HealthTech Visionaries: Jonathan Baktari MD Journey & Leadership in Healthcare Innovation

Look, anyone can be put in the cockpit and see straight ahead, but your job is to, as quickly as possible, see what's around the corner so you prepare your company and your people and your group for changes that are coming. A leader's main job is to know what's around the corner.

Welcome to the High Voltage Business Builders Podcast, a show where we interview high voltage entrepreneurs growing and scaling through e-commerce, real estate, and other wealth without Wall Street ventures, showing you the path to making your first Hey folks, Neil Twa here in the High Voltage Business Builders podcast.

Want to thank you for joining me again. If you're listening to this, help me beat big tech as always by like, commenting, sharing, putting something in there to help us engage, uh, so we can get this message out to the world who always needs to hear about others who are striving and thriving in the world of e-commerce and business and finance and real estate and software and all the topics we cover on our podcast. So I have a special guest here today. I'm excited to bring him on. He's someone who, uh, I've known for a while. Has numerous accolades that I probably would spend 5 minutes talking about. So I don't want to bore you with all the details. I'll let him do that and share his glory with you because he's a really cool guy. And I want to thank you for coming on the show today, Dr. Bakari. Appreciate it. Let's dig into the content, man. Let's get into the meat.

Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Awesome. So give the viewers a little history, a little update on where you're at and what you're doing in the world today.

Yeah. So I was in a different life, a physician, and practiced medicine and Eventually evolved into administrative stuff and subsequently into starting our, some businesses that basically are healthcare technology businesses. And we've evolved and now we have several companies including eNational Testing and US Drug Test Centers and e7 Health. And I help spearhead those companies and move them in the right direction.

Awesome. So into the entrepreneurialism side of the medical field, you don't always hear about that. I know sometimes in the medical field, you got to get on a certain track or a certain place, a certain position. And it's kind of hard to break out into anything entrepreneurial. Did you find yourself in that road or did you always say, okay, I want to be a different kind of business owner. I want to use what I'm doing. Or was that always your endgame? Like where you ended up now?

No, no, it really wasn't. It was, I went through the straight and narrow path of going to medical school, residency, fellowship, and then joining a group, being a senior partner. But then it's just evolved. One door opened another and it just continued to evolve. I don't think there was a, period in time where like something hit me over the head and I said, oh, I gotta pivot. It was just a natural evolution of wanting to grow your skills, have different experiences and becoming better at other things. And if anything, I think medical education, which is a long journey, teaches you that you can continue to grow and acquire more skills. And that's what we did just over time, just Wanted to continue.

Yeah, well, going to continue to grow in the residency and the fellowship and all that different time frame. What, what kind of sparked that change to get into medical and technology? We have a background in some software development. Do you have experience in that world?

Well, first, I think coming, going through all of that, and you can get to see as I became involved in administrative medicine, and I was also a professor in in a couple of medical schools. So, I got to see medicine from many sides, teaching, from the— I was a medical director of insurance companies. And so, I got to see it from many sides, also clinically practicing. And when you get to see healthcare from every viewpoint, you realize that there's a lot of friction in the system. And so, when an opportunity presented itself, We just realized that technology can actually reduce some of that friction.

Yes.

Meaning give people access to what they need in a much better way by deploying technology. So I would just say, I don't know if I had an inkling towards technology, but it became clear from my background that technology could be used in a way that would liberate and help people be more in control of their healthcare. If that makes sense.

Absolutely. But with those who might struggle with the fact that they don't have any experience with coding and software and development, and who do you trust to go build that? How did you, how did you jump that gap? Because for some people it feels like a Grand Canyon-sized jump to go from medical practitioner all the way over to entrepreneurial software development, e-health SaaS business owner. It's a pretty big jump.

Yeah, you're right. Right. Well, the first thing you do is sort of, I'm not the one coding. So the question is, how do you vet people out? How do you build this? a team? How do you build culture?

Yeah.

I have a podcast this year called Crash CEO School where I kind of go over some of those skill sets that I had to acquire to pull this off. And whether it's building culture, hiring, firing, vetting people out, encouraging, motivating, mentoring, all of that played into it. But to get to your real question is we started off very small. I mean, we, in our first entrepreneurial venture, we realized, oh gee golly, If we could just get a little technology over here in this little corner, and then we did that, and like, that of course sparked the thing. We said, well, okay, we did a little bit there and look at the difference it made. So I think it was, it was just, it was a gateway drug, that first project, to just this other stuff that you could do.

Yeah.

And I, I think it wasn't one moment where we just said, we're gonna be a technology company. It was, let's, let's hire people to to knock out this one little thing that's a barrier for our patients, our clients, our staff. And then once you did that one thing, you said, oh my gosh, I mean, this is like, let's do another one. And it's literally like an addiction because you realize there are so many problems that if you combine technology with the right intent, the right people, and the right culture, You can overcome a lot of barriers that people have with healthcare.

Yeah.

But it's, you, you have to combine, you can't just write code and, and that's gonna solve the problem. You have to combine that with people who are motivated, who want better things for themselves, for their clients, for their company, and then start solving one problem or another. And then before you know it, you're a healthcare technology company. If—

One day and realized the feather that dropped on the boulder became an avalanche, right? We kind of roll downhill into new things. Are you happy with where you are and where you're going? Are you excited about it? Is it fun for you?

Yeah, it is amazing, amazingly fun because there's really no limit. I mean, the limit is really your budget, right? I mean, how much you can spend and what have you, but there's really no limit to how dynamic you can become to help your clients, help your patients, help companies. And also we do things in places where other people are not doing things. So I don't feel like we're just another another person replicating what other people are doing. We try to, luckily we're in spaces that are pretty unique and no one has really deployed technology for preventative health, for drug testing, for some of the things we're doing. So it's exciting because you kind of feel like you're Lewis and Clark and you're going down the river and you're exploring and discovering.

And we're in new areas. Yeah. Which is cool. And man, you've changed some, I mean, we've hit some waterfalls and some rough rapids in the last 4 or 5 years, haven't we? How did that kind of shape and reshape some of the things you've been doing? It's so much of perception, actual perception, reality of medicine is sort of, at least from my viewpoint, I'm asking it from that direction. And maybe this, maybe not everybody listening to this agrees with me, but it certainly has reshaped kind of the way a lot of people consider personal health, the direction, health advisory, telemedicine has changed dramatically. How is that shaping and reshaping what you guys are doing now?

I mean, it's contributing, but luckily I'd like to think we were sort of heading in that direction. I always tell people that I mentor, a leader's main job is to know what's around the corner. Look, anyone can be put in the cockpit and see straight ahead, but your job is to, as quickly as possible, see what's around the corner so you prepare your company and your people and your group for changes that are coming. So I think change is always going to happen. If any— like, I doubt anyone really knows what's going to be around the corner in 3 or 4 years, but I can promise you the people who are super adaptable are the ones that are going to thrive. For example, when COVID hit, in many ways we were a COVID company before COVID hit with our technology at e7 Health, for example. And so for us, it wasn't as big of a pivot as other So it's, it's this idea of not only being happy where you are, but realizing where you need to be and also what's around the corner so you can adapt.

Very much so. Very much so. I was just thinking about this as you said that, because change and pivoting is a, is an integral part of any business. If somebody had looked at me and said, hey, Neil, when you left 2007 at IBM, did you know where you were gonna be and what you were doing exactly right now? I'd be like, no, not even clear. I could tell you the 20 times that I pivoted in the last 17 years to get where I'm at. And it's a very good analogy because as the leader, the ship, the captain, if you will. Our goal is to try to be out in the vision role and out ahead, like you just said, looking for the icebergs that are out there and doing our best to try to avoid those or to take opportunities whenever they really come, which is difficult. Not everybody quite has that visionary, I don't think. What is your interpretation? Can people get trained to become that person, or is there just an instinctual inheritable?

No, that, in fact, honestly, again, we're going back to what I teach. Is being, having these skill sets as a leader is not a soft skill. Now people think I'm a nice guy, people like me, I get along with people, so of course I'd be a great leader. Nothing could be further from the truth.

No, I've met you. I, I know that's not true. No, I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding.

Well, but, but you know what?

Yeah.

You do need, you do need to have those to be a great leader.

True.

But, but if that's all you have, yeah, you'll burn. Yeah, because so, so, so if you view being a leader like flying a plane, right? You wouldn't, you wouldn't try to land a plane from 30,000 feet because you've got a great personality and people like you.

So true.

That's not good. That's not gonna be enough to land the plane. So what you need is actual technical skills. Look, how do you talk to people? How do you mentor people? How do you negotiate? How do you fire, hire? How do you promote? How do you enroll people into your vision? These are not instinctual because no, If you haven't acquired those skill sets, if you haven't had someone mentor you or had the experiences at a lower level, it's not going to work at a higher level if you don't know how to do that stuff.

Yeah, that's hard to train into people. I know that for a fact. You've really got to find those people who are willing. And I love the plane analogy because if you're flying the plane, usually if I get on a plane, I don't question who's in the cockpit. I just get on the plane, I check my ticket, I sit down and I expect That the plane is going to take off and land in this destination, number one, without any trouble, or that if we run into trouble, the plane will be taken care of because who's looking out the window and watching where we're going or dealing with the issues? And then we're going to land safely and hopefully on time, and I'll make my connection. Business is so much like that, isn't it? I mean, we need the people who are willing to get on and then know how to operate the doors and do things and train. You've got to find really the right people no matter what technology said at the end of the day. And I would say to some definable nature, and you can re-clarify this, you found some great people willing to get on your plane that you were piloting and just jump on board and fit into certain roles, right?

It's not, yeah, it's not just a matter of even finding the right people, which is very important, but then what do you do when you've got the right people? Are you there for them? Do they feel, first of all, do they have respect for you? Do you have respect for them? Do they trust you? Do you trust them? Do you treat them the right way?

Yeah.

And Do you enroll them into your vision? Not everyone joins a company and all of a sudden is 100% on board.

No.

There's a process of sharing your vision with them, sharing their upside, that if they execute, this is what's in store for them. You can't just assume you picked the right person. You have to mentor, foster, help grow a lot of those relationships.

So true. As that leader in your business now, how much are you involved now or feel you should be involved or are actually involved in, say, the marketing operations? and oversight. How much do you continue to hang onto some of that, or how much have you now evolved into more on-the-business as opposed to in-the-business roles?

Yeah, that's a great question. I'm not involved in the sense that you want to be in the trenches doing it. However, you want all those people to report to you and you want to be there for them to support them. So in other words, you don't want to micro— I have a whole I have a podcast, Don't Micromanage, Micro-Mentor. So instead of micromanaging all those departments and say, wait, wait, wait, wait, what happened in marketing yesterday? You have to mentor those leaders in the marketing department so they make the decisions you would've made had you been like in the trenches. In other words, the philosophy, the strategy, the place where we want to go, where do we want to be? You can't not instill that into the leaders of all those departments.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you, but then you can then pull away and work on your business, but you have to first invest in those leaders so they have the tools and they make the, this, the right decisions without you having to look over their shoulder.

As you pull those people together and you kind of visionary your way through e7 Health, where, where do you see it going this year and what are some of the major like problems you guys are solving in the space of telehealth and? And providing healthcare and tracking as well as, well, everything e7 does. You can give us a rundown. I don't need to tell you what it does. Yeah.

So yeah, our tech— our technology literally runs the whole operation in terms of practice management, the portal for patients, for, for our clients. We have corporate clients. So we give everyone access to all their data. So the way analogy I kind of use is Our software for all our companies, eNational Testing, US Drug Test Centers, e7, is we make it Amazon-esque, right? So if you want to order something on Amazon, 3 clicks and you have your widget. If you want to know what you ordered on Amazon a year ago, you don't call Amazon, right? Say, hey, what did I order from you guys? You, 3 clicks and you're, you have access to what you ordered a year ago. So I would say if there's any running theme among all our software development is to really give people access to what they need, not only the clients, the patients, but even our staff. In other words, what can we do to reduce friction so even our staff is spending time on things that matter to them?

Yeah.

Face-to-face contact with the clients, the patients, the vendors, rather than doing busy work. So anytime you can help technology reduce friction and help people get what they want easier. And look at Amazon. That's really why, why does everyone go to Amazon to order something if they really need it?

Yeah.

It's because they know it's the minimal friction. I mean, I could go to any other website, but there'll probably be more friction. I think what I've learned from doing it and from seeing the results is every time we make Even my staff's life easier. Something auto-populates so they don't have to put it in. Something automatically gets pushed somewhere. Something that really required someone to scan something, to— it took 15 minutes to find something. When you can use technology to get that problem to go away, that all of a sudden frees up that person to spend 15 minutes on something that's productive, that, that actually is material that will help people, that will grow the company, that will grow clients. So it's, it has an effect on just bringing people closer to spending time on things that really matter.

Yeah. No, and that's good. It's, you found a need and you filled it and you took the risk and the development capital to go out and build something. And I assume you were the first man on the beach when it came to selling it to the practices and, and getting the word out.

Yeah, I mean, we luckily in all the businesses, we have lots of clients at US Ark Tenders. We have over 3,000 clients. And our goal was that the product would really sell itself because once you take brain damage or pain away from people, that's the best marketing, right? I mean, the best marketing is—

Solution.

Yeah, we have a solution for you. And this is interesting. What's one of the reasons we rarely ever lose a client? One, because we have great staff, great customer service, all the good things. But at the end of the day, most people are like, where are they going to go? Because who wants to go back to Excel spreadsheets and this and that? Right.

Or just very difficult. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And I love that because we sell on Amazon and I love your analogy because we are delivering products through a mechanism that people trust in 3 clicks and it's easy for us to get those products moving and it's a great last mile to the customer and they help us out in that way. And I love your analogy because it really borrows in the same idea and concept of goal of frictionless business as much as possible to the degree the products can sort of sell themselves. And so we talk a lot about the problem, reaction, and solution of products, whether it's a physical or digital or other product. You've obviously got a lot of problems that you didn't create, but the world needs solutions and everybody's reacting to terrible things and good things and healthy things and non-healthy things. And it sets you up to provide a solution, which is pretty cool. And I love your ingenuity and your innovation and what you guys are creating. Where, where does that leave you next? Where do you envision— now put your visionary hat on for a second. I'm going to ask you, what's your 5-year plan for this business? Is it to get to 6,000 clients? Is it, are you getting towards a retirement? Are you looking for an exit? Where do you, where do you envision yourself going with this?

Well, actually, for a lot of the technology we've developed, especially for US drug test centers, for example, our goal is to really build a platform that even our competitors could come on. So in other words, we have such great technology for our company that we're actually converting it into a platform so other companies can use, meaning our competitors could literally, so it's a separate business in the sense that, so, so in other words, I think we've made so much progress in the technology front that it services our company, but there's another level where it could literally be a platform literally for our competitors. Which would, you know, which we're fine with. In other words—

Corner the market.

Yeah. So, because we want, we think this is such a great solution that we think it could benefit a lot of other companies.

I love it. So is the endgame then potential exit? Is it a, you have acquisition and strategy acquisitions in mind, or are you just gonna run it until you run it and just see what happens?

Well, I mean, I think, I think in terms of exiting, I mean, we don't wanna look at that until we build this platform and see how much traction we get with it.

Got it.

Because that's just a different company now. I mean, in other words, exiting from this company is one thing, but if it becomes a platform, then that's a whole different thing to exit from. So we can't exit from it because we're not there. But if we get the platform and see how much traction that gets, That's a separate entity in essence. And we're not there yet. So it's hard to, it'd be premature to talk about how we're gonna get out of it when we haven't gotten to that point. So I'm not trying to—

You got your stepping stones in mind that would lead to those changes in the future.

Yeah.

Yeah. I'm excited to see how much traction we get with the platform in the next year or 2. And then we can like pull back and say, okay, now that we got this, where do we go from here?

Yeah. So on the entrepreneurial business side, obviously having experience in coaching and mentoring some people, if someone's listening to this today, what would be your words of wisdom to them if they're listening and they're thinking and they're maybe acting or in the process of acting or wondering if there's an idea they should take advantage of? What could you give them today that they could take away and glean from this?

Well, in short, I would just say some of the skills you need to be an entrepreneur, to start a business, are not soft skills. You need to actually Go get them, like playing a violin or a piano or flying a plane, whether how they choose to get it, whether they mentor under somebody. We have Crash CEO School on my podcast, the other venues where you can acquire these skill sets. But if you first recognize that playing a piano, you're going to need an instructor, you're going to need lessons. That's the first step. If you think playing a piano is just a soft skill where you just You know, you go in a room with a violin for a week and somehow you're gonna come out playing the violin. It's not gonna happen.

Yeah.

Most people recognize that.

Yeah.

Same thing with being a leader and entrepreneur. Go get the skill sets and then you'll, you'll understand that it's, it's not soft. You have to acquire it and then deploy it. So I would say the best advice I could give is go and if you're starting out, go and get the skill sets and acquire them and then Do your ventures.

Fantastic words of wisdom. I appreciate you so much for joining me. Any place, guys, go to e7health.com. The links in the show notes will be below. Yeah. Social media. Check that out.

Yeah. baktari md.com, our YouTube channel, podcasts on all the platforms. Yeah. That's a great place to start. We're on LinkedIn everywhere.

Please go check that all out, folks, in the show notes. Like I said, like, comment, engage, help us get some word out there. If you don't know what Grand Canyon-sized gap to jump in e-commerce might be, go check out the Almost Automated Income with FBA. The ebook is on our website and Amazon. I encourage you, if you're wondering what to do and need some help, go check it out. Obviously check out the show notes. Thank you so much for joining me on the show today and offering some words of wisdom and some insight. I appreciate your time today.

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