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