0310 | Dr. Jonathan Baktari MD

Hi, my name is Jonathan Bhaktari, MD. And you're listening to EA Interview, EA.

Interviews, episode 310, inspiration, transformation, success stories and the Imperfect Action Round. Seven days a week. Join Mario Ficcini for today's Expert Authority Effect interview. You go through things in your business, there's ups and downs and you think about preventative procedures, to think about next quarter, to increase sales, to talk about leads and all these different things business related. But what are you doing to prevent your health? Because if you don't have your health, you really have nothing. It doesn't matter what the leads are doing, it doesn't matter what the sales are doing, the team, the automation, the processes, any of these things. You know, preventative medicine is so important. And that's why I brought on Dr. Jonathan Bakhtari. And we're going to be talking about that right after we thank our sponsor. Every business needs a book, including yours. And that's why I'm launching my new book to help you, regardless of where you think your current writing abilities are. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Once again, that's EA publishing method book.

Here he is, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Jonathan Bakhtari. How are you doing today, Jonathan?

Good, Mario. Thanks for having me.

Oh, the pleasure is mine. You're a wealth of knowledge and I just want to get your insights on why preventive medicine is so important.

Yeah, I think we all know what it's like to go to the doctor when something comes up. But you know, at the end of the day, we know both in terms of the quality of your life and even from a financial point of view, it's a fraction of the time and effort and cost to prevent something than it is to treat it. Not to mention just the agony of having to go through different kinds of medical issues. So prevention is always better.

Why do you think so many business people and CEOs just not, don't prioritize it?

Yeah, I think, you know, we're all human beings and it's really easy to kind of get stuck in, you know, sort of the, the rat race of having to do everything, running companies or, and running people and, you know, just the hours and the days slip away from you and as you're upscaling and running things and it's just human nature and it's, it's important to pause and realize that you got to make that a priority to Your own health.

What would you say companies should be doing as far as their teams, their staff, the employees? What are your thoughts on a lot of companies cutting out the health care plans as of the last decade?

Yeah, I think it's important not only to have a good health plan, but, you know, to come up with strategies to incentivize your staff, your employees to prioritize their own health. Whether it's more time off, whether it's integrating other programs that have access to within corporate wellness. All of those things send signals that, yes, we're all here to make money, we're all here to make the company grow, but we have to have a balanced approach. And in the long run, actually, it turns out that if you prioritize the wellness, that actually can pay dividends if done properly.

How important would you say it is for a small company versus a big company?

I think the problem with small companies is if they're in the survival mode, it becomes harder to kind of think of those things. And bigger companies who've now plateaued and sort of, you know, kind of know their revenues and know that they're going to be able to, you know, pay their bills, what have you, they tend to have a little more freedom when people are struggling just to, you know, make payroll. I guess that becomes a bigger challenge. But it's. You got to keep in mind that you're more likely to become a big company if you have an engaged, inspired team to take you there.

So with everything that's been going on in the world, do you think we'll ever go back to a point in society where every company's paying benefits, everyone's got a pension, everyone, the companies are taking care of the people? Or do you think that's completely, 100%, unequivocally over and done with?

You know, it's kind of a mixed bag. Obviously, you know, we see, well, you know, last few years more government involvement in terms of, you know, increasing the minimum wage and doing other things to, you know, help employees have benefits like, you know, family leave, encouraging companies to do family maternity leave, family leave. But I think to get there, it's going to be. It's going to be a combination of regulation and private industry being convinced that's actually good business to work with their staff and work with maintaining their health and preventing illnesses. At the end of the day, it can be better business. We just have to win people over that. That actually is better business in the long run.

If you had.

Let'S say, 100, now, let's go with a thousand. If you were in front of a thousand small business owners right now.

Yeah.

What would you say is the number one thing they should be focusing on and doing over the next couple of quarters of the. Over the next year or two.

Set.

Themselves up for success over the next year, moving forward?

You mean from a health point of view or just. Yes, from a business point of view. You know, from a health point of view, I think, you know, giving your employees more control of their healthcare, giving them more options, and, you know, balancing the needs of the business versus the needs of your staff. You know, what we've done in the past is, you know, we look at our own staff, and if anyone needs any individual attention or help, you know, we have a mechanism where we can address individual needs. Because it's one thing to kind of have a cookie cutter, you know, like, this is our policy or this is this. But, you know, you have to be able to step in and accommodate people. And it's interesting because when you accommodate employees specifically and address their needs, those are the ones that will go to bat for you and do whatever it takes. So I think I would tell business owners it's okay to have policies and procedures, but looking at everybody as an individual and what their needs are. For example, we've had situations where somebody just needed to get in from one living situation to another and, you know, we may have, you know, fronted their money for their new location or their vehicle is having issues and that kind of caused problems, you know, in terms of even getting to work sometimes. And, you know, we intervened in those situations. So I think if you just have a corporate policy that this is what we're going to do and this is going to help everybody, especially if you're a small business, you just have to, you know, be in touch with your staff and see what their needs are. That doesn't mean you can make every accommodation, but you should certainly look at it that way. And that is the one way to get.

They're striving to be.

Yeah, right. That's the one way you can to get people to be unbelievably loyal to you and to their company because they're going to feel like it's their company.

Okay.

So obviously you're very passionate about this. No, no, I'd say more than most people, even in the medical field.

But why did you want to switch? Why did you start your company? Why did you want to switch and go, I want to. I want to switch what I'm doing? Because that would freak a lot of people out. Most people don't want to switch what they're doing, and they're not doctors and they're not successful doctors.

Well, yeah, you know, it was interesting because I had 20 years of clinical experience practicing internal medicine, pulmonary critical care. I was also on clinical faculty at several med schools throughout my career. So I was on the education side. I was a hospital administrator for a while, so I was. I also saw that. And then I also worked for a health insurance company. So, you know, I think I had the unusual luck or prevention privilege of seeing the issues with health care from all four sides.

Yeah, that's a very unique perspective.

Right. I mean, it's not often that you can see how the hospitals are thinking, how the insurance companies are thinking, how the educational system that trains doctors is thinking, and how private practice works, where, you know, the challenges of, you know, being in private practice and taking care of patients. So I think. I think it was the coalescing of all those experiences that made me say there must be a better way to deliver health care in a way where we actually think about what the patient needs and we don't burden the patient with how our process works. We're going to change our process to fix them. I often give an analogy like if you call a doctor's office right now in the United States, more than likely you're going to get a recording and it's going to say, press 1 if you need to make an appointment, press 2. If you need your medical records, press 3, blah, blah, blah. And then no matter what number you press, they say, leave a message. That sends a message that you adapt to our system. We're not adapting to you.

I think that kind of thing made me realize that we're not setting up the system to accommodate the patients. We're asking the patients to accommodate to us. And that didn't seem right to me.

Do you think there's too many companies that are trying to.

How can I say this? I don't want to say automate too much or leverage too much, because that's the. The whole goal is to be more efficient as a company. And I don't think anyone is trying to cut the people out, but do you think they're just getting so caught up with, you know, like when email came out, it's like, oh, we can email, email, email. Well, it's supposed to be a tool. It's not. People are treating it like a billboard. If you get an email once a day from someone, even if it's your family, I think that's a high frequency. So where does this fall with the phones and the caring side of stuff? Because it's like, obviously the business wants to do better, but where does it get so, so gray? They just forget, like you're actually talking to people and it just becomes robotic.

Well, I mean, I think part of it really goes to the core of the relationship between, you know, the medical world and patients. It's probably the only relationship where the payer is not one, you know, is not the person getting the service. You know, if you go get your car fixed or get a haircut, you're paying for it. But, you know, healthcare organizations realize, yes, there is copay and all that, but aside from that, they're getting the bulk of the revenue from someone else. So I think a lot of insurance.

Companies you're referring to, right?

Yeah, the health care insurance company. So a lot of times the health care industry is geared to what do we got to do to make them happy? So they reimburse us. Right. So it's, you know, imagine if you went out to dinner at a restaurant, but the restaurant was getting paid from a third party.

They would be more concerned if that third party was happy with the care you got than you. On some level. It's not all like that. And of course, there are a lot of caring physicians and a lot of caring people that. I don't mean it that way, but I'm talking about the machinery, the software, the technology is much more geared to maximizing reimbursements than patient satisfaction often. Now, there are a lot of healthcare organizations that focus on patient satisfaction and do a lot of work in that area. I'm not minimizing that, but I think on some level, from a satellite perspective, having the patient not be the ultimate payer makes that relationship somewhat artificial in ways that don't, that in ways that it doesn't happen with other types of transactions. And also, to a certain extent, you're a captured audience. You know, if you have a certain healthcare plan, there's only so many doctors you can go to, they know that. Or so many hospitals you can go to, they know that. So it's not like you're paying out of your wallet and you can pick any company you want. You know, you don't like one restaurant, you just move on to the next. Often in health care, especially these days, you don't have a choice. If that's the plan you signed up with, that's your ob gyn and that's your primary care doctor. And that's why you're going to get, you know, press 1, press 2, press 3, press 4, you know, we'll call you back. When, honestly, whenever you hear that, whenever you call a business and you hear that, on some level, you know that they think they have more leverage than you do because if you were calling to hand them $1,000, they'd answer the phone immediately. But you're not. And so I think, yeah, I think some of that is, is artificial because they feel like you may be a captured audience.

So tell me about your company, E7 Health. What are you doing to maximize and change this and make it a better experience for everyone?

Yeah, I mean, for one thing, I mean, we write our own software, we write our own technology so we don't have to get anything off the rack. As I often joke, we're really a technology company masquerading as a healthcare company because at the core we're leveraging technology to change the patient experience.

If you go to our website, you'll see just in the past three years, we have 10,000 positive reviews. It's interesting because I don't know many companies that have 10,000 reviews ever. But those reviews come from the patients having a one of a kind experience that they've never had before, where our technology removes all of the friction. We don't have a clipboard. When you arrive with 40 pages of things to fill out, you do everything online. When you book an appointment, you could do it online. You get a link and you could fill everything out.

And then you create an account. Like you create an Amazon account and password and login and that's your account for life. And anything we've ever done for you is in that account. Just like if you wanted to look up what your Amazon, what you ordered on Amazon a year ago, you could go back and same with us, if you want to know what we did for you three years ago, you just put in your password.

It's kind of unique. We don't even have a medical records department because everything we do is in your portal. So no one ever calls us and say, you know, I'd like to get a record of my physical three years ago. No, it's just log in and get it. And so I think writing technology that services the patients, not the insurance companies.

Or other needs, we think in the long run is actually better business anyway. So it's kind of a, you know, we think great quality care.

Done in an amazing way is actually good business. So that's what we bet on and that's the direction we went In I.

Love that you're doing it because I would agree, you know, the patient's the most important. And I would love to see it, you get so big and change the industry to a point where the insurance companies go, okay, what do we need to do to accommodate the patient better?

Yeah, I think that's really important. But, you know, as we see with consolidation of insurance companies and consolidations of healthcare companies and healthcare companies buying practices, you know, unfortunately, it's probably going in the opposite direction where the more consolidation that occurs, the less, you know, people may have to worry about, you know, patient satisfaction on that level.

And it's gonna, you're saying it's gonna go back more to where the doctors and physicians and everyone there, they, they're more concerned about the reimbursements just because there's, you know, three to five people, three to five companies instead of 30 or 50.

Well, not, not only that, but also they're buying practices. So most of the physicians are, you know, they're, you know, private practice is becoming a very rare breed, especially in primary care. They're most, a lot of primary care doctors just work now for the insurance company or health hospitals or other health care companies. On some level, the doctors are being taken out of the equation.

And that's progressing every year. More and more private practices are being bought out.

To traditional. For the listeners who remember Marcus Welby and those kind of doctors are definitely less and less and being faded out.

There's so many things going on.

Do you think it'll be to a point ever where people are just healthier to begin with? Because I know there's, especially here in the US the last 10, 20 years, it seems like people are getting sicker and sicker. Do you think it'll ever transition where it's like people care about their health and it's like they're.

They'Re just healthier overall?

I mean, I think if Covid taught us anything is to take care of ourselves. And, and you know, I think this pandemic has been quite the wake up call for staying healthy. And what's important, I'm hoping that this sort of pause the past year, people paused a lot of what they do and reevaluated what they do. I'm hoping coming out of it, and I'm optimistic. I hear it a lot from people and I see it a lot from people. People are giving their health a different priority, more than I've seen in a long time. We see a lot of it, we see a lot of change. Maybe sometimes it required the pause that we had for people to circle back and say, wait, wait, wait, what am I really doing here? Am I just working for the sake of working?

There are not many silver linings in this pandemic.

But hopefully that's one of them.

With all the people you've been able to help, who would you say is your biggest transformation and success story?

You know, we work a lot with companies and organizations that and provide preventative health care to their employees and stuff. And, you know, I think our happiness that we see is literally we will take on a major defense firm who's a Fortune 500 company, and they'll start using our services. And literally I will get a call from someone very high up in the organization saying, oh, my gosh, our staff can't imagine going anywhere else.

And we've had people literally fly their staff from across the country to come to our organization, and they picked up the tab for sending them here. And so that really makes us feel amazing that literally when a Fortune 500 company flies their staff over to come see us because they can't find this care anywhere else, that really, I think, makes my whole staff very proud. And it's really. It's because of the amazing work they do that we are there. They. They make this happen. And our technology and my staff really make it so certain companies literally can't find anywhere else that. That does what we do.

Wow, that's incredible. Congratulations.

Thank you. Don't thank me. It's my staff. Some of the most amazing people in the world, you know, work in our organization.

Yeah, great, great team. Is. I'm thankful for mine too. And, you know, it makes a big difference.

I have one more question for you before we go to the imperfect action round. And it is the wheel of whatever you want. Yellow or black?

Black. Oh, thank you. I feel like the. The last dozen interviews, everyone keeps picking yellow. I like both, but black is cool. Thank you for changing it up. So what do you think I'm going to ask you?

No idea.

That's the whole point. It's the wheel of whatever. So the question that came to me is, do I have to hold it up with the official ruling Lower. Okay.

Where would you like to see the healthcare industry as a whole over the next 20 years? Dream scenario. I have a magic wand. I can do whatever I want. What would you like to see happen over the next 20 years?

You know, for me, you know, being a technology company, I think our dream would be that every medical care you got was essentially yours. And in your Google Drive or whatever Dropbox or wherever you want it to be that you had control over, you had access to it. Because in taking care of patients for 20 years, I can't tell you how much things would go better if every healthcare provider that you ever met had all that information at their fingertips the instant they met you. If there was a way magically that could happen, that would be amazing. Because right now there are healthcare organizations that do that. But if you switch or move or, you know, it's not necessarily going to follow you around. And I think if we ever got to that point, one, we probably save a lot of lives because a lot of times things happen to patients because the current doctors have no idea what the doctors five years ago did or were thinking.

It gets lost in translation.

It does. Well, the data just doesn't get there. Now. It's gotten better with electronic medical records and stuff, but it is not perfect. And it doesn't follow you necessarily. It does follow you system. So like, you know, if you're in the UCLA system and you go to see any UCLA doctor, yes, they will have access to everything. But if you go to Stanford or somewhere else in the country, I'm not sure that goes with you. So that is the holy grail of, you know, information technology. When it comes to healthcare, can. Can you have all that information go with you and you control it? Not some big pharma or big tech companies, your information. When we get to that point, I think we're going to see amazing reduction in testing and unnecessary procedures, better diagnoses.

That is very, very important. And the other thing is the healthcare industry was very late to the game in terms of converting to electronic medical records. Just in general, there was a lot of resistance and blowback and now it's finally come about. A lot of that was through government pressure, but as an industry, I think we were late to the game and too resistant to embracing technology. And I think if we can take that next leap and have it really be comprehensive, where no matter where you go, it's with you, that would be a monumental change.

Well, I appreciate the insight with that. And when you're saying this, it seems so simple because we all deal with so much digital stuff. I just can't. I know what you're talking about and I remember filling out the forms and stuff, but it's like you can turn on your toaster, your fridge, the garage door remotely, the Internet of things, all these things just by voice activation. How are, you know, how are we still 50 years behind with some of this. And I. One thing that stands out to me is the empowerment for the patient to actually know what's going on. Because, you know, you give them that form, they spend, I don't know, two to five minutes or 20 filling it out, they get agitated, they don't want to do it, they forget about it. It's not what they do on a daily basis. So the only time you're ever really looking at your stuff is, you know, like some people do taxes, unfortunately, once a year, twice a year. And it's like you can't grow or make decisions based on old info.

Yeah. I think part of it is also there is no financial upside for someone to piece it all together. You know, how are they going to make more money having your electronic medical records follow you from organization to organization, or who's going to be the one that monetizes that, that and get the cooperation of all those healthcare organizations. So I think there lies the challenge. Yes, it would make it easier for the consumer, but what's the upside for someone doing all that work? And of course the upside is really we're going to save lives, reduce unnecessary procedures and do a lot of other things. So I think we need to look at the big picture.

That's interesting. You got my wheel spinning going. Should this be a business to tackle the problem or maybe a nonprofit that can partner with all these different things and it'd be interesting. But thank you for sharing.

Yeah, I think in the long run, maybe a private government, private industry partnership that would go in that area because there's a lot of cost to be saved and procedures and lives. There's a lot at stake there.

Yeah, I hope it gets solved because I mean, to me it's just the right thing to do. If you can save lives, cool. But it's very valid point. Who's going to monetize it? Who's going to benefit from it? It's like the patients, but right.

I mean, so what we did at E7 Health is we put all the records, so the patients own it in their portal. So at least our small way of contributing to that is our patients can print a laboratory test we did for them five years ago, literally on their home, or just pull it up on their phone and show it to the next doctor. So at least whatever we've done for them, they have access to it forever and they can share it. So as a starting point, if we can have every organization put everything they do essentially in a cloud based portal for every patient, the patients could then know, have Access to it. It wouldn't be in one, but it would. They certainly would have access to it.

Yeah, I love talking about this stuff and just going, you know, how can we change the world for the better? Decades into the future it's thank you for sharing, sincerely. We're going to thank our sponsor and come back with the imperfect action round. You've heard me say every business needs a book, including yours and it's true. And that's why I'm launching my new book@eapublishingmethodbook.com so you can learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. But you know what, don't take my word for it. Take it from a few of my authors like Lori, I went from having.

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And we are back with the Imperfect Action Round. Dr. Jonathan, are you ready to take imperfect action?

Yes, I am.

The First I got three questions for you and 60 second or less answers. The first one is what is the fastest path to the profits?

Fastest path to the profits. Can I get. Can you rephrase that?

In any business what would you recommend for making more money?

Ah, profits. The fastest way. You know, I think at the end of the day if you prioritize your customers over what you think they need versus what they actually need, that's going to go a long way. And I think that's what we did. And I think we look at and say, what. What are they asking us to do? And then we do it. And then at the end of the day, I'm telling you, the best business is if you take care of your customers.

Excellent. Number two, what is the biggest problem you see your prospects making and the fastest way for them to fix it?

You know, I think if you're, if you're saying our prospects, you know, I think what we, Our challenge is to let people know that there is a different way. I think most of us, when we just see an industry that's doing something a certain way, we don't ask for more. We don't ask for changes. I think, you know, asking for change and looking for what we can change in the whole industry, just because it's been done a certain way doesn't mean we got to keep doing it that way. And I think some. Sometimes you get in that rut and, well, that's just the way we do it. And I think it's to think outside that realm.

Excellent. Number three, what is the best way to maximize customer lifetime value?

Yeah, it's funny you should say that, because one of our slogans is customer for life that we talk about that we don't want a customer, we want a customer for life. It's a lot easier to get a customer for life than churning customers, right?

Absolutely.

There's a lot of work and costs associated with customers for life. Again, I think, you know, if your client, we have a lot of corporate clients. If, if you realize that they have specific needs, you know, it's just like a doctor, if one doctor wrote the same prescription for the. For 10 patients that he saw in a row and wrote the exact same medication, you wouldn't think much of that doctor. Right. If so doctor sees 10 people. This is the prescription you need. This prescription you need. You want your doctor to write a different prescription depending on what your problem really is. And I think when we get a new client, and I know a lot of people who do this, we really find out what their needs and wants are, what their pain points are.

So we become a solution. We don't just provide a product, we become a solution. And if you view your clients as having needs and wants and you're there to provide a solution, not the solution you think they should have, but the solution to their needs and wants. If you do that, I think the sky's the limit.

Excellent. What books would you recommend to Expert Authority world that have made a Difference in your business.

Yeah. You know, I think the book that I actually had my entire staff.

Read was just recently that we were talking about tribalism and tribal thinking where and then escapes me. But the whole idea is that in a tribe, you know, there's different levels of tribe. But I think the issue really is are you a great employee or a great team member because you do a lot of work and you get a lot of work done or are you inspiring other people? Is your job to you be a great employee or is your really job to make other people great? And if you can get a team, that's all they're concerned about is how do they make everybody else great? Of course they're going to be great by just doing that. That's where you get to the next level. Organizations that can get to the next level where everyone's focused on how to make others better in the organization. Not. Okay, look what I did. Look at this account I got. Look at the sales I got. As opposed to saying, look at the sales I got. Look at, say, look at who I mentored into a superstar. And if you can mentor a lot of people to be superstars, your value is much more than how much you sold or what you did.

I like that. I like that a lot. Do you happen to know the author?

Yeah.

It's tribal leadership, I believe. But I can look it up and.

I'll tell you what, no big deal. If you could just email that to me or something, we'll put it on the show notes for you.

Yeah, I will. In fact, one of the cool things about the book is literally, we did it collectively as a group. We read it all and then we actually sat there and everyone gave their viewpoint and then we talked about how to implement it in our organization. Because I had a lot of great superstars, but what I wanted them to get from this book is it's good to be a Michael Jordan. But get me three more Michael Jordans with you and we're going to be better. It's one thing to have. Yeah.

The rising of the tide raises all ships.

Right. So don't tell me you're a Michael Jordan. Tell me how you made three other Michael Jordans.

I like that. Well, I appreciate everything you've been sharing. It's a pleasure. Where would you like people to learn more?

Yeah, so of course, e7health.com, you know, we have a lot of information there. My website is bakhcharimd.com and of course you can also catch me on LinkedIn and also, you're welcome to email us also at our website. So there's a lot of ways to get a hold of us.

Excellent. Well, thank you again so much.

Thank you so much.

All right, Expert Authority World, we have another great episode here today. I'll see you tomorrow. Have a great day and God bless.

You're already the expert, but have you transformed your expertise into a tangible asset that will generate qualified leads while increasing profit for you 24 7? And if so, how well are you promoting it? With my new book, the Expert Authority Effect Publishing Method, I take you through my process step by step. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com today to learn the seven steps to publish and promote your nonfiction, lead and profit generating business book in eight weeks. Visit eapublishingmethodbook.com to get started. Now. Once again, that's eapublishingmethodbook.Com hey, thanks for listening to today's episode. I hope you got a lot out of it. I know I sure did. If you haven't done so already, I invite you to subscribe to the show and also be sure to check out eainterviews.com for complete show notes, the full interview video experience, links to the resources we mentioned, and more. Have a blessed day and I'll see you tomorrow.