 7:27
  And simply because I want to give other clinicians the same
• 7:30
  opportunity that I've got and I want them to find the pleasure
• 7:34
  in owning businesses, running businesses and scaling
• 7:36
  businesses because it can be rewarding both in terms of, I
• 7:39
  mean, from a financial perspective, correct, but also
• 7:43
  from a freedom perspective as well and from a creativity
• 7:45
  perspective as well. And this is.
• 7:47
  Something how about from a technical competence
• 7:49
  perspective? Oh, absolutely.
• 7:51
  How about and this franchise comes.
• 7:52
  In because yeah, because what happens with franchising is you
• 7:57
  you automatically have the guardrails of the franchise
• 8:00
  system, right. So the franchise system tells
• 8:02
  you what you cannot do and that usually correlates with what is
• 8:07
  legally not allowed. Franchising is a great step in
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  because it basically means that people are able to jump into
• 8:13
  business ownership without burning their fingers and
• 8:17
  without doing something that could get them in trouble.
• 8:19
  And this is this is where it's a win win really for them.
• 8:23
  And the the reason why we limited it towards clinicians,
• 8:27
  doctors and nurses is because we wanted to have that ownership of
• 8:31
  the clinic as close to the point that that intersects with the
• 8:36
  patients. So when patients are the ones
• 8:40
  that interface directly with the clinicians who also are the
• 8:43
  business owners, in my view, that gives the patients a
• 8:46
  maximum value. And that's the reason we made
• 8:49
  the decision because there's a lot of people that approach us
• 8:52
  who are interested in opening the clinics as investors.
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  But again, they would be running it not on the ground level so
• 8:59
  that, that passion that they have would not be, would not be
• 9:03
  translated to the patient. And we want to absolutely have
• 9:06
  passionate clinicians treat the patients.
• 9:09
  And so far the, the, the franchise clinics are doing
• 9:13
  exceptional. The feedback that we're getting
• 9:15
  from patients, the feedback that we're getting from the from the
• 9:18
  clinicians has been, has been outstanding and it's been very
• 9:22
  rewarding when I, when I speak to them about the experiences
• 9:26
  they've been having. So yeah.
• 9:29
  Interesting. It's a journey that that that's
• 9:31
  that's been very good fun so far.
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  You know, one thing that I, I appreciate about that model of
• 9:38
  restricting ownership of the clinics to doctors and nurses,
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  you know, it gives way for that technical competence to be
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  assured. Of course that informs the
• 9:52
  integrity of that practise. We should remember it's not just
• 9:56
  a business, but also a professional practise.
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  And professional practises are governed by strict regulations
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  and both those regulations should be adhered too.
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  So it's honestly to have a professional, a licenced
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  professional to to actually run the business you're going to
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  keep in something. You're completely right about
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  that. And one of the things that
• 10:18
  struck me when I was younger is when I was in the hospital
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  system. And when you're in the hospital
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  system, you do community placements, you work in, in in
• 10:26
  community settings such as GP clinics.
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  There's a big difference in the in the mindset of the doctors
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  where they're working for themselves as the owner of the
• 10:37
  clinic versus where they're working for a corporate where
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  they have to abide by certain policies and procedures because
• 10:45
  somebody tells them to do so and hit KPIs.
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  When are then looked into what material change that that made.
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  There is a, there is a much more of a personalised approach
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  towards the patients in a, in a setting where the clinician owns
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  the owns a business, whereas one where they are simply there as
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  an employee, simply there because they just need to pay
• 11:09
  their bills. And, and when you then look at
• 11:12
  the relationship between the patient and and the clinicians,
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  it is much better in practises where the clinician owns the
• 11:19
  practise than in places where the clinician works for, for a
• 11:22
  large corporate. And again, that's proven to be
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  true, you know, in the franchise clinics, the, the, the
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  franchisees, the franchise partners are doing an amazing
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  job and it's been very rewarding seeing, seeing what they're
• 11:34
  doing. So many clinicians actually
• 11:36
  still remain trapped in service roles.
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  So you chose honorship and skillion.
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  What Mantechiefs allowed you to see beyond the treatment room
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  and seek and venture into enterprise?
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  I don't know if it's always been something that that I was
• 11:52
  interested in and it was a natural progression, or if it
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  was something where the I saw the value that I could bring
• 12:00
  opening businesses, opening the dental clinics.
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  But I recall being a medical student and me and one of my
• 12:06
  good friends opened a business where we imported mobile phones
• 12:12
  usually from China. These are your Nokia's and your
• 12:16
  Motorola's from for those people who remember those mobile
• 12:19
  phones, that's how old I am. And, and we sold them on eBay.
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  And it was an amazing business. I like more than more than the
• 12:27
  money that I made. I recall the amazing fun that I
• 12:30
  had. And, and, and I think it's a
• 12:32
  positive correlation between, between running businesses and
• 12:35
  having fun doing. So I think that's what naturally
• 12:39
  progressed me into, into opening and running businesses.
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  And the other thing is once you do have that mindset, what
• 12:45
  happens is you see opportunities, right?
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  You, you are at work and you essentially, rather than going
• 12:52
  to the motions of, of the work, you actually start seeing
• 12:56
  opportunities where it makes a sizable difference to the, to
• 13:00
  the consumer, the patient, the customer.
• 13:02
  And yeah, once you get into the frame of mind, it's hard to,
• 13:05
  it's hard to escape it. So Cosmetic became Australia's
• 13:10
  first accredited cosmetic clinic.
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  Why was accreditation non negotiable for G and what did it
• 13:16
  cost to hold that standard? So before, so firstly, before we
• 13:21
  went into the cosmetic industry, we've had experience in founding
• 13:25
  or buying and scaling and and successfully exiting in the
• 13:29
  dental space, the GP space and the day hospital space.
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  So in those areas accreditation has been established a long time
• 13:36
  ago. So accreditation is a set of
• 13:38
  standards that you have to meet that independent auditors on
• 13:41
  behalf of a government regulatory body come in and
• 13:44
  inspect you and they give you a stamp of approval saying yes,
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  you are working at that level. When that's been proposed in the
• 13:51
  cosmetic industry, we were the first to jump into it simply
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  because we do have that experience, We do have all of
• 13:56
  that intellectual capital in house.
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  So we were able to do it very, very easily.
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  But more than that, the other thing that struck me was any
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  change that is available to improve patient safety should be
• 14:11
  seen as mandatory, not optional. And the reason is in the
• 14:15
  cosmetic industry, you're dealing with people who are
• 14:18
  innately healthy from the start. You're not dealing with somebody
• 14:22
  who's got a pathology or an injury.
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  So which means that anything that could be put in place to
• 14:28
  not deteriorate the patient beyond the point where they're
• 14:31
  started should be done. I think it's an obligation and
• 14:35
  we were seeing thousands of patients a month.
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  So even a small point, 1% change leads to a whole number of
• 14:43
  patients who are positively affected.
• 14:46
  So from our point of view, safety is not negotiable and if.
• 14:50
  You're imagine for error. Be taken, we will take it.
• 14:52
  And that's exactly right. That's exactly right.
• 14:54
  I'll look at ourselves as the airline company.
• 14:57
  You want your airline to not cost cut.
• 14:59
  You want them to have an obsession towards safety.
• 15:02
  I don't care if they give me peanuts or not when I sit down,
• 15:04
  but I do care that their planes are beautifully serviced every
• 15:07
  single time. There it's impassioned to
• 15:09
  profit. And of course trust is very,
• 15:12
  very important. I remember, I remember working
• 15:14
  at PwC. So a PwC, the mission statement
• 15:18
  is building trust in society by solving important problems.
• 15:22
  And that sounds like exactly what you guys are doing and
• 15:25
  solving important problems and of course building trust in
• 15:28
  society. They hit the nail on the head
• 15:31
  with a mission statement, Yeah. You know, this is an industry
• 15:34
  that is crowded with marketing noise.
• 15:37
  It's trust standards. But how does trust become a real
• 15:40
  business assets, not just a branded idea?
• 15:44
  I think, I think the way I look at trust in terms of real
• 15:46
  business practises, what would you do when no one is looking
• 15:52
  right? So it's easy to have a glossy
• 15:54
  website that talks about trust, mission statements and value
• 15:57
  statements, but do are these practised in areas in the deep
• 16:03
  dark crevices of the business that no one ever peeks into?
• 16:06
  And, and, and the accreditation, for example, was that was a
• 16:09
  perfect example. Another one that we always do is
• 16:12
  mandatory training. So in our industry, if a
• 16:14
  clinician says that they're trained in something, most
• 16:17
  clinics, if not all of them, take their word as gospel and
• 16:22
  put them in contact with the patients.
• 16:24
  But we are the only company that actually mandates internal and
• 16:27
  external validation of the training.
• 16:29
  So what we do is we put the same conditions through external as
• 16:33
  well as internal training to make sure that the standards are
• 16:36
  met. And this is exactly what I mean.
• 16:38
  Following, following these these steps that no one sees.
• 16:42
  I think is is is important is important because what it does
• 16:45
  is it demonstrates values being put to practical use rather than
• 16:50
  being on a mission statement on a website.
• 16:53
  Excellent practise management right there.
• 16:55
  With that in mind, I'm just on our website and we do not have
• 16:57
  our values and website. So that's something that I
• 17:00
  should be bringing up with that we should probably do that.
• 17:04
  That's. That is a deficiency in internal
• 17:09
  controls that has to be rectified.
• 17:14
  How did how did we fail to tell people what we said?
• 17:18
  We've just been showing people, not telling people, we need to
• 17:21
  do both. Action speaks louder than voice.
• 17:26
  Actions speak louder than voice. And there you go.
• 17:28
  And of course you know it's. I've just seen the PwC website
• 17:32
  as well by the way, it looks phenomenal, like phenomenal.
• 17:36
  What does the branding at PWC's and these?
• 17:40
  PwC. Proud.
• 17:41
  Phenomenal. He's obviously proud you guys
• 17:45
  have actually scaled to the early 20 clinics nationwide,
• 17:48
  what systems bats at most, what broke 1st and what had to be
• 17:53
  evolved. Scaling is not the hard bit,
• 17:55
  right? Because.
• 17:55
  Because if you look at the demographic of people that get
• 17:59
  our treatments, it is pretty much any patients, any females
• 18:03
  between the ages of 18 to 35, vast majority of them get
• 18:07
  cosmetic treatments. So getting the patients through
• 18:10
  the door wasn't hard for us. The second thing that wasn't
• 18:13
  hard for us is also getting the nurses as well.
• 18:16
  A lot of clinics struggle to find nurses.
• 18:19
  Every time we put up a job ad we get anywhere from 100 to 300
• 18:22
  applicants. So we are the employer of
• 18:26
  choice. So we are spoiled for choice.
• 18:27
  So that's it hasn't been hard for us as well.
• 18:29
  One of the things that we had to scale is our audit and
• 18:33
  compliance system. So if for us it's mandatory that
• 18:36
  every patient that gets treated is actually audited by one of
• 18:40
  our independent staff members. So these are staff members not
• 18:43
  affiliated with the clinician that calls the patient up finds
• 18:45
  that every facet of what their treatment was like.
• 18:48
  And we actively encourage patients to give us feedback.
• 18:51
  And that's important for us because when you reach more than
• 18:55
  a handful of clinics, you actually dissociate yourself
• 18:59
  from the front line and you can then stay in a bubble.
• 19:02
  It's so easy to stay in a bubble where no feedback reaches you.
• 19:06
  And we want to have as much as much of A direct phone line
• 19:11
  with, with the with the customers as possible.
• 19:14
  And that's something that I consider as a very, very
• 19:17
  important step as we scale. Wow.
• 19:19
  So yeah, I totally agree with you.
• 19:22
  Feedback is very, very important and please us, you know, and
• 19:25
  that is what I also do in my ecosystem and it has led to
• 19:30
  winning awards. You know, I've been in the
• 19:33
  hospitality business, not hospital business, right?
• 19:36
  And I've won the booking.com award for travel review for
• 19:40
  travellers reviews, right, three years in a row, three years in a
• 19:44
  row, thebooking.com award. And of course you're recently I
• 19:47
  was recently nominated for the black tech award, black tech
• 19:51
  achievement award in the UK. That comes with taking feedback
• 19:55
  and to ensure that there's amazing.
• 19:58
  Thank you, very thank you very much.
• 20:00
  Thank you very much. She should go vote.
• 20:02
  I think the voting closes on the 26th of January.
• 20:05
  So guys, I'll put the directions to vote in the the.
• 20:10
  The description. The link, Send me the link.
• 20:11
  I will absolutely. I'll absolutely vote send.
• 20:15
  Me the link, I'll send you the link via link to well, thank you
• 20:19
  very much brother. So let's talk about the
• 20:22
  franchise model and of course empowering others.
• 20:25
  You launched A franchise model to empower nurses, clinicians
• 20:29
  into ownership. So what does empowering others
• 20:32
  mean to you? And of course, why do you prefer
• 20:34
  it over centralising power? Yeah, that's a good question.
• 20:37
  So a lot of business owners, they worry about giving up
• 20:42
  control in a way. They want everything to be as
• 20:45
  controlled as possible. Makes sense.
• 20:47
  I was there. And but what I've found is when
• 20:50
  you get good people in at the start, you micromanage them
• 20:54
  until they understand what needs to be done.
• 20:55
  But the results actually get better when you impart your
• 20:59
  values in that micromanaging process and then you zoom out
• 21:02
  and let them do their thing. And that's what we've done with
• 21:05
  the franchise model. So the first set of franchisees
• 21:07
  that we got were people that actually worked at the clinic or
• 21:10
  associated with the clinic. So for example, one of them was
• 21:13
  the first doctor that said that we've ever had at the clinic.
• 21:16
  He's now a franchise partner. And and once we zoomed out, they
• 21:21
  essentially propagated all the values that we hold dear and the
• 21:25
  mission statements and essentially internalised it and
• 21:29
  are running the clinics exactly how we would do it.
• 21:32
  And that's what a democratisation of those values
• 21:35
  is something that that's led me down the franchising path.
• 21:39
  We are very careful to do it in a controlled manner.
• 21:41
  So, so we we're not actively advertising on any, for example,
• 21:45
  doctors groups or nurses groups or doctors magazines about
• 21:48
  opening clinics. All the referrals we've been
• 21:50
  getting thus far have been through word of mouth, which has
• 21:53
  been phenomenal. And my initial view was not to
• 21:58
  have any sales staff because when you have a sales staff,
• 22:01
  you, you are incentivizing them to sell, sell, sell businesses.
• 22:04
  And you might be bringing in people that are not doing that
• 22:08
  may not hold the same values as you do.
• 22:10
  But what we found after a while is when you're getting hundreds
• 22:13
  of applicants of people that want to become franchise
• 22:15
  partners, it's almost impossible to manage by yourself.
• 22:18
  We ended up bringing in our first part time salesperson, But
• 22:23
  again, we spent a lot of time explaining our values,
• 22:27
  explaining what we do. And this is a person that's been
• 22:29
  in the industry for a long time and she's she's phenomenal in
• 22:33
  translating that to to potential franchisees.
• 22:37
  And we know that she's doing an amazing job because she
• 22:40
  frequently comes to us and says, no, I don't think this person's
• 22:43
  going to be right. I don't think that person's
• 22:44
  going to be right. So when a salesperson tells you
• 22:47
  not to sell something to somebody, you know that you've
• 22:50
  got a winner on your hands. Absolutely, you know, and of
• 22:53
  course we need to cheat in the fact that it's a high risk
• 22:56
  industry. So there are no rooms for
• 23:00
  errors, there's no mining for error.
• 23:02
  And of course, you know, healthcare anaesthetics involves
• 23:05
  high risk, real life risk. So how do you train leadership
• 23:09
  discipline across the teams so that standards are not dropped
• 23:13
  in exchange for increase in sales?
• 23:15
  Yeah. So one of the things that we do
• 23:17
  is we are, we are very pragmatic about what we do, right.
• 23:20
  So everything that we do has to be, we need to consider the fact
• 23:24
  that we are treating people that have no pathology.
• 23:27
  We have treating people that have no underlying illnesses or
• 23:31
  issues, right. So for that reason, risk
• 23:33
  propensity or the risk appetite has to to be different to when
• 23:38
  you're treating people, let's say for example, with a heart
• 23:40
  problem or with a broken bone. However, we also have to balance
• 23:44
  it with the fact that we're not scaring people.
• 23:46
  So if you look at what we do, which is mainly Botoxes, fillers
• 23:49
  and laser treatments, there are some of the most safest
• 23:52
  treatment modalities out there. So the complication rates with
• 23:56
  any of these treatment modalities is extremely low.
• 23:59
  But if there is a complication, it is a complication on a very
• 24:02
  healthy person. That's the problem.
• 24:04
  The problem is you have very safe medicines and very safe
• 24:07
  treatments. However, it's not a 0% risk
• 24:11
  being administered to people that actually are healthy and,
• 24:14
  and, and fit from the start. So that's how we, that's how we
• 24:18
  approach safety in our industry is, is having those honest
• 24:21
  conversations with the stakeholders.
• 24:24
  Because if you, if you basically tell them that what we do is
• 24:27
  dangerous, and if, if we tell them that, you know, things can
• 24:30
  go horribly wrong without any, without any context, they would
• 24:33
  translate that to the patient and the patient would not have
• 24:36
  honest understanding about the treatments they may receive.
• 24:40
  So you might essentially be scaring somebody out of a
• 24:43
  treatment that might make them feel very good about themselves.
• 24:47
  But on the same token, if you are very flippant about the risk
• 24:51
  and tell people, Oh no, it's a very safe treatment, you might
• 24:54
  be bringing in people and and doing treatments that should
• 24:57
  otherwise not be done on patients.
• 24:59
  The other way we manage risk is that we are very specific about
• 25:02
  treatments that we perform. So we never ever perform
• 25:05
  treatments where we cannot manage the complications if they
• 25:10
  were to happen. And what I mean by that is our
• 25:12
  clinics are also designed to manage the complications if they
• 25:16
  do arise. So part of that is we only do
• 25:19
  treatments that are reversible. So when we do lip fillers, for
• 25:21
  example, they can be immediately dissolved like that using a
• 25:25
  specific agent. So we use only fillers that are
• 25:28
  soluble and the Botoxes that we use are Botoxes that are
• 25:32
  temporary as as all of them are. Let's say worst case scenario
• 25:35
  happens, the treatment disappears within three months.
• 25:39
  So the patient is never left with a permanent deficit.
• 25:42
  And that's how we approach things at the clinic.
• 25:45
  I think that is actually very, very important because Can you
• 25:49
  imagine a person having a permanent blemish on their skid
• 25:53
  for the rest of their lives? You're not going to find it
• 25:57
  funnier at all. And of course, you know, you
• 25:59
  speak often about, but one thing I appreciate is the confidence
• 26:05
  with which you speak about your integrity and your identity.
• 26:08
  But what are people really buying when they walk into a
• 26:11
  cosmetic clinic? What I think that people are, I
• 26:14
  mean, forward facing basically says that, you know, they're
• 26:17
  buying a beautiful aesthetic. The backward facing, which is
• 26:21
  the where we recruit staff, we say that they're buying a that
• 26:25
  they're buying safety in, in that we we we train their living
• 26:29
  daylights out of our nurses. So they're incredibly well
• 26:32
  trained. But what I genuinely think is
• 26:35
  that we are essentially transacting a non judgmental
• 26:39
  environment, right? Because what I find frequently
• 26:42
  about cosmetic clinics is they line between what the clinicians
• 26:48
  ideals of aesthetics and what they translate to the patient.
• 26:52
  The line gets blurred very easily.
• 26:54
  We don't do that. We understand that every person
• 26:57
  has their own idea of a aesthetic end result.
• 27:01
  We appreciate that, we respect that.
• 27:04
  And our job isn't to judge that. Our job is to make sure that we
• 27:08
  take the patient from where they are to where they want to be in
• 27:11
  the safest and the most efficient way possible.
• 27:15
  And that's especially important in a country like Australia,
• 27:18
  which is very multicultural. So Australia has people from all
• 27:22
  over the world. And, and with that, aesthetic
• 27:25
  ideals are are a spectrum in Australia.
• 27:28
  It's not homogeneous and unified.
• 27:30
  You can only understand that through open dialogue with the
• 27:33
  patient. And that's what we that's what I
• 27:36
  personally think our secret currency is.
• 27:38
  Oh wow. Interesting.
• 27:39
  Definitely you need to sell what the customer wants to buy.
• 27:43
  Know what you want to sell and it's a business and a practise.
• 27:48
  You know healthcare, healthcare professionals, ancient business,
• 27:52
  they often struggle. But what are the most common
• 27:55
  blind spots you see granite clinicians attempt are
• 27:58
  entrepreneurship? What I see in our industry is
• 28:02
  that, say for example, if you're, if you're treating blood
• 28:05
  pressure right and there's a lot of blood pressure medications
• 28:07
  that come out, you look at it objectively at the different
• 28:10
  blood pressure medications. There's no sexiness attached to
• 28:13
  blood pressure medications. It is what it is.
• 28:16
  But I in our industry, every time a new version of Botox or a
• 28:19
  new version of fillers or a new laser machine comes out, there
• 28:22
  is enormous pomp and circumstance around it.
• 28:25
  Everyone portrayed, well, I mean, the pharma companies
• 28:27
  portrayed as though it's the best thing that's ever happened
• 28:29
  since sliced bread. And what I find about clinicians
• 28:33
  is that sometimes they can, they can fall victim to the high.
• 28:38
  They, they become curious and they, they think that the
• 28:41
  patients are there for the pharmaceutical agents, not for
• 28:45
  them, right? And that's very important
• 28:47
  because I keep reminding the clinicians, the most important
• 28:50
  person here is you. People are there for the
• 28:53
  painter, not the paint. So the painter is the one that
• 28:57
  gives you the result. The paint isn't the one that
• 28:59
  gives you the result. And once clinicians understand
• 29:03
  that rather than investing in pharmaceutical pharmaceuticals,
• 29:07
  they invest in their skills and the more honed their skills, the
• 29:11
  better the result. I mean, if you look at all the
• 29:13
  agents available in Australia, so there's seven different
• 29:15
  Botoxes and there's some 30 different types of fillers
• 29:18
  available in Australia. Objectively there's very minimal
• 29:21
  difference between them, right? If you speak to every pharma
• 29:24
  company that they think that their one is the best thing in
• 29:27
  the world, but objectively they're all exactly the same.
• 29:30
  What makes a difference difference is a clinician that's
• 29:32
  injecting the agents. I mean, sure, some of them are
• 29:35
  more expensive, some of them are a little less expensive, but
• 29:38
  you're looking at, you know, plus -1020% nothing that is
• 29:41
  material. So that's one thing that I tell
• 29:44
  clinicians is to understand their value and their worth.
• 29:47
  I love that. I love that.
• 29:49
  It's very, very important to invest in your skills.
• 29:51
  I remember recently a friend of mine who's also called
• 29:55
  podcaster, she has reminded me after I got nominated for the
• 29:59
  work that remember last year you put in a whole lot of work.
• 30:03
  There were days when you would only eat once and or you
• 30:06
  probably eat in a day's noodles and you are buried in the work.
• 30:10
  And now you're surprised you have been nominated for an
• 30:12
  award. Like it's not far fetched.
• 30:14
  The apple doesn't fall far from the tree.
• 30:16
  You know you need to believe in yourself, right?
• 30:18
  And invest in your skills. Recently I discovered I had done
• 30:22
  more than 10,000 hours, right, in terms of podcasting.
• 30:27
  So wow, if you invest that time into the trade, you, you are the
• 30:34
  painter, right? And of course you can use
• 30:36
  different tools, correct? Different tools to achieve the
• 30:40
  same results. So I, I love that.
• 30:42
  I love that actually. And I think that is essentially
• 30:45
  in mindset. What I say hack.
• 30:48
  Yeah, a mindset hack. So let's talk about the mindset
• 30:52
  through setbacks. So what has been your largest
• 30:56
  and your highest leadership season so far and what Intel is
• 31:00
  being kept you standard when pressure was highest?
• 31:02
  Oh. That's a good question.
• 31:03
  So one of the things that I wouldn't call it set back, but I
• 31:07
  would call it, there's always pressures to do something.
• 31:10
  And whenever there's a there's a pressure to do something, you
• 31:14
  have to take a step back and go, well, hang on.
• 31:16
  Is this actually the right answer?
• 31:18
  So for example, a perfect example is I was asked about one
• 31:22
  of the clinicians to bring in specific types of fillers that
• 31:26
  come in at higher volume. And the reason for that is
• 31:28
  higher volume means that they can bill more for it.
• 31:32
  But then it got me thinking, it's probably not in the
• 31:35
  patient's best, even though financially you can tell the
• 31:38
  patient, well, I mean, you know, would love to do this, but this
• 31:41
  is the minimum amount of filler that you have to have.
• 31:44
  And therefore this is how much it costs financially.
• 31:46
  What he said makes sense, but it's really not in the best
• 31:49
  interest of the customer. And what you always have to do
• 31:52
  is you always have to prioritise what the customer values and
• 31:56
  that automatically translates to sales.
• 31:58
  Perfect example is iPhones. I mean, if you go into an Apple
• 32:02
  shop, there is no, you're under, there's no pressure at all for
• 32:05
  you to buy anything. And same with the Tesla.
• 32:06
  If you walk into a Tesla showroom, you don't have a car
• 32:09
  salesman who's pressuring you to buy stuff.
• 32:11
  And, and the sales for those companies are, are astronomical.
• 32:15
  They, they do phenomenally well. But then if you go into say, for
• 32:18
  example, a Ford dealership or a Hyundai dealership, from the
• 32:21
  second you step in there, you are a piece of meat that the
• 32:25
  lions will just want to RIP through.
• 32:28
  And it is unpleasant. So, and, and that's the
• 32:32
  experience. You remember, you don't, you
• 32:33
  don't care about the car. You're like, oh crap, I need to
• 32:35
  get, I need to buy another car because my car broke down.
• 32:39
  I really do not want to go to the Ford dealership and deal
• 32:42
  with that crap. What is coming for you?
• 32:45
  What is Ford Motors? I got Ford Motors are going to
• 32:48
  put you on Forbes. There's a lot of.
• 32:51
  Fords in Australia and there's a lot of people passionate about
• 32:53
  Fords. Like the next thing you know,
• 32:55
  there will be one chasing me down the road and I'll just be,
• 32:59
  I was joking, I was joking. Ford Ford is to better Hyundai
• 33:05
  Oh bad those vehicles. I'm not going to say anything
• 33:09
  you said it. I'm not going into this guys
• 33:15
  know how to spend your Australian dollars like.
• 33:17
  I we recently got a Kia. I used to have a Ford, but we
• 33:21
  recently got a Kia, right? And I have to say it is a very
• 33:24
  liberating car because, because the thing about Kia saw like
• 33:28
  when you have a nice car like a Ford or a BMW or a Range Rover,
• 33:31
  you care a lot. Like you care about where you
• 33:33
  talk, you care about the car being nice, you care about who's
• 33:36
  parked next to you, you care about all of these things.
• 33:39
  But when you get a Kia, it's very nice inside, but you just
• 33:44
  don't care because it's such a unpretentious car that that
• 33:49
  whatever happens, you just go, it's a Kia, right?
• 33:52
  Like we, we got, we got broken into a couple of months ago that
• 33:54
  the car did. And that happened because I
• 33:57
  forgot to lock the car because it's just a Kia.
• 33:59
  Like the police officer was, was asking me like, did they steal
• 34:02
  anything? Did they break anything?
• 34:04
  And my response just kept going it's, it's a, it's a.
• 34:07
  It's a Kia. Relax everyone.
• 34:09
  It's a Kia. I don't care there's.
• 34:12
  Something liberating about there's something liberating
• 34:17
  about having having a car like that.
• 34:19
  You just just don't care. Like it's phenomenal.
• 34:22
  We careless? We careless.
• 34:25
  Wow, exactly. Yeah, let's let's talk about
• 34:29
  beauty, a lifestyle brand without becoming, you know,
• 34:32
  affirmative that is obsessed with performance.
• 34:36
  So you've actually beat more than just a piece that's it's a
• 34:38
  lifestyle brand in Australia? Or how do you lead authentically
• 34:42
  without performing or the optics?
• 34:44
  The important thing is, is not to get carried away with the
• 34:47
  lifestyle aspects. I mean, cosmetic is purely a
• 34:50
  lifestyle brand. So there's again on the
• 34:51
  healthcare space. There's nothing that we do that,
• 34:54
  that, you know, we don't cure cancer, we don't care heart
• 34:56
  disease, we don't cure diabetes. We just make people feel better
• 34:59
  about themselves. So that is your quintessential
• 35:01
  lifestyle brand. And again, it's important when
• 35:04
  you're when you're, when you have a lifestyle brand such as
• 35:06
  cosmeti to prioritise on what it is that makes the brand special.
• 35:11
  So for us, what what makes it special, especially on the
• 35:14
  behind the scenes aspect is, is unrelenting obsession about
• 35:18
  safety. So any safety set that can be
• 35:21
  taken, we take it. But on the forward facing, we
• 35:24
  are also unashamedly non judgmental.
• 35:28
  So we are one of the only clinics that that that are happy
• 35:32
  to accommodate whatever the request is as long as it's safe
• 35:36
  and is in the best interest of the customer.
• 35:38
  And we understand that everyone has a different ideal of
• 35:42
  aesthetic end result and something like absolutely
• 35:45
  surprises. Sometimes the girls come in with
• 35:47
  just wanting the tiniest little bit of filler in their face just
• 35:51
  to wipe off 1 wrinkle. And other times, you know,
• 35:54
  people that you would not suspect, such as doctors and
• 35:57
  lawyers and barristers come in wanting their face completely
• 36:00
  frozen with Botox and lips that are very large.
• 36:04
  So we don't ever correlate who the person is and what their
• 36:07
  profession is to what they consider as an aesthetic end
• 36:11
  result. That's what that's one thing
• 36:12
  that we value a lot as a lifestyle brand.
• 36:15
  Interesting. And of course, you know,
• 36:16
  cosmetic gave birth to Yuri. So let's really speak about Yuri
• 36:20
  and what are the lessons and the accomplishments that you've had
• 36:26
  so far? Yuri is a startup that that I
• 36:29
  founded last year and what it is, is a tech tech platform that
• 36:34
  helps clinicians maintain compliance.
• 36:36
  What I've found is having, you know, been in in the healthcare
• 36:40
  sector for now, what, more than 10 years?
• 36:42
  I've seen a gradual up regular in the amount of regulation
• 36:46
  guidelines in Australia. So Australia when I was younger
• 36:49
  used to be a very free place. I mean, you know, you could for
• 36:53
  example, there weren't many things that were that got you in
• 36:57
  trouble, for example. And everyone at the same time,
• 36:59
  everyone practise a lot of common sense.
• 37:01
  But as we progressed into the 21st century, the amount of
• 37:05
  rules, regulations and the amount of unnecessary burden on
• 37:10
  society from these things has gone through the roof.
• 37:13
  So I'm sure you heard by the the crazy lockdowns in Australia, so
• 37:17
  our state. Yes, completely.
• 37:19
  And New Zealand the. Rest of the world for about a
• 37:20
  year and a half, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:23
  And, and Melbourne had lockdowns after lockdowns after lockdowns.
• 37:28
  And this is a so we've progressed from a, from a
• 37:31
  country that is free to effectively a nanny state is
• 37:35
  what's happened in Australia. And the same things happen in
• 37:37
  the healthcare sector as well. So in the healthcare sector, the
• 37:40
  regulation has gone past. We need regulation to, we need
• 37:43
  to look after patients in safety to now we need to tell doctors
• 37:47
  and nurses how to think, how to behave, how to do everything,
• 37:50
  which is which is gone to a crazy amount.
• 37:53
  Now the problem there is your average doctor, your average
• 37:56
  clinic doesn't understand the amount of regulation there is
• 38:00
  now because again, we've got 20 clinics and we are pretty much
• 38:03
  all around the country and the regulation changes state by
• 38:06
  state. We have a very deep
• 38:08
  understanding of what the what the regulations are.
• 38:13
  And on top of that, I work with several medical and doctor
• 38:16
  advocacy groups in, in helping doctors navigate through
• 38:20
  regulatory hurdles as well. So what we've done is we've put
• 38:23
  that through into a platform which at the end of the day for
• 38:27
  clinic is using Yuli. What it basically means is that
• 38:31
  they are able to deliver their episode of care to the patient
• 38:35
  without having to worry about any, any compliance issues.
• 38:39
  They so depending on where for example they are, software may
• 38:43
  ask you to load in your licence number, your permit number, your
• 38:47
  registration numbers, everything.
• 38:49
  And it automatically correlates it with what is in public
• 38:52
  databases to make sure that all the is are dotted TS are crossed
• 38:56
  and not many people know how to do that.
• 38:58
  And that's where that's where it's come from.
• 39:01
  And the next thing that's happened is what we found is
• 39:03
  healthcare isn't just a here's a patient, here's a doctor and a
• 39:07
  conversation and you get better. What we're finding is as
• 39:10
  healthcare becomes more and more complicated, there's more and
• 39:13
  more people involved in the healthcare journey.
• 39:15
  So your typical person may have multiple touch points with the
• 39:19
  healthcare system. For example, if somebody wants
• 39:21
  to lose weight, they would want to see their doctor to make sure
• 39:25
  there's nothing endocrinological happening.
• 39:26
  For example, they may see a specialist, they may see a
• 39:29
  pharmacist, they may see a nurse, a dietitian, A
• 39:32
  psychologist, exercise physiologist.
• 39:34
  So as Healthcare is becoming more and more complicated, this
• 39:37
  one-on-one interaction between the doctor and a clinician at a
• 39:42
  time is not efficient. And that's another thing that we
• 39:45
  built in. We built in a system where
• 39:47
  multiple touch points can happen at the same time in order to
• 39:51
  deliver care in a single synchronised matter in a
• 39:53
  synchronised manner. And the best place to start, for
• 39:56
  example, is actually the, the cosmetic industry.
• 39:59
  Because in the cosmetic industry, you want to make sure
• 40:01
  that the patient doesn't have any mental health issues.
• 40:04
  For example, we can do that through mental health screening.
• 40:06
  They need a doctor, for example, to do a consultation and to give
• 40:10
  a prescription. And and hence there's there's,
• 40:12
  there's a portal specifically for doctors.
• 40:15
  The nurses are the ones that administer the treatments, so
• 40:17
  there's an app specifically for the nurses.
• 40:19
  So we are able to get everyone on the same page very quickly
• 40:23
  using technology. And that's where I see the value
• 40:26
  for Yuli. So yeah, it's been very popular.
• 40:28
  We've been receiving so many requests from other clinics
• 40:31
  wanting to be on boarded onto Yuli and it's been, it's been
• 40:34
  phenomenal. Amazing, amazing work.
• 40:36
  You know, your body of work is actually highly, highly amazing.
• 40:41
  And of course, there's something I always say on the broadcaster,
• 40:44
  anytime a person shares their time with you, they're sharing
• 40:47
  their life with you because the SI unit for measuring life this
• 40:50
  time. And of course, big love and
• 40:53
  respect to you today for sharing your life and your time with us
• 40:56
  today. I'm going to end with five quick
• 40:59
  fire round questions. Are you ready to rumble?
• 41:04
  OK, OCOCOCOCOCOC, let's go. OK, So what is wonder leave
• 41:12
  about success you have completely unlearned?
• 41:14
  I've unlearned the fact that success is not a binary concept.
• 41:19
  Previously, I used to think of success as just a successful or
• 41:22
  not successful. Successful success is something
• 41:25
  that you have to, you could be successful one day.
• 41:27
  That means that you also have to hit that mark again the next day
• 41:31
  and the next day and the next day.
• 41:32
  It's not something you buy. It's something you rent and you
• 41:35
  need to rent it every single day.
• 41:37
  So you need to play at that level every single day, is what
• 41:40
  I've learned about success. But and press what is 1 daily
• 41:43
  habit that protects your mindset under pressure.
• 41:46
  Objectivity. So whenever there's pressure,
• 41:48
  rather than succumbing to the pressure within trying to solve
• 41:51
  the problem, the best thing to do is to take a deep breath,
• 41:54
  step back and objectively look at the situation and always
• 41:58
  evaluate the situation against the values of the business.
• 42:01
  And the answer becomes very clear very quickly.
• 42:04
  Objective assessment what is 1 leadership mistake that taught
• 42:07
  you more than any win I. Would say the initial commitment
• 42:12
  towards towards having a top down approach as I recently
• 42:17
  learned that that going through a democratisation of values is
• 42:21
  actually better for the end result rather than being a
• 42:24
  authoritarian. And simply The only caveat there
• 42:29
  is when you democratise the values, you need to make sure
• 42:32
  the people that are the torchbearers are the are people
• 42:35
  of good character who also value the same thing as you do.
• 42:38
  So what would you say has been a mentor that has shipped your
• 42:43
  leadership philosophy? I've been very lucky in that, in
• 42:46
  that I have a lot of close friends and a lot of close
• 42:49
  mentors and each of them have different facets of what I
• 42:53
  value. So for example, when it comes to
• 42:55
  when it comes to anything in the healthcare space, I've got a
• 42:58
  number of people that are relying number of mentors that I
• 43:01
  rely on and they're very happy to receive my call and I'm very
• 43:05
  liberal at calling them and asking them for advice.
• 43:07
  And when it comes to the business side, again, I'll come
• 43:10
  across many, many business people who are, who are
• 43:12
  absolutely phenomenal and very generous with their time.
• 43:15
  So there isn't one person, but there is a, there is a, a
• 43:19
  spectrum of people that I, that I speak with, depending on what
• 43:23
  it is that I'm seeking guidance from.
• 43:25
  And, and, and I would caution anyone against having a mentor
• 43:28
  because especially when you're in business, you're dealing with
• 43:31
  your many, many different facets.
• 43:34
  And so you need to consider a, a team of mentors.
• 43:37
  The team is very, very important.
• 43:39
  Absolutely, absolutely in the multitude of guidance their
• 43:42
  safety. So the last question is legacy
• 43:45
  over profits, yes or no? Look, legacy, legacy is
• 43:49
  absolutely important because I wouldn't say legacy or profits.
• 43:51
  I would say that profits may not lead to legacy, but legacy
• 43:55
  always leads to profits, right? Because if something, if
• 43:58
  something's got legacy, it basically means that it's stood
• 44:00
  the test of time, which means instead you bring, you're
• 44:03
  bringing value to other people, which means that that transfers
• 44:06
  profits. So again, legacy comes back to
• 44:09
  staying true to the message and staying true to your values.
• 44:12
  So I would I would prioritise legacy over profits if it just
• 44:16
  is a binary binary. I love that.
• 44:19
  Wow, Doctor Vivek. This episode has been highly,
• 44:23
  highly educational and of course, our audience of founders
• 44:27
  and professionals are going to benefit immense value from this.
• 44:31
  And of course, now you are also a symbol of deep inspiration
• 44:36
  retailing life experience. And of course, you have shared
• 44:38
  with us practical frameworks on leadership, scaling, trust and
• 44:42
  mindset. The philosophy of this broadcast
• 44:45
  is mindset, skill sets, tool sets, in that order.
• 44:48
  If we're collaborating with anyone, we need to 1st consider
• 44:51
  the mindset, then the skill sets and the tool sets that they use.
• 44:55
  And of course you have even us no fluff today.
• 44:59
  You ate and left no crumbs. And this is really, really
• 45:03
  amazing. Thank you very much.
• 45:05
  Once again, just an. Amazing team that I had the
• 45:08
  pleasure of working with every single day.
• 45:10
  They've been absolutely inspirational and they've been
• 45:13
  and their commitment towards patience and and patient safety
• 45:16
  and looking after the patients has been has been great.
• 45:19
  So massive shot. A shout out to our amazing team.