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TRANSCRIPTION WITH SPEAKERS
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[00:00] SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Canada's podcast.
[00:05] SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody, I'm Phil Bliss, Founder and CEO of Canada's podcast,
[00:09] SPEAKER_03: coming to you today from Toronto.
[00:12] SPEAKER_03: Today we're going to meet Perea Somadi,
[00:15] SPEAKER_03: who's a healthcare professional within a accomplished background in healthcare technology.
[00:20] SPEAKER_03: He's a health informatics and analytics professional that has become an entrepreneur.
[00:25] SPEAKER_03: Perea is co-founder and CEO at MedB health,
[00:29] SPEAKER_03: where they are building the operating system for pharmacies of the future,
[00:34] SPEAKER_03: shifting to days dispensaries to tomorrow's community healthcare hubs.
[00:39] SPEAKER_03: Pharmacies are in the community.
[00:41] SPEAKER_03: 90% of North Americans live within five miles of a pharmacy,
[00:45] SPEAKER_03: and primary care is in crisis with chronic diseases on the increase.
[00:52] SPEAKER_03: That's why MedB was started.
[00:56] SPEAKER_03: Today, the already Canada's leading clinical services platform for pharmacies.
[01:02] SPEAKER_03: So, Perea, welcome to Canada's podcast.
[01:04] SPEAKER_03: It's great having you here.
[01:07] SPEAKER_03: Nice meeting you at Collision,
[01:10] SPEAKER_03: and it was a busy few days.
[01:14] SPEAKER_03: So, right away, let's get on to your story.
[01:19] SPEAKER_03: Before we get to D,
[01:22] SPEAKER_03: tell us a little bit about yourself,
[01:24] SPEAKER_03: what you're doing now,
[01:26] SPEAKER_03: and how you got here basically.
[01:28] SPEAKER_03: I think I've looked at your background and think it's very interesting.
[01:35] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, pleasure.
[01:38] SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for having me.
[01:41] SPEAKER_01: And yes, I'll tell you a little bit about my own background,
[01:44] SPEAKER_01: and what we're doing at MedB.
[01:47] SPEAKER_01: And we're at now, and what we're going.
[01:51] SPEAKER_01: So, my story kind of starts early as a child.
[01:58] SPEAKER_01: I always wanted to be in healthcare in my career.
[02:03] SPEAKER_01: And that's cheaply because of when I was very young,
[02:07] SPEAKER_01: and we were new to the country,
[02:09] SPEAKER_01: and my mom actually suffered from a number of heart complications,
[02:17] SPEAKER_01: which led her to require open heart surgery
[02:20] SPEAKER_01: and replace one of the valves in her heart,
[02:24] SPEAKER_01: ultimately, through some complicated surgery.
[02:26] SPEAKER_01: And she's away from my family for about a year in and out of surgery
[02:31] SPEAKER_01: and in her hospital.
[02:33] SPEAKER_01: And I remember as a mate,
[02:34] SPEAKER_01: an eight-year-old meeting her heart surgeon,
[02:38] SPEAKER_01: the great man named Dr. Tyrone David,
[02:41] SPEAKER_01: and he operated out of Peter Mike Party Act Center.
[02:46] SPEAKER_01: And he...
[02:47] SPEAKER_01: I remember in meeting him,
[02:49] SPEAKER_01: just being a little awestruck by the effect that he was having.
[02:55] SPEAKER_01: The effect that he was having not only on my mother in saving her life
[03:16] SPEAKER_01: but moreover,
[03:19] SPEAKER_01: the rippling effect of that on the people that relied on her.
[03:24] SPEAKER_01: And so at that time, I really thought,
[03:26] SPEAKER_01: you know, what a way to live a life
[03:29] SPEAKER_01: is to make impact on her life.
[03:29] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[03:29] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[03:29] Speaker UNKNOWN:
[03:31] SPEAKER_01: And so I really wanted to be a third genie growing up, actually.
[03:36] SPEAKER_01: But once I got to university age,
[03:41] SPEAKER_01: at that point, I started learning more about what the journey to medical school would be like.
[03:49] SPEAKER_01: And I also don't have the steadiest of hands
[03:53] SPEAKER_01: and I started learning that I could become an adult.
[03:56] SPEAKER_01: And so I realized around that time
[04:00] SPEAKER_01: that well,
[04:02] SPEAKER_01: due to the steadiness of my hand,
[04:04] SPEAKER_01: and in talking to some of my cousins who were already physicians,
[04:07] SPEAKER_01: that journey might be more difficult than I thought,
[04:10] SPEAKER_01: to specifically become a surgeon,
[04:12] SPEAKER_01: and I figured if I didn't,
[04:13] SPEAKER_01: if I wasn't going to become a surgeon,
[04:15] SPEAKER_01: did I want to become a patient-facing physician
[04:19] SPEAKER_01: to make that sort of impact?
[04:21] SPEAKER_01: And I, in that time,
[04:26] SPEAKER_01: also had a lot of interest in computer science.
[04:29] SPEAKER_01: So I was doing a lot of computer science
[04:31] SPEAKER_01: and the work of technology as well.
[04:35] SPEAKER_01: And my undergrad within medical sciences,
[04:38] SPEAKER_01: I was taking a number of computer science courses,
[04:40] SPEAKER_01: and ultimately that kind of propelled me
[04:43] SPEAKER_01: to take an internship at a pharma company,
[04:47] SPEAKER_01: where I did a number of technology projects,
[04:50] SPEAKER_01: and then going back to school,
[04:51] SPEAKER_01: I realized, okay, I'm going to kind of take this on a little further,
[04:54] SPEAKER_01: and that prompted me to apply for my NASA's degree,
[04:58] SPEAKER_01: which is Health Informatics at the University of Toronto.
[05:02] SPEAKER_01: And, you know, throughout my career thereafter,
[05:05] SPEAKER_01: you know, I had the opportunity to work in hospital innovation,
[05:09] SPEAKER_01: I won the hospital networks in the GPA.
[05:12] SPEAKER_01: I worked in app development at the Center for Global E-HELP
[05:17] SPEAKER_01: at the time in UHN,
[05:18] SPEAKER_01: and then I worked as management consultant,
[05:22] SPEAKER_01: largely for data analytics and strategy,
[05:25] SPEAKER_01: specifically on healthcare project.
[05:28] SPEAKER_01: And after my consulting career,
[05:30] SPEAKER_01: I worked directly to the government,
[05:33] SPEAKER_01: particularly working with surgical data
[05:35] SPEAKER_01: for the Providence High Mod and Period,
[05:37] SPEAKER_01: wait times inefficiency,
[05:39] SPEAKER_01: and that also gave me time to start IDating
[05:42] SPEAKER_01: through ideas back at my alma mater.
[05:45] SPEAKER_01: So I went back to an incubator at U of T,
[05:48] SPEAKER_01: and in the evenings I was kind of thinking through ideas.
[05:50] SPEAKER_01: And as I was thinking through ideas around 2018,
[05:54] SPEAKER_01: I started noticing some things about this market,
[05:58] SPEAKER_01: this pharmacy market.
[05:59] SPEAKER_01: There was an interesting observation that I had,
[06:04] SPEAKER_01: where at that time the market cap of RIDAD
[06:07] SPEAKER_01: was the same as the venture valuation
[06:09] SPEAKER_01: for a direct-to-consumer pharmacy brand known as HMSN Hurst,
[06:13] SPEAKER_01: where they were doing direct-to-consumer drug delivery
[06:19] SPEAKER_01: for kind of taboo issues like a hair loss
[06:22] SPEAKER_01: or I tell the tongue in this kind of thing.
[06:24] SPEAKER_01: So it was very confusing to me,
[06:28] SPEAKER_01: because everything I knew about healthcare for that time,
[06:31] SPEAKER_01: I couldn't quite wrap my head around why it was basically a concept
[06:34] SPEAKER_01: that was age-old male-order pharmacy
[06:36] SPEAKER_01: with now just an app,
[06:38] SPEAKER_01: and a tremendous amount of marketing dollars
[06:41] SPEAKER_01: was worth the fame as a very large brick-and-mortar pharmacy
[06:44] SPEAKER_01: present which brick-and-mortar and healthcare is quite hard to scale.
[06:47] SPEAKER_01: And you can kind of see that with some of the big tech or retail players,
[06:53] SPEAKER_01: especially in the States having tried some brick-and-mortar plays
[06:56] SPEAKER_01: and some working, some not working as well.
[06:59] SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, that kind of all that culminated into a,
[07:04] SPEAKER_01: into this realization that,
[07:06] SPEAKER_01: hey, there's an access to care issue,
[07:09] SPEAKER_01: pharmacies are in the community already,
[07:12] SPEAKER_01: 95% of North American brick-and-mortar and 5% of the pharmacy.
[07:16] SPEAKER_01: Pharmacists are now trained in their new doctorate to do more clinical things,
[07:21] SPEAKER_01: and there is this trend toward needing more,
[07:26] SPEAKER_01: kind of accessible points of care
[07:28] SPEAKER_01: that don't necessarily involve a position at the first point of care.
[07:32] SPEAKER_01: And so I asked myself,
[07:35] SPEAKER_01: you know, why, what's stopping these pharmacy locations
[07:37] SPEAKER_01: from being more like these healthcare hubs that could be first access,
[07:40] SPEAKER_01: access points for healthcare in the community?
[07:42] SPEAKER_01: And it turned out to be largely a workflow software and physical space issue.
[07:47] SPEAKER_01: Everything had been optimized over a number of decades
[07:50] SPEAKER_01: toward retail drug dispensing
[07:51] SPEAKER_01: and not this kind of care model that was emerging
[07:56] SPEAKER_01: and moreover how these healthcare hubs could interact with the modern patient journey.
[08:03] SPEAKER_01: A patient journey that's increasingly becoming more consumer driven,
[08:07] SPEAKER_01: folks are looking for more personalized care,
[08:10] SPEAKER_01: folks are willing to spend money on things like, you know,
[08:14] SPEAKER_01: personal scans or personal diagnostic testing,
[08:17] SPEAKER_01: but strangely, they're willing to spend that money,
[08:21] SPEAKER_01: but they are less with the results and having to interpret it themselves.
[08:27] SPEAKER_01: And when interpreting it themselves, they're often,
[08:30] SPEAKER_01: this is kind of meaningless to many folks,
[08:33] SPEAKER_01: even though they have that will to want to invest in their own health and no more about it.
[08:39] SPEAKER_01: And all of this together kind of culminated in me thinking about will pharmacies are there,
[08:45] SPEAKER_01: they're trained, they're willing to maybe look at your A1C levels
[08:49] SPEAKER_01: at a frequency that maybe a physician might not as frequently be able to look at your A1C levels.
[08:55] SPEAKER_01: And you know, here's an opportunity for us to kind of empower these pharmacies
[09:00] SPEAKER_01: at these healthcare hub locations to interface with the modern patient journey
[09:05] SPEAKER_01: at a time when primary care is in a crisis and kind of diseases increasing.
[09:11] SPEAKER_01: And so that's kind of why we started medme and today,
[09:14] SPEAKER_01: that's where today we are Canada's leading clinical services platform for pharmacies.
[09:20] SPEAKER_01: We've been used by about 4,000 pharmacies across the country.
[09:25] SPEAKER_01: We've served over 25 million patient interacting through our platform
[09:30] SPEAKER_01: and we were kind of also instrumental in the nation's COVID response through pharmacies.
[09:36] SPEAKER_01: And now in a post-COVID period, we're really now leaning into new model of care
[09:42] SPEAKER_01: beyond this pandemic option of care.
[09:43] SPEAKER_01: I think what personalized care or chronic care and empowering more in-depth healthcare services
[09:50] SPEAKER_01: at these healthcare hubs across the country.
[09:54] SPEAKER_01: And yeah, we're really excited to now be looking beyond Canada's borders as well.
[10:00] SPEAKER_01: As you know, this is in just the Canadian problem.
[10:03] SPEAKER_01: It's a problem across many countries in the world.
[10:07] SPEAKER_00: Canada's podcast is your gateway to success in the world of entrepreneurship.
[10:12] SPEAKER_00: Start listening today.
[10:14] SPEAKER_00: Canada'spodcast.com subscribe now.
[10:16] SPEAKER_03: What drove you to entrepreneurship?
[10:21] SPEAKER_03: You know, you had a perfectly good career.
[10:24] SPEAKER_03: It was going very nicely.
[10:27] SPEAKER_03: You know, why you know, step off the edge if you like and take the risk?
[10:35] SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think for me, it was.
[10:42] SPEAKER_01: I think back to something I learned early on in my entrepreneurial career,
[10:50] SPEAKER_01: a very influential guy in my past,
[10:54] SPEAKER_01: he's a successful entrepreneur and Canadian.
[10:59] SPEAKER_01: And he says, there's two types of entrepreneurs.
[11:02] SPEAKER_01: There's impact driven entrepreneurs and there's opportunity driven on truth.
[11:05] SPEAKER_01: And I was largely the former getting started.
[11:09] SPEAKER_01: I was dead set on making this impact at a large scale.
[11:14] SPEAKER_01: And so even as a consultant when I had discussions around my professional development plan,
[11:18] SPEAKER_01: I said, I wanted to start a digital health company.
[11:21] SPEAKER_01: I didn't know in what.
[11:22] SPEAKER_01: I didn't know in what, but I knew that I wanted to make a large scale impact with technology at a healthcare level.
[11:30] SPEAKER_01: And the second part, the opportunity part kind of came through this research,
[11:35] SPEAKER_01: just kind of putting the time in.
[11:37] SPEAKER_01: You know, once I started working with the government,
[11:39] SPEAKER_01: I used to study using my evenings or that exploration of saying, hey, what's out there?
[11:43] SPEAKER_01: What is the potential opportunity where this impact can be made?
[11:48] SPEAKER_01: And there's a business opportunity.
[11:49] SPEAKER_01: And along that, that kind of made me stumble into this entrepreneurial path.
[11:54] SPEAKER_01: And I was lucky enough to, in my last year of eligibility, be accepted through the next 36th.
[12:01] SPEAKER_01: And the next 36th was a program that almost gave me a platform to put my job and fully commit to this endeavor.
[12:11] SPEAKER_01: And as a result of that, also through the next 36th, I met my co-founder Nick.
[12:15] SPEAKER_01: And he was also one of the next 36 cohort members.
[12:20] SPEAKER_01: And we kind of linked up during the program and we started working on this together in the summer of 2019.
[12:27] SPEAKER_02: So, you know, here you are, you know, start up already, you know, built a good Canadian presence.
[12:39] SPEAKER_02: Do you have any kind of thoughts to offer on, you know, stepping outside of Canada?
[12:48] SPEAKER_03: You know, you've talked about into that, you know, obviously, US, but more global market.
[12:57] SPEAKER_03: Because you're right at that point, I think, you know, being interested to know, you know, where your mind's at on that.
[13:05] SPEAKER_01: Yeah. So I think there's a few aspects to this.
[13:08] SPEAKER_01: One is we're lucky in Canada to have, so she brought my healthcare perspective.
[13:15] SPEAKER_01: This contained this contained market that in some ways is ahead of other healthcare systems in terms of what what folks are able to do.
[13:26] SPEAKER_01: And the needs of the needs of the population and how we're able to meet it.
[13:31] SPEAKER_01: Now, I know that's it's not a perfect science, you know, there's ups and downs in that in having a single pair of healthcare system.
[13:40] SPEAKER_01: And particularly our healthcare model in Canada has its own challenges.
[13:45] SPEAKER_01: But we were able to learn a lot in the, in kind of the initial period in working within this market and serving it.
[13:53] SPEAKER_01: And as it pertains to our product, the workflow challenges in pharmacy to make this transformation towards more of a healthcare hub are similar, at least for the end user, at least for the pharmacist.
[14:06] SPEAKER_01: And even by, by extension in some regards the patient.
[14:11] SPEAKER_01: But there's obviously some differences of the comes to reimbursement model.
[14:16] SPEAKER_01: You know, the share of care between physicians or the pharmacy or other allied health.
[14:24] SPEAKER_01: And so it's taking into account these nuances and proceeding with a learning mind into the new market, knowing what we know from what we've been able to achieve in Canada.
[14:36] SPEAKER_01: And you know, taking that and having it with us when we go into these new market, but not be imposing about our learning, but rather be open to learning about what we don't know maybe about these markets and the needs of those market.
[14:49] SPEAKER_01: And really trying to find some early, early partners who will almost work with us to tell us their needs, the ones that are already kind of pushing forward and trying to do more of these kind of services and healthcare services through their pharmacy.
[15:06] SPEAKER_01: And those folks that are already trying to push on forward, those are the folks you know we want to talk to, we want to work with.
[15:12] SPEAKER_01: We want to see how our platform can help them today, but also how our platform can evolve in kind of serving the use case as they go through that evolution.
[15:20] SPEAKER_01: And that's how we can know that hey, you know, if they're evolving in this direction and they're happy with our platform and empowering that transformation.
[15:27] SPEAKER_01: Then we have something that can power that transformation at a larger scale after we're in those kind of early early days of almost co developing.
[15:39] SPEAKER_01: And you know, you can think about that in our earliest days as a company in Canada, we started in Alberta and the reason for that is Alberta.
[15:48] SPEAKER_01: And we had already a very kind of evolved scope of practice for pharmacists.
[15:53] SPEAKER_01: And so when we started to look for those early pharmacies that would use our platform in the earliest days of the platform, we kind of use that model and we're kind of repeating that now going into a new market like the US in some specific states where where the primary care shortage is more pronounced and pharmacists are being relied on more.
[16:12] SPEAKER_01: And that's the problem in this direction.
[16:15] SPEAKER_03: Let's move on to some challenges.
[16:17] SPEAKER_03: You know, what would you say is the greatest challenge you've faced in the business today?
[16:24] SPEAKER_02: Well, this is a good question. I think the greatest challenge.
[16:28] SPEAKER_01: And this might be a very common answer for most for many.
[16:33] SPEAKER_01: Nothing wrong with that.
[16:36] SPEAKER_01: I think one of the biggest challenges that you face in healthcare is interoperability.
[16:41] SPEAKER_01: And it's this idea that, you know, clinicians aren't necessarily.
[16:47] SPEAKER_01: They're not technologists necessarily.
[16:50] SPEAKER_01: So they don't want to have to use all this different technology to do.
[16:54] SPEAKER_01: What they're best at, which is patient care, you know, diagnosis and treatment.
[16:59] SPEAKER_01: They don't want to have to use seven different software, eight different software.
[17:05] SPEAKER_01: But in healthcare, the challenge always is that there's a lack of interoperability between software systems.
[17:11] SPEAKER_01: And so one of the challenges that we face even as a new class of software in our space is how do we make it additive as a software platform rather than another software platform.
[17:27] SPEAKER_01: You just have to take on to that kind of contributes to you having to kind of what we, the term we like to call is swivel chair.
[17:37] SPEAKER_01: So folks having to swivel chair between software systems almost add to the administrative pain of wanting to do more in a clinical setting.
[17:45] SPEAKER_01: And so that's a challenge because you know, as a new part of software, we also then become part of that ecosystem.
[17:52] SPEAKER_01: And we also have challenges to kind of mitigate that effect of swivel chair.
[17:56] SPEAKER_01: I'm to integrate with new systems, establish systems or new emerging systems to make it so that our software is additive to the workflow of the condition as opposed to taking away from it.
[18:08] SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, more on the personal side.
[18:12] SPEAKER_03: When you're sort of building in your face with unexpected challenge.
[18:19] SPEAKER_02: How do you handle them? How do you get around the wall to the other side of the show?
[18:27] SPEAKER_02: So in the beginning, it was largely very personal.
[18:34] SPEAKER_01: And the reason is because you know, you alluded to earlier, like I was on this career path and in taking that leap of faith, I think 26 years old.
[18:44] SPEAKER_01: I hadn't necessarily created the financial grounding for myself that I would have wanted by that stage to kind of take a leap of faith and no income and just kind of go all in on an entrepreneurial effort that wasn't sure that it was just an opportunity that I saw that it was something there and now's the time to take that leap of faith.
[19:03] SPEAKER_01: So that point it was kind of like.
[19:06] SPEAKER_01: Basically, it was my only opportunity to make it work.
[19:10] SPEAKER_01: And but as I've gone through the journey with with my team, I think when we, when we look beyond where we're at now and we aspire to grow further in our journey.
[19:24] SPEAKER_01: To new to news stages as a unit, we think about all the things that we've done in the past, all the hurdles we've gone gone beyond and all the unlikely scenarios that we were able to kind of get ourselves out of.
[19:38] SPEAKER_01: And oftentimes when we look forward, the uncertainty faces us less.
[19:45] SPEAKER_01: Obviously, it's much more considerable. We do a lot of more deep thinking about it. But in terms of our confidence in moving forward despite the unknown, we look back at what we've done and we can say, hey, if we were able to overcome those things in the past, we should be able to overcome whatever comes our way.
[20:04] SPEAKER_01: And when I lived in a temperate, this go for a short time after we did white combinator, I always remember that it was me on fine.
[20:14] SPEAKER_01: I was drive by on my way home and it would say we've done so much with so little for so long that now we could do anything with nothing.
[20:23] SPEAKER_01: I think that kind of perfectly chapters how we think about that.
[20:26] SPEAKER_03: I like that.
[20:27] SPEAKER_03: Yeah, like I think that that's something I might have driven past that one as well.
[20:35] SPEAKER_01: Absolutely. I think I think it really captures, you know, how we think about this is that, yeah, like if we want to do what's in our mind, what our North Star is and make this systemic healthcare impact on millions of lives internationally, the only way we're going to do that is to look back on our past successes and the past tribulations that we've overcome.
[20:55] SPEAKER_01: And be confident that you know what whatever is in this path for us on this journey towards a destination that we're aiming for.
[21:03] SPEAKER_01: We're ready and we're equipped to kind of overcome it. And that's how we think about it.
[21:09] SPEAKER_03: So, you know, we talked a little bit about mentorship before and what's the best piece of advice you've ever received that you know, you keep in your back pocket there.
[21:23] SPEAKER_03: And it stays with you.
[21:27] SPEAKER_03: I mean, you know, or also just talk about how important mentorship has been to you in your life today kind of thing.
[21:38] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
[21:40] SPEAKER_01: So I think mentors come in different forms.
[21:42] SPEAKER_01: I mean, I've already kind of mentioned just that simple interaction with my mother's surgeon as a child.
[21:48] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
[21:49] SPEAKER_01: That single interaction has been still for this day has a huge impact on me.
[21:57] SPEAKER_01: And so I like to think about impact in that way.
[22:02] SPEAKER_01: You know, in life, you may interact with people once. You may interact with them multiple times.
[22:07] SPEAKER_01: You may have a long standing relationship with them and anything in between.
[22:10] SPEAKER_01: And how you make them feel and the things that you make them think, but the emotions and the thoughts that you list it within them.
[22:16] SPEAKER_01: That in itself is a huge form of mentorship.
[22:20] SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I give the example of the surgeon, but I also gave that example of that.
[22:27] SPEAKER_01: That well respected entrepreneur, you know, he is one of the founders of next Canada.
[22:31] SPEAKER_01: I think raised that to you.
[22:33] SPEAKER_01: And not only did he kind of give me that comment of the impact and opportunity driven entrepreneurship, but one other thing that really sticks with me is.
[22:41] SPEAKER_01: He always says that entrepreneurship is the relentless pursuit of opportunity without regards for resources currently held.
[22:49] SPEAKER_01: And when he says research is that means anything. It means people and means network and means money and time.
[22:55] SPEAKER_01: It means know how that is what entrepreneurship is.
[22:58] SPEAKER_01: And you have to believe that that's what it's all about.
[23:01] SPEAKER_01: To take on large media challenges and believe that as a startup, you're going to change reality.
[23:10] SPEAKER_01: You're going to change the reality that's already dictated by incumbents by current regulation by the state of things as it is.
[23:19] SPEAKER_01: And you have to believe that as a startup, you're going to be able to influence it despite your lack of resources, time, et cetera, et cetera.
[23:28] SPEAKER_01: So I think that that piece of advice is always in the back of our heads.
[23:32] SPEAKER_01: And we were lucky enough to be part of the next 36 programs to to burn are these types of insights from mentors like Ray, the and the many other great.
[23:41] SPEAKER_01: Ray folks that are that are there at next and that kind of set us off on our on our path and through the next network.
[23:47] SPEAKER_01: You know, we were really lucky to meet a number of mentors, not only advisors, but also more.
[23:51] SPEAKER_01: More senior entrepreneurs who kind of been through the program themselves.
[23:56] SPEAKER_01: And then again, that propelled into, you know, we did like a combinator and again, we were exposed to kind of new types of mentors.
[24:03] SPEAKER_01: And now at this stage in my career and lucky to not only have mentors that are more seasoned entrepreneurs than I am and learn from them and also be friends with them and be able to talk about things both on a professional level, but also on a personal level and the experiences that we think.
[24:21] SPEAKER_01: And then I think that that is the way it's the similarities and taking from each other's learnings.
[24:25] SPEAKER_01: But I'm also lucky enough to be at a place where I can be a mentor and I try to be a mentor by, you know, judging things like, you know, things like hack the North or.
[24:37] SPEAKER_01: You know, I was lucky to judge some really bright folks with a moonshot project in the knowledge society in Toronto earlier this summer.
[24:47] SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, I'm lucky to be able to give mentorship as well and that in itself is is is a.
[24:54] SPEAKER_01: Is the teachable for me as well because there's an adult thing is the best way to learn something is to teach it.
[24:59] SPEAKER_01: And so when you're acting as a mentor, you really have to be thinking about, do I really believe this?
[25:05] SPEAKER_01: And sometimes you have to remind yourself of things that you've forgotten or you haven't revisited in a while and when you interact with earlier stage entrepreneurs, you almost think about.
[25:16] SPEAKER_01: Those moments when we were in our earliest stages and it reminds you of the things you shouldn't forget the realities that maybe you forget once you have a much larger client base and a much larger team.
[25:27] SPEAKER_01: And so it's almost like a full circle it's full circle this this cycle of mentorship.
[25:33] SPEAKER_01: I'm lucky to have had these great mentors throughout my career and continue to have them and now some of them become my friends, but.
[25:39] SPEAKER_01: I'm also lucky to be in a position where I can kind of before that mentorship to the next generation of entrepreneurs and.
[25:47] SPEAKER_01: And through doing that I get to kind of remind myself of the teachings that I'm going into to my journey so far.
[25:54] SPEAKER_00: Stay ahead of the game with our expert tips and strategies that will help your business thrive in a digital era.
[26:00] SPEAKER_00: Canada's podcast dot com subscribe now.
[26:03] SPEAKER_03: Let's go into two or three rapid fire questions before we conclude we're removing on our time there.
[26:10] SPEAKER_03: Good interview. What book are you currently reading listening to podcasts whatever that you would recommend to the to the audience.
[26:23] SPEAKER_01: So right now one book that I'm reading is scaling people like Claire shoes Johnson and it's a very practical.
[26:34] SPEAKER_01: Sort of guide to being effective leader and manager in a high growth environment.
[26:40] SPEAKER_01: Claire you know she she had a history as from a number of startups that are well known you know so she was a corporate officer advisor at strike.
[26:52] SPEAKER_01: And you know before her time at strike I believe she she also had roles I think in Google if I'm not mistaken.
[27:01] SPEAKER_01: Again and you know has a good track record as an angel investor but her teachings in this book are really really timely I think for the stage of company that we're out basically being able to learn from her experiences and a lot of tactical information that she puts in there.
[27:27] SPEAKER_01: That you can tell you know he's worked with founders and company builders to try to replicate their success and it's not only about business strategy but you know how do you scale operational structures and more importantly people systems when you're rapidly growing startup and you know for us.
[27:47] SPEAKER_01: That's very relevant because you know in the last year we've almost almost doubled in five so we just we just have 80 people at me and so I'm also kind of learning because at the first time founder it's my first final meeting of company over 50 people and so learning from a book like this has been tremendously helpful for me and I'm in the middle of reading it and it's been great some of those some of the extra perfect perfect timing for me.
[28:15] SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
[28:16] SPEAKER_02: No more fun he will morning or night person.
[28:22] SPEAKER_01: So I am historically a night person my most effective hours are actually in the evenings where and oftentimes even now when you're in a CEO role a lot of your day is still with meetings.
[28:41] SPEAKER_01: So it's the evening that I kind of had the time to kind of go through email and do my own kind of silent work and so that kind of remains to be the case for for myself but I have I have kind of question my own reality like I think sometimes you have your own.
[29:00] SPEAKER_01: He assumptions about yourself based on the history but as you look you kind of push your own boundaries and put boundaries of your company you also have to challenge yourself is like he's the thing that think about myself are those actually true and do they need to be true and so one thing I have started to do is wake up a lot earlier try to try to.
[29:22] SPEAKER_01: Kind of sleep sooner get more sleep and do something you know more productive during the day and so like during the start of the day as opposed to kind of.
[29:34] SPEAKER_01: Backloading everything in the evening and so you know I started my days some days waking up a lot earlier kind of going to the gym or going for a morning run just to kind of level set and have a mindfulness actifies that.
[29:49] SPEAKER_01: Especially when the weather so nice out here in Toronto the one thing we have is beautiful summer so kind of take advantage of that and it really does have a positive impact but it also constantly challenging yourself to re reimagine yourself as a person and so I'd like to say now that I'm a little bit of both and sometimes a nighttime person and sometimes a morning person whereas if you had asked me this maybe like five or six years ago I would have said I'm a night owl.
[30:17] SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
[30:19] SPEAKER_02: You had to pick one word to describe yourself what would it be and why would you choose that.
[30:29] SPEAKER_02: I think that it would be curious.
[30:35] SPEAKER_02: I think I always want to question do things need to be that the way that they are.
[30:40] SPEAKER_01: I think one of the lucky things that I think we're very well positioned to do as a company now is actually influence the reality of how healthcare access is thought of not only here in Canada but soon in new jurisdictions and I think that we want to create a new status quo.
[31:04] SPEAKER_01: We want to question the status quo and we want to be part of that new reality and even being a startup I think that's pretty somebody to that's really ambitious or you know that might be unlikely like how are you going to do that and you're not going to do it alone as an ecosystem.
[31:25] SPEAKER_01: There's different headwinds that go but the reason I define myself I curious is kind of the top is I always want to ask what if you know what if what if we do this differently what if things were this way and you know what can we do to nudge that forward nudge that forward and anything we can do to influence that I think in a positive direction is a great is the great thing that we can do and I think we can be very proud of the company that we can do.
[31:53] SPEAKER_01: We have been a big part of the transformation that's kind of now ongoing here in Canada and we're excited to do that kind of beyond our borders.
[32:03] SPEAKER_02: What's keeping you up at night?
[32:08] SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean, I think sometimes one thing that I think about once there's a time that I burnt out pretty bad a few years ago on this journey and I bring to
[32:28] SPEAKER_01: that I had this really big realization at the time that man if I'm not taking care of myself I'm not taking a care of Korea I was for you're going to take care of 50 plus employees and you know tens of thousands of end users and and all of our customers that we love working with so this was back in end of 2020 kind of early 2021 and it was kind of on the back of the way.
[32:58] SPEAKER_01: Like a lot of we don't a lot of work we just kind of finished we just kind of had finished my combinator I had kind of embarked on our our fundraise a lot of things that happened back to back and I was so a tunnel vision just working working working I didn't done anything for myself and I reached this kind of burnout point where I actually I took a week off and my co founders kind of helped things down for a week and I was like, I'm going to do a lot of things.
[33:28] SPEAKER_01: I came back for it and I promised myself I would never burn out like that again and so I wouldn't say this is like keeping me up at night in fact I try to make it something that's not giving me up at night but I do want to hold myself extremely accountable to never putting myself in a position to burn out like that and when it comes to burnout it's something that much burns out all the time but it's often too late the moment you identify it as burnout you're already you're already too late it's all about the prevention.
[33:59] SPEAKER_01: And so I try to really think about what are all the things that I can do to make sure I'm not my best that I can do my best in my accountability to the people that rely on me.
[34:10] SPEAKER_03: That's great. Well, being a very interesting session.
[34:14] SPEAKER_03: Thank you so much for coming coming on. Before we finish where can people get a hold of you online?
[34:21] SPEAKER_03: I'm actually listening to this one group one one connect.
[34:26] SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I am easily find you can easily find me on LinkedIn. So if you just put my name my LinkedIn handle is actually just my first name so PURYA.
[34:39] SPEAKER_01: So LinkedIn.com slash in slash praia will get you to my LinkedIn page and I'm happy to connect there.
[34:45] SPEAKER_01: And you can also find me elsewhere on on my email. So it's just praia at nemyhealth.com.
[34:57] SPEAKER_02: And so anybody can do me an email on my inbox and I'd be happy to interact.
[35:05] SPEAKER_02: Thanks very much. Great having you great having on canvas podcast.
[35:09] SPEAKER_02: Thank you very much. I really appreciate the opportunity and wish you all the very best. Thank you.
[35:17] SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
