Episode 39: "A Health Tech CEO’s Handbook" | John Kalix, SOC Telemed

In this episode, I talk with John Kalix about his 20+ year journey in the healthcare industry and starting SOC Telemed to help provide tele support specifically to support acute healthcare and address the shortage of specialized clinicians across the US. He talks about his lessons and journey as a CEO and shares wisdom from launching multiple products and solutions focusing on clinicians and hospitals across the United States.

John Kalix spearheads SOC Telemed’s efforts to be the leader in the field of acute telemedicine by bringing the highest quality of care, the best clinicians, and the patients who need them, together with using technology. He comes to SOC with more than 25 years of experience in healthcare.

Key TakeawaysDo not dilute your long-term vision and mission. When building the mission of your organization, it is important to have clarity on the things that you will be doing that the things that you won’t be doing. Often for health tech companies during the pandemic is that they pivoted to new short-term opportunities and they lost the track of their long-term vision and mission. This can adversely affect the culture of your organization. As a CEO, building culture is so important for attracting the right team.Be honest and humble about things that you do not know. The most successful CEOs are those that are honest about the things that are not their area of expertise and lean into the strengths of their team. When you play to your strengths, it provides your team space and opportunity to play to their strengths and this, in turn, will give you space to work “on” your company rather than just “in” your company.Monitor the performance of your strategy. Strategy always has to be experimented with to see what works and what doesn’t work when it comes to launching your solutions and products. It is key to have regular time intervals where you set metrics in place to monitor the key performance indicators of your adopted strategy to measure its success. This helps provide better insight into problem-solving and refining your approach.
Key moments01:08 – John talks about his background in health tech and the healthcare industry04:06 – The problem identified that led John to start SOC Telemed07:40 – The process from ideation to launching your product solution12:35 – How to attract a quality team and build  organizational culture15:20 – How to prioritize and build vision as a CEO20:40 – Working on business instead of in the business24:31 – How SOC Telemed launched their solution in the market28:13 – Advice for professionals in the healthcare industry30:30 – Rapid Fire Round
Quote“To have vision and mission you will have to know what you are not going to do as much as what you are going to do.” – John Kalix
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