Dr. Babak Azizzadeh

@0:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Hello everyone and welcome to The Shades of Entrepreneurship. This is your host, Mr. Gabriel Flores. Today I'm here with Dr Azizzadeh, really excited about this one because it falls in the healthcare world, which is where, as you guys know, this is kind of my area of expertise for the last 22 years.

@0:27 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Dr Azizzadeh from the Center for Advanced Research. It's plastic surgery in Beverly Hills. How are we doing? I'm doing great.

Thank you so much for having me.

@0:36 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I'm so excited to chat with you. No, this is going to be a good one because, you know, it's healthcare.

Healthcare is a different landscape right now. It's a competitive landscape that we'll get into. first, Dr Azizzadeh, please introduce yourself.

@0:51 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

us a little background education career journey. How did you get to this point today? Well, I'm a facial plastic surgeon in Los Angeles.

My practice is in Beverly I'm a clinical attending at Cedars-Sinaia and a faculty at UCLA. did my, most of my education at undergrad medical school.

I did a head and neck surgery residency at as well. And then I did official post-care and reconstructive surgery fellowship at Harvard and then came back to Los Angeles to set up my practice and get involved in all the wonderful things.

@1:29 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That I've had the opportunity to get involved with. I love it. Now, you have a very interesting background because you migrate to United States and then you started your entrepreneurial endeavor.

Talk about your transition, your story.

@1:43 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Yeah, so I was 10 when I moved to the United States. just like most immigrants didn't speak English, my parents working class trying to make ends meet.

You know, academics had always been important. Although I did not get into the academic world until I was well into high school, it was just really, really hard, I think, to just, you know, transition.

But, you know, in our families, this is, you know, one of the things that, you know, I talk about it was just like education education education.

And, you know, best public school was UCLA that we could afford. So we ended up, I ended up luckily getting into UCLA.

I never actually thought I had really business acumen, to be honest with you. I was never in that space.

I was surrounded by people who did, know, whose families were affluent and were in the business world. But I just thought I was going to go be a great doctor because I loved talking to patients.

I loved solving problems and so forth. And really, I would say the business, you know, think, And entrepreneurship really came in once I started my practice.

And so I never really thought that was going to be a world that I would have an enjoyment. And it's been really kind of more of my avocational process, which is really exciting because I've never been, you know, like, oh my God, if this business doesn't do well, I'm going to lose it all.

@3:26 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So that's kind of, it's been cool because it's been fun and it's been kind of like, you know, You know, you mentioned something because I think people may not know this, but most providers, even if you work for an academic medical center or a community hospital, you kind of act as an entrepreneur, right?

Your goal is to go and build up your patient panel. So can you talk to the folks kind of through how, what does the true role of a provider do outside of just clinical care, right?

does the role of a provider do?

@4:00 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Well, you're 100% right and this is I have a fellowship program and some of our fellows go on to become faculty members at academic institutions.

@4:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Some go into private practice.

@4:11 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

And basically what I tell them is like, look, you're running a team, right? Wherever you are, you are running a team.

You have a P&L, right? You have a profit and loss. The academic institution is going to have a cost center for you.

Your cost includes employees that are dedicated to you, the marketing that's dedicated to you. You have to be able to manage your team.

You got to get your team to excel and to be able to do what they need to do to make you successful.

You have to understand compliance. You have to understand HR laws. So all of that is running a business. And even though you're getting paid by the institution, if you're not profitable for the institution.

@4:59 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

They're true. I have a job.

@5:01 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

So it is like whether you're in private practice, academic, as a physician, you are a small business owner. And everything that's important for other small business owners is important to you.

So you have to keep your eyes and ears open about what's going on in the womb.

@5:20 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, it's very true. And that's kind of where the physician liaison folks were unaware. That's where my role kind of comes into play.

become the communication conduit between our specialists that are doing facial plastic surgery, which is a community provider who actually need that support that that don't do that care.

And so we build those relationships. we know now physicians are entrepreneurs.

@5:43 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Right. Absolutely.

@5:45 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

So now with that said, how should physicians work harder, work smart, harder, not harder when they're a solo practitioner?

@5:54 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Well, as a solo practitioner, I think the way, you know, we were talking about this with a few. The next five to ten years is going to be divided into really physicians who are employed by academic institutions, physicians who are employed by health maintenance organizations like Kaiser and so forth.

Physicians who are employed by community and public hospitals. And most physicians are going to be owned by private equity.

Otherwise, very few will fall into a fit amorphous category of private practice. Because private practice without institutional backing is going to be very, very difficult in ten years.

Because insurance reimbursements are going down. You're not going to have leverage with insurance payers to pay you a fair market value for your services.

So you either have to develop what I call a mill or Which is like, use mid-level providers and just like crank out, I would say, not as high level of care as personally I like.

Or you have to go concierge, charge cash, and just like provide a little bit more of that market's wall-be medical care, which is spend an hour with your patient, but get paid for it.

So, as a private practitioner or as a physician entering this space, you have to really decide what, you know, all of these options have pros and cons, all of them.

There's no bad option, but all of them have pros and cons. So, if you're going to be more on the entrepreneurial level, truly entrepreneurial level, you're going to have to look at the private practice world, you've got to look at the private equity world and see what you can do.

You have a little bit less control when you're hired by Kaiser or by OHSU. Who are by the public hospital and the community?

Those are kind of where I see things happening.

@8:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, and that's a great point, unfortunately, folks are maybe unaware, think in the healthcare world, you saw this consolidation of the private practice back in about 2015 to 2018.

And that really had to do, you know, not, I'm not saying this was the fault, but the way the Affordable Care Act was created and the way it really tried to leverage the EMR, Electronical Healthcare Records, it became such a financial burden for these individuals.

So for those that independent, you know, think of yourself as an entrepreneur and you just get a 10x operational cost in one year, right, for a software that, yeah, how you are required to use, right?

It's not like, oh, you can possibly use it. No, these individuals, these, you know, again, these practitioners that were entrepreneurs were now required to use this service or this, this software.

Where some type of EHR, right, didn't have to be epic or one script or whatever it was. It just had to be some type of EHR.

And that really was difficult for a lot of folks to move. And then we saw this consolidation, right? but to your point, we're still seeing the need for our physicians to have this entrepreneurial endeavor and mindset.

Do you feel there was any formal education and throughout the healthcare process that provided that?

@9:30 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

No, and that's one of the real, real, I would say shortcomings of medical education. Really, there are no courses that teach you about options, what you need to do, understanding finances, understanding business growth opportunities, understanding even academic medicine.

Everything's just kind of by osmosis for the most part. And that's it. It's a, I would say that's probably one of the biggest weaknesses of our educational process.

And it really puts the doctors at a major disadvantage. Because as we just talked about, you're coming out and wherever you're going, you have to be an entrepreneur.

have to be a small business owner mindset. You have to learn how to manage your community, manage your patients.

So it's a major weakness. And I wish I had some of that. It was really self-taught. And there is information out there.

But you have to almost like, look, this is a very important thing that you have to do for yourself.

@10:38 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah. And you know, now the more I'm starting to think about it, you're starting to get my brain journey here.

Continuing medical education, right? The way continuing medical education is in fact defined is it has to be able to help you in your practice, right?

And provide a learning gap. Entrepreneurship and business acronym, that's actually a big learning gap. think that, you know, people might be able to think about

Hey, how can we create a one hour lecture and credit this? So our providers get this AMA-PRA category for one CME, but they also get business acting.

Now with that said, we've talked about entrepreneurship, we talked about a competitive landscape. How do you build a successful practice in a competitive healthcare landscape?

@11:19 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

I mean, the way a classic surgery world is ultimately very competitive and in Beverly Hills, basically you have a ginormous constant of doctors.

I think it goes back down to the following, kind of really providing the best care possible, exceeding your patient's expectations.

That's the first thing. When you exceed your customer, consumer, patient expectations, you will develop a word of mouth and now it's social media, that word of mouth is critical.

So that's the first thing. Number two. Who is doing great work? If you're a doctor, you're going to be a great physician.

You can't, I mean, bad physicians do survive out there because there's such a shortage, right? But you have to be a great physician.

I think the experience that the patients are getting in your practice or whether it's very important. There are oftentimes people forget like the person who's greeting and picking up the phone is the most crucial person.

They are the face of your practice. And they are the lowest wage earners in most practices. In my practice, they are the highest wage earners because they are the first critical contact point.

And then really doing great work. mean, ultimately your work is really, really important. And I'm understanding marketing because that marketing, again, how do you interact with doctors?

You know, majority, you know, have a pretty active social media. The majority of patients I actually operate on are referred by other plastic surgeons, dermatologists, or my own patients.

that's really do great work, provide great service, exceed expectations, be a great person, be a great human being, treat people well.

Complications happen, unhappy patients come up. Those things are natural. If someone tells you they never have complications, they're either not doing enough, or they're really lying about it.

But how do you manage that, right? How do you take care of the patient, make sure that their issues are resolved?

@13:41 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Those are some of the... Great, great point. fact, know what? I'm going to provide a great example for this folks at home.

In fact, this is exactly kind of what I do in my role, this is how we help our providers succeed.

know, when we're talking about doing great work, one of our providers, Dr. Hunter, he's a esophageal surgeon. There's a new esophageal surgeon coming into the state.

However, Dr. Hunter is nationally known. He's taught death style of outcomes, right? Because esophageal is your throat, very complex surgery, very great outcomes.

So when we have this other individual coming into the community and saying, hey, we can provide this service, I'm like, that's great.

But you know what? Let's go to marketing first. What am I going to market? I'm going to market our outcomes the last five years.

Here's the volume of getting. Here's the outcomes. And here's how it actually works. It lines up nationally, right? And I take that out to the community and say, hey, by the way, here's our provider that's able to do esophageal surgery.

Here's his outcomes the last 10 years. I know there's somebody else coming. You can do whatever you can go.

You can refer who you like to, but I just want to let you know this is this is the quality of care you're going to receive when you get sent over to this location and this provider, right?

And because it is a competitive landscape. Unfortunately, healthcare, got to keep the lights on. It is a business, folks.

And I know it's sometimes difficult to talk in that sense, but. And. We do support the economy, we do support jobs, and we do support patient care.

It's all actually in what? And we support education and research and all these other things. there's a lot of aspects of enjoyment, or maybe not easy, but enjoyable.

So starting the business can have its rewarding moments. What are some of the aspects that you have found relatively enjoyable?

even easy during the early particular.

@15:30 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

The most enjoyable moments for me are happy patients, transformative patients. When I get an email of a patient who really had something that we took care of, and it could be a simple, believe it or not, as a rhinoplasty, was, you know, how to...

Really what I call nasal dysmorphia. The nose was just like, this wasn't like a little bump in the nose.

The nose was just, you know, had made tremendous psychosocial impact on her. She was an introvert. She didn't want to go to school because she was being teased nonstop.

And a year later after surgery and they travel from Vegas to come and see me. A year later, she's wearing makeup.

She's going to school. She's going to their homecoming. Life has changed. Or when I get like, you know, somebody who had not, you know, had not gone out socializing and after their surgery, they're sending me this glam shot.

Oh, I'm going on my first date in five years. Or like someone who I like treated for facial paralysis and they're going to college.

They're getting married and they were born with this issue. So that's the most enjoyable thing. I also, for me, I also find enjoyment in the growth process, Myself, am I getting better as a doctor?

Am I getting better as an employer? Am I getting better at what I'm doing? I enjoy a lot of things.

publish, I have other healthcare ventures that I get involved with. All of those little things make my whole life really complete.

@17:31 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, and I got to tell you, folks listening, if you haven't had an opportunity to go to some of these websites and listen to some of the patient stories, because most healthcare organizations will highlight some patient stories, because it is quite remarkable what the outcomes that some of these procedures that providers are able to do to really change and impact individuals' lives.

In fact, your front desk employee, the first point of contact for those patients, you also impact these individuals.

@18:50 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Well, I mean, I think as a physician, there are two major challenges. One is, Is, I would say, the regulatory colleges.

You have to, know, your licensure, your hospital credentialing, the oversight of that. It's a lot of work challenge, cost and burden, right?

The second challenge is patient satisfaction, right? So we want as physicians, and as you said, outcomes are critical, right?

You go get a facelift, okay? know, each surgeon has their own outcomes, right? You could go to a surgeon that's good, and like 80% of their patients are happy.

You could go to a surgeon that is exceptional, 98% of their patients are happy, but there's still 2% of their

So if you do 300 surgeries high volume, you still are going to have every year or six patients that may not be satisfied by the outcome either because of the nature of the surgery.

It wasn't anyone's fault. It's just the healing process or the patient expectation was not met or the surgery didn't achieve the outcomes that the surgeon expected.

Right. So that's still a lot of to me. That's still a lot of people that have been even at the most exceptional level, you're a sulfigio cancer surgeon.

know, that doctor will have a lot of complications. Yeah. I'm sure there's deaths involved with that surgery. So even at the highest level of care with the best intentions with the kindness and most technically gifted surgeon or physician.

There will be some issues and that's the hardest part. I would say seeing those patients and not helping or not achieving where they want to be, even though 98 to 99% of patients achieve everything they want, I feel bad for that 1% of patients.

And then to compound that the way that right now doctors or judges are you yeah a lot of times it's like Yelp reviews Google very much stuff again if you have out of 99 out of 100 who are happy maybe one will go and put some when people are happy they don't post anything but that out of the 100 that voice can get amplified and for doctors that's the difference in their livelihood because if that amplification or someone is really really upset about something and it could be real and it could be not real that can really impact.

Dr. Lives. And not just financially. Forget about the finances. Like, we, you know, the emotionally intelligent doctor, which is your human.

Gets really emotionally hurt.

@22:15 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah.

@22:16 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Patience put mean things on social media or websites and so forth. So that's really the balancing act. And it's that I would say today is the most challenging.

At least one of the most challenging things.

@22:31 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That's such a great point. I kind of want to highlight that a little bit for the folks listening is our providers.

healthcare workers, even in hospital administration, they go through a lot of judgment. And their judgment is sometimes in fact, you kind of alluded to it attached to financials and your performance.

For example, press gamey and H-CAP scores, press gamey and H-CAP scores are patient satisfaction scores where. If your hospital doesn't do very well in your age caps, if patients continue to come to your hospital and say it's dirty, or they continue to say it's loud, or they have these various questions they ask, you will get deemed.

It's tough because providers, you at home, folks, you listening at home, when somebody writes a snarky remark on your Facebook page or your Instagram, you have an emotional reaction.

We all do. humans. Now, imagine that times 10, because again, these individual providers are truthfully, they're getting their names dropped in the comment section, like you mentioned like a Yelp review and saying, this doctor did this, I don't like this, or this hospital did this, I don't like this.

And it's, I think that starts to come into the concern about burnout and mental health within the healthcare space.

Now what is your kind of experience with burnout and mental health?

@23:54 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

And where do you see it at? And where can you see it being resolved? Yeah. think it's at an all time high.

It's at an all time, all time, all time high. I think the majority of doctors are burnt out.

@24:09 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

I agree.

@24:10 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

They burned out earlier and more extensively than ever before. see colleagues around me. would say 90% of the colleagues I know around me are not happy.

The doctors are burnt out and so forth for a different reasons. How I have maintained myself in terms of my mental health and my own, you know, in a bill of thank God, not getting burnt out is I really make decisions for my practice decision, my family life, my outside ventures to keep myself, you know, happy.

don't like, you know, having a meal. I like a very good, cheap practice. I do a few surgeries that I love and I do them.

I think really. Well, at the volume that I like, providing the care that I like. And if I don't like some aspect of a surgery that I stop doing it, so I just focus in on the surgeries and the areas that I really enjoy.

I try to develop a phenomenal relationship with my staff, so I have, you know, key employees that have been with me for over 12 to 15 years.

Multiple key employees that keeps my life a lot more enjoyable. And, you know, my family life, I really pay a lot of attention to, and my other ventures, my academic, educational, other entrepreneurial ventures in the healthcare space.

I enjoy those a lot, so it keeps me from getting burnt out. And if I don't enjoy them, I will like wipe my hands off and say, look, this is not what I want to do.

So I try to really do the majority of the things that I love. are some limitations, obviously, we talked about the regulatory, we talked about the unhappy patients, etc, etc.

But those are really for me, not all would have been a major problem. But I know for some of colleagues, they're just kind of like, you know, they don't enjoy doing what they're doing.

@26:21 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

And it's kind of sad.

@26:23 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

We are in the best field in the world being a doctor is a provision and an honor. And I think, hopefully, we can really tackle this problem.

@26:32 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah, I completely agree. You know, I travel the state of Oregon often and meet with a lot of community providers.

And one provider recently said, you know, it's almost humanly impossible to be a doctor these days. You know, just the amount of stress and time and work and you're seeing patients for eight hours a day.

And then you still don't have time for the EMR. So then you have to go home and chart. It's just.

So I'm just saying this, folks, because, you know, folks that listen, I really want you to just kind of take a step back because the pandemic, I think the health.

History had went through a lot during that time, a lot of mistrust. But in truth, we have about 300 to 400 providers that commit suicide on an annual basis.

That's the size of an OH-ish you could graduate in class. Think about that. The entire class gone in one annual year.

we're just here to try to help. Truly. We don't know everything. You mentioned it earlier. Sometimes it's difficult to help patients when you really can't help them.

You know, the same thing with genetics. We have a lot of great research. We testing. But sometimes we might know that you might have this genetic gene, but we don't know how to fix it.

So it doesn't really help to tell these patients like, hey, by the way, we know you have this, but we can't do anything about it.

Right? That's the worst possible feeling as any provider in any hospital really has. But I just really wanted to hand it to the home folks.

If please thank your providers. Thank your health care. They're your nurses. You're, you know, even down to your food nutrition folks that are actually serving food providers.

Everybody in the health care world is really. I'm not saying that other industries aren't, but I've been in the healthcare world for about 24 years.

I've never felt it more. I would say it's rough. I don't even know how to explain it. There's a lot of tears sometimes.

I'm not going to lie, folks. There's a lot of tears behind these Zoom calls sometimes. And we're talking about you, our community.

How do we help you in our community? Now, we're moving away. I'm sorry. No, trying to not trying to beat on the dead.

But now let's get back into the entrepreneurship. Let's talk about you and building your brand. Let's talk us through the strategies and efforts you have employed to build and establish your brand.

@28:39 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Yeah. one, building a brand is a continuous project. It never stops. I've been in practice for 20 years. And guess what?

This year, I have to revamp my website after revamp my logo. I have to revamp my various aspects of the...

One facing aspect of your practice, the first impression. So the brand is critical because your brand is basically telling your patients what you stand for, right?

Is it something like cutting edge? Are you cutting edge? Are you all about empathy? Are you all about expertise?

What is what do you stand for? So the brand is very, very, very important. The second thing is how do you stand out amongst other people, right?

That's a little bit more difficult to do now. I would say that has changed so much in the last 20 years.

And 20 years ago, you built a beautiful brand, you built a beautiful office, you put some advertising in the local magazines, you went as shook hands with your colleagues in referral.

And the community and you built your word of mouth. Now word of mouth is built, I would say primarily via social media.

And social media, whether you stand out on social media or not, is draw the blood. I mean, there is a lot of things that are going on.

Are you going to be the personality who's going to be wild, crazy on social media to attract patients? Or are you going to be professorial?

All of it makes a difference. And it's become entertainment. That's the one area I don't love personally, because you have to be an entertainer on social media to draw likes and so forth.

Or you have to be large institutions like OHSU and other that have huge, huge presence on both social media and in the web world.

So brand building, you got to do. Just focus on yourself, be yourself, be who you are, put out, branding is really only as good as your team.

@31:08 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yeah.

@31:09 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

If your team does not reflect your brand, it all goes away, right? That first impression that continued impression that patients and consumers will get is critical.

So that's really, it's a 24-7 job. You are continuously having to rebrand or tweak your brand all the time and your team.

And your team maybe, like the team I had in my first year and for my needs in my first few years of practice are very different than my needs now.

It doesn't mean they were bad employees or they were not. It's just like you got to have employees that fit your goals.

And that's another thing that you have to continue to sleep change and improve.

@32:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That's very true. kind of have to have the right people in the bus, right? And you know, speaking of branding, you know, for folks listening at home, if you're in the marketing world, if you're familiar with the marketing funnel, right?

How do you basically take? How do you get people aware of your product or service or service provider, right?

Provider, try to get them aware. Then how do you get them considered to start to rebuild the referral, then you want to build a lower referral, then you actually want to try to bring them into your system.

If you want to learn want how to do that. I'm actually going be doing a presentation, September 7th for the American Association of Physician Lasons talking about the provider referral funnel.

It's something I recurated. And it's basically goes through step by step of what should the marketing be doing at this point in time?

And what should the physician liaison be doing? And what's the goal, right? Because each step has a goal. And for example, we might go to one community and say, Hey, again, this is a, this is very inclusive of entrepreneurship.

You might go to one target. The specific goal, right? But each one of your consumers, you're going to target different based on where they're at on your marketing funnel, right?

It might be somebody that's a little bit more loyal. They're part of your fan. Okay, then that means you're going to have a little bit more direct communication versus awareness where you're just for the provider world.

We're just going to conferences, right? Going to large conferences showing what we're doing versus if we're trying to create a really nice lawyer referring provider.

Okay, I'm actually having one on one meetings with our specialists building that relationship, right? And so, those are just things in the healthcare world.

I'm happy if folks, again, if you're listening, if you're like a healthcare executive or your hospital, you want me to come present, please let me know.

I'm happy to do this. I do a lot of national presentations about the refer, referred bottle funnel and how do we build your relationships?

How do we scale our businesses? And again, I'm happy to, if we can figure out a way to do a CME, we'll do it as well, right?

Now, Dr. Speci, how do you like, let's give us some, some actual valuable entrepreneurial advice. Either for the physician.

What advice or maybe what's one thing you would have known before you started your entrepreneurial journey?

@34:10 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

I think entrepreneurial journey, I think it requires two critical things or three critical things. Number one, you've got to be passionate about what you're going to do.

If you don't have a passion for it and you're just trying to make money, forget it. going to burn out.

going to hate life. You're going to You're do this even if you make all the money in the world.

Number one, you've got to be passionate about it. Once you're passionate, you've got to have a vision. You've got to know where you want to go.

If don't have a vision, it's like closing your eyes and trying to get to a destination. difficult to do.

Not impossible, very difficult to do. So you've got to have a vision. And the third thing I really believe, you've got have a great team.

You can't. And a very few entrepreneurial endeavors are solo jobs. So you've got to be able to be collaborative.

You've got to have a team. You may have a team of people who are going to be at the same level as you.

Or you've got to have a team of people who are going to do the things that you need to get done.

Whatever wherever that is, that's your team. And you have to be able to motivate that team. And the way you motivate it is with the passion and vision.

So that's why these three things are very, very important. Don't focus on money. That's what unfortunately a lot of people who think about entrepreneurship, like, want to be rich.

I want to be an entrepreneur. That ends up being fool's goal. Because all that does is just kind of your creative.

Then you make the money like, okay, wait, okay, now what?

@36:00 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Yep.

@36:01 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

So if you have those three components, the collaborative nature with your team, vision, and passion, the world's your oyster.

@36:13 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

That's very, very great advice. And folks, cannot stress this enough. you kind of come into the entrepreneurship world thinking you're just going to be rich and get quick.

Man, you're going to, you're going for a rude awakening. It is a grind every day in the entrepreneurship world.

mean, I'm up at night. think I'm like, what do I need to update on the website? What do I need to do for the newsletter?

What I need to do for the next episode? There's always something in your mind thinking. And to your point, you might not get paid the first, you know, couple of years.

So it might take some time, right? But it's hell of a journey. And it's fun. It's, I wouldn't change it for the world.

So for the audience interested in reaching out to you, maybe learning more, how can they connect with you?

@36:52 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

How can we learn more about you? Yeah. So I'm like really, really good at social media responses, direct messages.

My Instagram is at DRZsadeh. That's probably the best way to reach out to me. I'm very, very active in responding to people.

I get emails, calls from people, oh, can I talk to you? Can I observe anything? I'm very, very open to it.

I love it. I love the mentorship and anything I can do to help. I'm always there. I'm so, I'm really, Gabriel, it's awesome you're doing this because I know you bring in a variety of different guests, but this is super cool because this is something I actually had never, know, there are a lot of entrepreneurial programs and podcasts and so forth.

But I think you're really going granular on it and then a whole, you're looking at entrepreneurial endeavors, not just like the classic, oh, I'm going to get venture backing.

I'm going to do this and that. You're looking at, hey, I want to do a podcast. It's an entrepreneurial endeavor.

@38:01 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Exactly.

@38:02 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Yes. You've got to do this, this, this, and this to get that. And if people think that way, they can get not only a lot of excitement and pleasure out of it, but it can be a very, very potentially rewarding process.

So this is super cool and I'm really honored to be on your show. And I appreciate your vision.

@38:28 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Well, thank you so much for the kind words. I appreciate you being on the show. enjoyed this conversation quite a bit again, because it's in the healthcare world.

And again, the goal is to really try to help folks get inspired and think entrepreneurally, you know, probably jump into it.

My goal, I think I'm going to steal it from Angel Nunez from Beacon. And he said he wants to inspire a billion people.

This is how we're going to do it. If we can influence a thousand people and those people influence a thousand people and then those thousand people influence thousand

We have other thousand people. We have been influencing a billion people. How are we going to do this? Podcast is one for those folks that are listening.

We officially started our nonprofit business accelerator, Black, you know, founders, we have funding for it. We have 11 different entrepreneurs that are coming through our business accelerator program and at the end of it, we're going to do a pitch Latino competition where these individuals have the opportunity to pitch their ideas in front of capitalists.

In addition to that, we have earmarked 100,000.,000 in grants to give out these entrepreneurs. grants is free money. This is for you to scale your business, either for operations, for marketing, whatever you need it for to help you grow and scale your business.

And so that's how we're going to do it. And thank you again, Dr. Azizadeh for being on the show because I really appreciate the work and the health care providers do and the health care professionals around the world because it is a taxing job sometime.

And again, folks listening for those. All this information will also be Be on the shades. The Shades of Entrepreneurship.

can visit The Shades of Entrepreneurship You can subscribe to the newsletter. I will have a doctor as he's a day's website information, this photo as well as some background information.

And then you also get some good little entrepreneurial insights on the newsletter on a weekly basis. if you're not subscribed, I would highly suggest you do it.

Now before we go, is there any last things you would like to say to the listeners?

@40:20 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

No, enjoy life. Enjoy. Do the things you love. That's the number one thing. Do the things you love. But don't forget, you still need money to make a living and have, you know, pay for things.

you know, there's a balancing act, but enjoy what you do. And this is a, you know, and listen to this podcast.

@40:42 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

This is like really, really a great podcast. Free education, folks. Free education, I'm telling you. Well, thank you so much, Dr.

Babak Azizzadeh, advanced facial plastic surgery in Beverly Hills, California. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

@40:54 - Babak Azizzadeh, MD

Well, we've connected on LinkedIn, so I know I think we're going to continue to have some conversations offline. hopefully.

You know, continue to build that relationship. Folks, listen at home.

@41:03 - Gabriel Flores (The Shades of Entrepreneurship)

Thank you again so much. Please hit that follow button. Please leave a review if you have not already and please subscribe to the podcast and the newsletter.

Thank you and have a great night.