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Checking my, got it now. Thank you. Got it. OK. Yeah, yeah. OK. We can start and I'll try to. Ok. Yeah, so I everyone sorry for that. Um early sort of confusion on how to put up the slides. I do have slides um and they will be, they'll be quite a nice uh quite a nice addition to this. But you know what, let's just uh go ahead and just uh talk. Why not? Why not do that? I wish I could see you all but I can. So my name is Doctor V Gupta. I am a general practitioner and an entrepreneur. Um I uh wanna share my journey and my story because when naval came to me, she said we wanna talk about how you started a business, how you started your um company that you now run? Oh, there you go. And you know, just take, take, take everyone through. What are the uh what are the important things of starting a business? Especially being a medical practitioner. Um And how do you run a business, being a medical practitioner? Cause a lot of us uh as you know, when we do medical school, nobody nobody learns how to do business studies. Right. How many of us in medical school have learned how to do business? Uh, I mean, my medical school did not have that. Um, I'm sure a lot of other medical schools didn't have that all of this kind of stuff. Like how to manage money investing business studies. All of this is just ignored. Um, so I thought about that and I said, yeah, I think that's a really great idea. Uh I'm quite new into it as well, so I'm not like an expert. Uh but I thought that it would be nice to sort of share some of the important parts of uh how uh medicine and business can be combined. And then I sat down and I thought about how I can do this um without making it boring. And I thought that, you know what I think the, the best way to do this is to go through the journey that I've had in my life and sort of uh the lessons that I learned in that journey because at the end of the day, what is business? And, you know, that's a, that's an open question by the way to anyone that's here. What is business? You know, if anyone wants to type in the chat, please go ahead. Um But basically business is ii it's, it's uh exchange of goods and services between people. Um You, you give something to get something and it involves uh AAA lot of experiences that we have in life and the lessons that we learn in life are uh involved in business and, and involved in making your business successful. Um So how to win in business, how to expand, how to trade, how to make a deal, how to make a loss uh and still come back, uh how to uh take a loss, uh how to deal with people, uh how to deal with setbacks. Uh These are all the things that you need to, to run a successful business and all of these things you learn uh through your life, through your, through, through your experiences in life. Um You can't win in business if you don't know how to come back after taking a loss in life, right? That's the most important lesson that anybody has ever taught me. Um There's no MBA program, there's no book that'll teach you how to do business or how to think like an entrepreneur, you just have to get up and do it. And most of the, the greatest businessmen in the world. If you look at Richard Branson, if you look at um Steve Jobs, if you look at all these guys, they started from their garage. Bill Gates started from his garage and he owned AM multimillion dollar company after it became the richest man in the world. Um So you don't need a lot of expertise to go into business, but what you do need is the recognition of things that you've learned in life through what you've been doing in life and use that um to become better. Um So if you, if we just um if we just go back to that previous slide, if that's OK, amazing. So the journey that um that I talk about, this is something that this is not just my journey. II don't want you just to focus on this because I want you to at the end of this lecture. Think about all the instances in your life where you've had setbacks where you've had experiences that can now help you in taking yourself forward to that next step that you all want to do. Ok. Um So that's what the journey is about. Ok. So I'll start off a little bit about myself. So I've, uh uh uh uh uh I'm, I'm from a nuclear family, so I have only one child, only child. Uh My parents are both doctors. Uh, my mom's a radiologist, my dad's orthopedics. Um, and they basically started off in a very small town in India, uh with very little money, um, was born in a very small flat, um, probably smaller than the living room that I'm in right now. And uh it didn't really have much resources, but they started off and they uh expanded from there and they left the country and they moved around the world to look for better opportunities. There's a lot of immigrants do and a lot of second generation kids do. So I was one of those uh second generation kids. I moved around a lot in my childhood. Um Indian origin, lived in North America, uh Toronto, Canada, uh New York, um Cincinnati in the United States. Um And in London as well. Uh and then also in the Middle East. So I did my high schooling in the Middle East in a British school. Um and then, um basically tried and applied for medicine from there, uh and did my med school in Ireland internship in Singapore, went back to New York to work, came back to London. Um I just traveled a lot in general so that uh experience of mine uh was not gen necessarily my choice. It was something that my parents uh did for looking for better opportunities in life and trying to earn more money and trying to get the best for, for their family. But in that process, I ended up traveling a lot, meeting a lot of people changing. A lot of schools getting in touch with a lot of multicultural societies where uh you meet people from different backgrounds and countries and you have to adjust to that. There's an adjustment that is, is needed every single time you go from one country to another, uh one school to another. And at one point in my childhood, I actually hated that. And I said, why am I having to do this, this is so annoying, like I just made friends here and now you guys are moving somewhere else and now I have to make new friends, you know. And um you know, I was, I was actually quite mad at them. I was like, you guys are selfish, you know, you guys are just thinking about yourself. And uh and probably it was probably true a little bit, but it was also true that they were looking for better opportunities so that, you know, I could get the best of them. And in that process, I had to adjust and I had to adjust a lot. Um make new friends, make new, meet, new people, meet, new teachers, establish yourself from nothing. So I learned a very valuable life lesson there. That adjustment is the key to life. Nothing will go according to the way you want it to, you will have to make changes in your life. You will have to adapt to changes in your life. And how you adapt to those changes is gonna decide how you come out in that situation, whether you come out victorious or you come out as the loser. But to be honest, there are no losers in that situation because every adjustment that you make will at some point help you in life in the future. And I remember when I was in high school, I had a very uh interesting discussion uh because I wanted to do a, a bunch of stuff. And the three main things that I wanted to do was filmmaking. Um I wanted to go into films, whether it's uh acting or producing or directing. Uh The second thing that I really wanted to do was business. And II got that from my uncle because my uncle used to be a managing director of this big company. And he used to, I remember going into his office and he would be sitting on this big huge black chair with a massive table and all these like, you know, photos of him meeting all these like important people in the world behind him. And he would always be living in five star hotels, traveling around the world and in first class and doing these meetings and all of that. And I was like, wow, man, this kind of has the life. I mean, why, why on earth would I wanna be anything else? I would love to be in business and in management and, and, and try and you know, travel the world. And the third option was obviously medicine uh because medicine was inevitably a part of my life. Um So those of you in the audience that are, that are Children of doctors would know that you your your table, your dinner table discussions involve medicine. You inevitably talk about medicine at home, you listen about it at home. And when you're, when you're from an Asian background, when you're from an Indian background or even an Arabic back background or eastern background. You, you really just have three choices growing up in life. You either become a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer or a failure. So you're not. So you're pushed by uh your family to try and, um you know, make those choices in life so that you have a successful career and all of that. I used to hate that. I would be like, why, why are we so obsessed with this? And it was funny because when I was choosing to go into um into my college, I'd applied to University of Los Angeles in UCLA. And I wanted to do film directing and film, film acting. And I got in there and I was really excited and uh I also got into med school in Ireland in Dublin at the Royal College of Surgeons. And I II got all these things happening at the same time and I had to make a choice and it was funny because I remember this conversation with my mom and it was a really, and it's a conversation, I'll come back to later in this, in this um in this presentation. And I went to her and I said, look, I wanna do this film thing and, you know, I wanna go there and uh I think I'll be really good at it and I wanna do journalism and media and stuff and she's like, all right, that's great. You wanna do that. That's fine. And then I said, you know what, I also kind of wanna do medicine because I really like it. Like, I do genuinely enjoy medicine and then I also wanna do business. And so she's like, you're, you're, you're confused. And I was like, yeah, I am confused. So what should I do? And she basically said, look, if there's anything I've learned in life, um, it's that medicine is a very stable career and it will always put food on the table and everything else you wanna do would be a risk. And that's a risk you can take if you want to. But it's a risk you can take at any point of life. And it's definitely a risk you can take later on in life if you're well settled with a career. And that's a typical sort of mom like, you know, background, immigrant mindset that because they're always so afraid of, of not having food on the table that that's what they want their kid to have installed in them. That, you know, the most important thing is make sure that you're able to feed yourself and your family. And um and it was really interesting because it hit me hard and I was like, you know, this is an opportunity I'm getting to go to med school. This is an opportunity that I don't wanna waste. So why not? Let's just go and deal with it and see how it goes. And so II joined the College of Surgeons in Dublin in Ireland. And, um, and that brought me into medical school. Uh I had done, I had done biology and business studies and G CSE and all of that. So I had knowledge of everything. But my, now my specialization was gonna start in medicine as a lot of you guys did too. And I was in, and I'd forgotten all that other stuff that I wanted to do. And I said, right, this is, I've got six years here. I'm gonna just, you know, enjoy it. And that's what I did. And I think the important part that I wanna highlight here, especially for those that are in med school. I don't know if there are any, there are, they're actually 16% of you are med students. The time that I had in Dublin, by the way, great city to visit. If you ever get a chance to go, please go. If you have been. It is one of the most fantastic place I've lived everywhere from Los Angeles to Singapore. And Dublin is truly a really, really good city to live in, to be a student, to travel, to meet Irish. People are generally really nice and very, very kind uh and welcoming. And I felt that when I was there as a student and when I was there, I embraced all of it. I embraced the Irish culture. I embraced Ireland as a country, traveled around this country. Um did all joined all the clubs and societies. I could maximum I II, if there was a club in society that I could join, I'd just do it. Especially in my early years, like premed and first med and second med because you know, that's when your pressure of your, of med school isn't as much uh later on, obviously exams and can come into the picture. But II was in film society. I was in drama, I was in theater, I was in sports, whatever I could get my hands on, I would do it. And II really don't regret doing that even though my grades suffered a bit because of the social aspect of it. Um, but I really enjoyed it and I think that's one of the best memories that I've had from medical school was being involved in all of those things. So if you're a medical student that's on here and you have, uh uh you know, chance to sort of, uh take some time out, out of studying for the exams, please go and join these societies and these clubs of yours because they really do make you meet people and you form these friendships and I'll tell you about these friendships because I formed some really formidable associations in med school that now all these years later is helping me in business. Um I made friends with people in med school that are now uh in some of the best institutions in medicine around the world. Um whether it's in London or New York or in Boston or in Los Angeles or Singapore. These guys are at the top of their field in, in the, in, in what they're doing, they're in some really good institutions. But even the ones that did not continue medicine. A friend of mine became a film director, he actually did film direction. Uh one another med school, uh A friend of mine became a singer. Uh One of them became a consultant for PWC and is now the head of PWC, the medical side of PWC in Asia. Um So, so some of them went to, to the Middle East and they, they joined the government, they were, became Ministers of Health and, and all of that kind of stuff. So it, it you, you develop this fraternity of people and you, the people that you meet in med school are at that time, probably just your colleagues or your, your friends. But down the line, you don't know how people's journeys would go. And if you keep in touch with these people, if you are friendly with them, it can, you know, it can be a fruits for years to come because everybody then uh tries to help each other because everybody has fond memories of med school. Uh you know, because you go through war together, it's like war stories that you, you share. So I II I'm sort of benefiting from that now. Um, when I'm making my associations, I called a friend of mine in Dubai the other day and I just talked to him and II haven't talked to him in like 15 years and he's like, hey, here, how's it going, man? Yeah, come over, you know, we'll, we'll go and check out some places we'll take you to my hospital show you how it's going. And it was so nice to, to get that association from him even after all those years. Um So, so that's something that if you're in med school right now, please uh be, be nice to your friends and your colleagues cause you never know what these guys will end up being and they, they might help you in life at some point. Um So medical school is great, did a lot of electives as well. Went to uh Los Angeles for um a um ee emergency medicine elective, which I learned a lot from um but the real life starts after medical school and it was an interesting thing that happened to me in med school when I went back home once um to visit my family and my friends. And it was, it was like the December Christmas break and a friend of mine who didn't do medicine and went into business quite early on. Um I met him uh at this party and uh he was, he was quite stressed. So I asked him what's going on, man, you know how How's it? What's going on? He looked a little bit stressed and he said, I'm, I'm in my third, I'm in my third year now of business. I'm almost gonna finish and I have no idea what I'm gonna do after. I don't know whether I'm gonna start a company. I don't have a product to sell, I don't know whether I'm gonna do an MBA or, um, you know, join a firm and work for someone. I don't know. And I said, well, that's not too bad. I mean, that's ok. I don't know what I'm gonna do. You know, I'm in med school, but that's all I know. I just know medicine and that's it. Um, so if II I'd be, I'd be worried like I'm worried about it as, as much as you are. And he just looked at me and he said, why are you worried about it? I said, well, because I don't know what I'm gonna do after med school. He's like, but you'll be a doctor and you're, you're in medicine. So you are the product. So you are the product. So that's where my next slide comes in actually, because I wanted to emphasize on that and he said that to me and it sort of really, really stayed with me for a long time to come even till today because he said I'm trying to search for something to sell or something to, uh, you know, make my company out of whereas you don't need to do that because you are the product, you are the expertise. You are the person whose services will count. Ok. Um, and you're the person who's going to basically sell himself or herself, uh, to the world in terms of how you wanna do it. And it's very funny that he said that because only a person that was doing business at that time, it was 2122 years old would think like that. You know, when we're in med school, we don't think like that. We're like, oh what's the next exam of fucking out biochemistry? Oh God, I gotta get through this shit. All right, then we gotta do like, you know, all these clinical subjects, you're not thinking that whatever you're learning here is actually specialized to the point where nobody else knows it, right. There's 7 billion people on earth. How many doctors are there on, on this planet? So you have an expertise and I'm not saying that you have to be a doctor only to do that. You don't have to be in clinical medicine only to be using that expertise. The, the fact that you've gained that expertise is very, very important because not many people go to med school. So it really hit me hard and I felt um I felt empowered by it and II didn't do much about it at that point because I had to get through 27 exams to get to final year. So II just parked to the side. But I said, you know what, I'm gonna come back to this. Um, can we go to the next side, please? So I finished med school and, uh, on 111 fine day, uh, a group of very smart looking Singaporeans came down to Dublin Ireland and they had a, uh, an event in, uh, the Hilton, I think it was and they called all us final year medical students and they said, you know what? Come to the Hilton, we're gonna give you free food, we're gonna give you drinks and we're gonna do a presentation. I said, all right, let's go. It's free food. Um, we're at the Hilton. I mean, nobody treats us. Um, med students are just treated like shit everywhere. So, you know, if someone's doing a, a nice meal at the Hilton, like why would you not go? And so we go there and we still have our final year exams left and we go and sit in this presentation and they show this beautiful skyline of Singapore and they say, look, we need doctors down there. You know, you guys are trained in Ireland and, and there were some people from the UK there as well and you know, we want you to come down and work in our country and we want you to experience how it is working in Singapore. And I was like, where do I sign up? Because I am ready to get out of here. I don't wanna be working in these hospitals where I've been working, I'm done and I wanna go to uh you know, Southeast Asia, a nice, nice part of the world and experience something new. Um And I was really glad I did it, but I did not know how difficult it's gonna be. So I landed in Singapore and I started working at um the National University Health System, which is what the photo here shows. It's the, it's a collaboration of hospitals that, that um that basically run the Singapore public healthcare system, which is a fantastic healthcare system, very state of the art, very, very posh and you know, you'd think you're in a private hospital, but that's actually it's a government hospital. Um But I very soon realized that it's not all shiny and all, you know, uh it's not all uh as attractive as they'd seen that it would be. Um Singapore was a very hard place to work. It's a very hard hierarchical medical system. It was hard work. It was 36 hour shift. It was no weekends. It was uh early morning starts. I remember I came in one day, I was doing my surgical rotation. I came in at 515 and my registrar at the time was like uh yeah, you're about half an hour late. You should have been here about 445 rounded, everyone had it ready for me. So I can have it ready for the consultant that comes in at 630 then we could go to theater at seven and I was like 445. Am I'm gonna be, uh, that's when I decided I'm not doing su surgery. That's it. I'm done. I am a very, I'm very happy doing medicine. Um, and I'm not, I'm not really gonna be getting up at four o'clock in the morning to go do surgery. So it was hard work. And there were certain experiences I had in Singapore that I would like to, um, share with you just really shortly. But basically all those experiences were trial by fire, the night shifts, the night calls, 4050 admissions. Uh, and those of you who are F one F two. Now, I'm talking to you guys now, um, you know, when you do, when you do your, what we used to, we used to call them active jobs and passive jobs. So your active jobs would be your admissions and your passive jobs would be stuff that's lying around the ward, you know, like putting in canals and, you know, treating uh someone's urine infection or giving someone's, uh, you know, treating someone's constipation in the middle of the night, all of that kind of stuff, the boring stuff is all passive and the active with the 40 to 50. So I was the only house officer on three floors doing both the active and the passive jobs at the same time. So I'm, I'm being called by, by the uh emergency department to come and collect the admissions. Then I'm being called by the floors to come and take care of the passives. And also I'm the first guy that has to, um, go for every cold or any recess that happens. So, yeah, it was horrible. And then you finish your shift and then you go home and you come back the next morning. So you do your 24 hour shift. You take like a six or eight hour or 12 hour uh maybe 10 hour break and then you're back the next morning, you don't get the next day off. And this happened for a whole year. It was horrible. It was horrendous. I mean, there were times when I was doing the um um patient notes and tears were falling, you know, tears, I was like, what have I gotten myself into? And the most, I think the most vivid memory I have of, of the first code that I ever ran was when we went in for this code. And I was the only guy there and there was all these nurses around and they, and we, we used to get this little book where we would have all the um, step by step instructions. And I go in looking at this little book and everyone's there looking at me saying you're the one who has to run it and the whole family is there, there is about, it was a Chinese family with about 10 to 12 family members. The elderly gentleman is passing away. He's, he obviously needs to be recessed and they're all looking at me and the nurses are looking at me and I'm just like I just froze. I had no idea what to do. Um And then I looked at my book and then the nurse said, yy, you need to start now, like give us an instruction, give us some something, give start with something. And so then you sort of start and then the muscle memory kicks in and all the ACL S courses and all of that you've done comes into it and then you start, all of you guys have done that, especially the ones who are doing junior doctor medicine right now. Um But it was funny thing that I forgot about the family. So the consultant comes in after everything is done, watches me do all this and takes me to the side and said, you know, you did really well, but you didn't ask the family to leave it like what's going on. I was like, oh my God, totally forgot about that. It was my first go third day on the job um after a night shift. So it was just a brutal awakening that OK, shit is real. Now, this is no longer a joke. Um And it was trial by fire on many instances. I had people that were dying that were elderly. Um Some of you might be doing geriatrics telling your first patient, uh or sorry, not your first patient, but the calling your first death. And then speaking to the family member that is an experience on its own. Just, um, and I remember an elderly gentleman who, who lost his wife and I had to, you know, go and tell him that she's, she's passed away. Now. Um, he cried to me, he took off, he took out his hat and he said, I'm really upset because II had to tell her a lot of things in my life. I wanna do share with her some of the things, I mean, I have a lot of gambling debts in my life and I stole money from her in my life and I never can now, you know, take that guilt off me and now she's gone and people share these stories with you and you're just 24 years, 23 years old. And you're like, this is a lot of responsibility. This is a lot of, um, emotions that you deal with and you come home, then you have to have a life, you have to have a relationship, you have to then go out with your friends, pretend that you're happy and not sleepy, do stuff on weekends, meet your family, you know, and everyone's having a great time going on trips. So all of that was a lot. And I know that it's the same for people that do house officership and all. But you have to take your positives out of it. You gotta take the, the what you can out of that and the quote on the previous slide. Sorry. No. While if you just go back is that a diamond is a chunk of gold that did well under pressure. And that's what happened. I learned so many lessons in those 22 years that I can use that today in business. Nothing in business would scare me after you've, you've talked to people, um, people's family members and told them that they've just passed away. You've resuscitated people in front of their families. You have done night shifts and you've basically been admitting uh people and, and, and, and doing passive jobs at the same time, you're just exhausted by the end of it. It's a hierarchical system. So you gotta get, you have to get used to getting shit from your seniors all the time. So it was hard work and it gave me a lot of strength to deal with a lot of things in life. What is a business loss after that? What is the loss of a little bit of money if you, what is a loss of, uh, of a little bit of uh income in business when you're taking a risk when you've dealt with that kind of stuff? Nothing. And I took that with me and I took that with me and now we can go to the next slide and I used that in a, in a happy way. So I did a lot of traveling in Southeast Asia at that time. Um One of my colleagues was a, was a young American doctor and he was, his family had moved to Singapore. So he was uh you know, he used to love to travel. So we used to finish our Friday shift at 5 p.m. on the weekends. We had, we didn't have many but uh and then we would just go straight to Changi airport in Singapore and just fly out to whatever the cheapest there used to be a little kiosk in the airport at that time where you could get uh you could bid for flights. So in the areas your flight would be like $50 and you'd be like, ok, where is this one going? And they'll be like, uh it's going to Vietnam uh in about like 2.5 hours and yeah, we'll take it, you know, we didn't even know that we couldn't even pronounce the cities that we were going to. But we just went and then we would come back Monday morning and go and, and, and do our shift and, and a lot of it was actually done to believe it or not, was done to save money because a night out in Singapore was way more expensive than taking a flight going and exploring another city in Asia and, you know, having, you know, a night out there or meeting people, there was more cheaper over the weekend than staying in, in Singapore and going out. So I used whatever opportunity I could get to travel at that point. And I think that was also very important for me because II, after that, I um after the in, in intense sort of 2, 2.5 years that I worked there, I was kind of burnt out and I took some time off and I got out of medicine and I focused on some other stuff that is important, which I've written here, family travel, hobbies, you know, your life and career is important. But these things are, you know, life is much more than medicine. And I think those of you that are at that stage like F one F twos that um want to take a little bit of a break and get out of it and just go and, you know, see, I know a lot of them go to Australia, go to New Zealand, do it. Why not? I mean, you're not gonna get this time back, you're never gonna get this opportunity again. Um And you just get into this rat race of, of, of things in medicine where even a gap is, you have to explain every single gap in your life, which you do at some point when you're applying for jobs in the future you will have to. But you know what I think, um, saying that you traveled and you gained experiences is, is never a bad thing. So I did, II traveled around, I've done around 52 countries now. Uh, I speak about three languages. I got to meet so many different people, experienced so many different things and that really helped me and, um, it's never a bad idea. Um, I then wanted to sort of do something a little bit less stressful. So I joined the United Nations in uh in New York City. And I did um I did some uh medical logistics for them uh in South America. And it was basically the Zika virus vaccine and how to get the Zika virus vaccine to the places where uh it was needed. If you remember back in the 2016, 2015, there was a lot of Zika virus going around in the world uh especially that part of the, the Southern uh Southern America. So I did nonclinical medical stuff. Um and which I really enjoyed. And I II think I'm, you know, I'm always thinking about it and maybe that's something that I will experience in the future again. Um And I really enjoyed that because it was combining my experience in medicine, but then also combining my experience with travel in different communities and also combining my people's skills to try and all bring it all together. And then the management of it all and the leadership qualities, all of that came in together. And again, I wanna remind you these are the same things that you need in business, the exact same things. So I wasn't even realizing it and I was gaining the exact experiences that you need in business. The stuff that they teach you in MBA programs, the stuff they teach you in Bachelor of, uh, business programs is, is exactly what you would learn in your journey through medicine. Uh So I picked up those qualities and those skills as I went along. And um I enjoyed it. And at the, at one point I said to myself, look, um I need to do my specialization and I need to get this chapter of my life over so that then I can focus on what I really wanna do, which is business and all this other stuff and integrate all of that. So I said, you know what, let's head back to London and uh my next slide please. And so I went back to London and I was sure that I wanna do because II wanted to do medicine, but I didn't wanna do the uh ten-year program on medicine and, and get into Act and then core training and then now they've made it into I NT and all of that. But it was just a very long, I think, II think the UK um Sh Short Cells itself in medicine by, by making these very long programs and there's multiple reasons for that. And I've talked about that in talks before and I don't think it's necessary or needed. I think you're losing a lot of doctors here. Um, because of that. So the General practice program really, um, got me very interested. It was a three-year program. You're in and out and you get this good specialty where you can see medicine, you can see Children, you can see adults, you can see old people, you can see young people, you can see everything and you never know what's coming through the door. Uh But before I could get into that program and do my M SRA and all of that with some of you I think are doing. Now, I had to, at that time, there was a rule that you have to do one year in the NHS in any specialty and re familiarize yourself with your, with your, uh with, with medicine and clinical medicine, which I was OK to do. I didn't have a problem. Um and uh, and uh my uncle works as a pediatric cardiologist in gosh, in London. So I called him up and I said, hey uncle thinking of coming back to London. Actually, II think I wrote him an email. I said, hey uncle thinking of coming back to London to uh get him back into clinical medicine again. You know, uh how do I go about it? And if there's anyone that you can get me in touch with for a job. That would be great. And he replied, within 20 minutes, he said, definitely need you here uh contact this person tomorrow morning. And I was like, ok by tomorrow afternoon, by the next day afternoon, I had a job um and I was like, man, this is crazy, like how, how bad is it over there that they need doctors so bad in 24 hours. I was, I was given this job now the job was pediatrics and I was in Queens Hospital in uh in Romford Essex if if any of you guys are from there. Uh and I uh I took it up and I said, yeah, pediatrics is awesome. Great love kids gonna be really fun. You know, let's see how it goes. I've done PS in, in med school and a little bit in in internship and I was like, yeah, let's see how it goes. And I get there. And the first day um Cristiana was the lady and she said, hi, Doctor Gupta. We are very short in neonatal medicine. Um We are a, we're one of the biggest neonatal units in the country and highly specialized. I know you have no experience with that. But would you mind just covering the gap? I was like, what I've never done that. I've never done neonates. I've never done highly specialized NICU. Believe me, when I say highly specialized NICU, this is the most craziest NICU you will ever be part of. It's, it's a catchment area of 1 million people. East London. Uh it's one of the biggest NICU centers in the world which I found out later. Uh and is also the hub of the neonatal transport service, which is a super specialized uh neonatal transport service for um people that, you know, I mean, neonatal um patients. Um some, it, it, it's crazy like they have film shows on it, like there's TV crews that have made uh shows in, in there and there have been some really insane uh doctors that have worked there and some of the people that work there now as well are, are really, really specialized in what they do. And I'm, this guy has just come out of New York and done. The United Nations has not really touched medicine from back in Singapore. And now I'm in the middle of NICU, one of the biggest NICU in the country. And um I set you on call day one and I'm like, OK, that's great. Um This is gonna be insane. And if I don't do this properly, I will really mess up badly. So I have to learn really quickly. So again, it was a very, very steep learning curve. The people I work with were very good. They helped a lot, they were highly specialized. Uh and they got you on board really quickly, especially especially the uh advanced nurse practitioners that have been doing it for so, so many years. A lot of them were from the Philippines and they were insanely good at what they do. I mean, resuscitating premies 24 25 26 weekers. I mean, you can't even see their airway like it's so, it's tiny, resuscitating babies with their little finger. It was just movie stuff and it was just, um, it was a real learning curve and uh by, by month three or month four, I was really into it and I loved it. It was exciting. Um It got me on board, it got me all the experiences that I had learned in the, on those night calls in Singapore. All the, uh the stress management experiences helped me in NICU. And I think that is, um, I'm just gonna, I'm sorry this out. I think that's very important to understand that you don't realize sometimes what experience in your life will help you in a, in a place where you never thought it will, it, it can help. So, uh I remember II had this, uh really interesting case there. Where was the, I don't know if you guys remember the crossbow killer in, in East London. There was a person that shot, um, uh, a lady with a crossbow in her, uh, her two, uh, you know, she was pregnant at the time and I think it was twins. Um, and they were, uh, uh, she was brought into the hospital delivered the twins, they were in our NICU. Um There was so much police presence that night I was on call because there was uh you know, some media reports going around that this killer is out to get the babies as well. So it was, I mean, that's the kind of stuff you saw in in Greens hospital. But it was again, it was such a great experience to have um later in life to in whatever field you were gonna go into. Um So yeah, lesson learned over there. Very important was that you need to play the cards you're dealt. I was dealt that I was not, I didn't opt for it. I didn't choose it. I could have said no, but I said, look, it's gonna waste my time. If I say no and look for another job, let's just go for it and you, you play the cards that you're dealt and you play them well, it'll end up helping you at some point in life. OK? Then um going to general practice training, I think there's another slide before this. If that's, I don't know. OK. Can you go to? Oh Yeah, that's fine. All right. So right before General prac started general practice training, which I'll talk about in the next slide. But right before that, the pandemic hit and, and we all know about the pandemic how it happened. My first memory of the pandemic was just switching on television and looking at this Japanese cruise ship uh docked outside of Tokyo and there was like helicopters over it and, you know, cameras looking down and they're like, these people have been quarantined. They can't enter mainland Japan because they have this virus that's come from China and it's just uh consuming everything, it's killing everybody it touches and we're like, whoa, what's going on here and uh four weeks or about 56 weeks later, uh that was in December of 2019 and six weeks later, you know, the first patient was in uh Saint Thomas in London and it hit our shores. And once that happened, I think those of you who are F one F two s probably won't remember. Medical students. Definitely not a cho maybe registers. Definitely some of the GPS might remember. It was brutal. It was crazy. You were being called in like it was the military like um you know, the whole was put on alert. We were, we were told to come in do our shift, you know, do extra shifts. Uh um There was a scarcity of masks, there was uh patients after patients. My, I was unluckily working on the respiratory unit at that time out of all places. Uh And I was in on the respiratory unit during my training in general practice. And I just had to, to uh see the, the the first wave of patients come in without even having proper equipment because we were very short of equipment at that time, at the start of the pandemic. If you guys remember, uh we didn't have masks, we didn't have proper equipment in the hospitals. It came after months to be honest. And N95 was like a luxury. You had two n 90 fives in the whole ward. And then, you know, the rest of it was just normal regular masks and sometimes you would be short of masks. So if you're wearing a mask, they would tell you why you're wearing a mask because if you wear one, then everybody else is gonna wanna wear one. That's the kind of stuff that happened at the start of the pandemic. Um So it was, it was, it was insane to be thrown into that. Uh and to deal with that and inevitably uh seeing CO uh COVID patients, I got, I got sick with COVID. I was, it was very early on in the pandemic. I was admitted uh to my own hospital where I worked. Um and almost admitted to ICU. Uh it was really, really bad for me at that point. I have asthma. So it was, it was quite difficult. Um My own uh respiratory consultant was the one, you know, I had to call her saying, look, I need an ambulance. I'm quite, I'm quite bad at the moment and she was there waiting for me at the door when the ambulance brought me in and she made sure from start to finish, you know that um I was taking care of and those are your colleagues, those are the people that you work with. They're always gonna have your back. And that's what I realized at that point, how important it is to have your colleagues have your back and you have their back in situations like that. Um The media picked that up. There was a story done on me uh on a, on a social media platform of how I was treating COVID patients and got sick, was admitted into my own hospital into my own unit where I work and it became viral. It went uh I think it was like maybe about a million views online on Facebook and on uh Instagram. And then I started getting calls from all the news agencies, a lot of news agencies around the UK um ITV news, sky news, ABC, um Australian news channels, Canadian Broadcasting Network picked it up uh Indian news channels, uh newspapers from Caribbean to Brazil. And within about a year's time I had done uh about 68 media interviews on various news channels around the world. Um And without me having planned any of this, one of the passions that I wanted to do in my life quite early on. If you remember, I told you was media and journalism and, and, and uh you know, basically anything to do with filmmaking or, or, or cameras and I was in it, I was very much in it uh unexpectedly. So mom was right. She said if you do, if you do one thing and focus on that the other things will happen, they will happen, you will learn to integrate the other things into that. So that was unexpected. And I put this in here uh because sometimes we do give up our other passions in medicine. I mean, a lot of you might have other pa passions that you would want to do. Some of you might wanna be sportsmen, some of you might wanna do other stuff that you never wanted. You can never do because you got into medicine, you might be able to do it. You never know what happens. And, and that was um that was a really life-changing experience with me. And now I'm gonna take that forward with me um wherever I go and with my company because I do a lot of media work now uh through my company as well. Um Next slide, please. Thank you. So, and it was really interesting because when I was doing general practice at that time, general practice was taking a big hit too because we were the first point point of con contact during the pandemic. Um And I was looking at the media and I was looking at the, at the news channels and, and there were people that were losing their jobs, there were people that were in other professions that were being kicked out of their company. They were not, uh you know, because people were sitting at home, the, the so called uh football stars and actors who were earning millions. We're all sitting at home jobless because there was no, well, not jobless, but they were sitting at home because you couldn't leave. There was a pandemic. Um And we were, we were working, we had our jobs, we were doing our, uh you know, we were getting our pay. Um And so mom was right again that she said, you know, medicine will put food on the table and it did. And a lot of ii know a lot of people in my, in my friend circle that lost their jobs during that time. Um So yeah, it, it, it was a challenging time for the whole world anyway, things settle down. Uh Thankfully and we uh sorry, just go back to general practice again. Sorry. And I was in the midst of my general practice training, which is a whole new world. Very challenging, very enjoyable. Those of you who do general practice, I can see a few of you here are GPS. Uh uh uh probably, I don't know if you did it during the pandemic time or post pandemic time, but a lot of changes happened in general practice during that time, we went from being uh very much face to face to very much cell phone and, and, and video based consulting and, and that brought into a whole different aspect of tele telemedicine and tele GP into it, which now I'm employing in my company as well. So that was a, a really life changing experience for me going through training at that particular time. I think I'm very lucky that I had the experience training in general practice at that time because a lot of changes happened in, in general practice at that time and they're still now um happening as we speak and reaping the benefits or sort of disadvantages of it. But um it changed the scope of primary care medicine. It made primary care even more important than it was. And uh as we can see, there's a lot of shortage of gps in, in the UK. Right now, there's a lot of shortage of primary care doctors all around the world. Believe me, it's, it's a, a global shortage and there will be uh as we speak because uh or as time goes by because we are the first port of call. Um And w the pe the decision that make will either keep people out of hospital. A lot of hospital doctors think, oh you're just sending us, you're just sending us after shit. But actually, we're keeping out a lot of shit too. We're keeping out 70 to 80% of the stuff that you guys don't get to see. So it's very important and without primary care, the entire healthcare system will, will collapse. So drug practice has become a passion of mine now. Um And I really do enjoy it because you never know what's gonna walk through the door next next side, please. So after I finished my general practice training, we come down to this point here, which is starting a British company. Um And this is what we're here to discuss. So all of these experiences helped me to this point of starting this company, the British company that I started is called Lemon Global Health. Um I say it's a British company because it was started under British law. Um For those of you who have started a company well done, you should those of you who haven't, I'll briefly go through it really quickly. Uh So it's very easy to start a company in the UK. You go on gov.uk and you pay a certain amount, you set up your company, you write the details down and you, you can basically apply for it and then company's house uh approves and, and gives you a company certificate and you have your company. Uh There's different types of companies that you can start. So a sole trader, for example, is someone that does sole trading doesn't need a limited company. Uh just does a limited amount of trading on under a company name. You don't even have to get it registered. Um You can open a bank. You, you do have to get it registered, but not in such a form or process as a limited company, um you can get bank accounts easily with that and you can do uh whatever trading that you want to do based on a sole trader company, there are tax benefits to having a limited company versus a sole trader company. Uh Those tax benefits uh include a lower taxation for limited companies. Whereas sole traders generally pay the same amount of tax as you and I do uh over uh a certain amount. So those are some business laws and taxing laws that, that differ between limited enterprises and sole trader enterprises. Um But essentially what you need to remember when you start a company is that you need to have a really good accountant. You need to have a good accounting uh software, you need to be uh doing your accounts regularly, you know, whatever accounts is happening, you need to keep a record of that, keep your receipts. OK? Keep every transaction that you're gonna do, keep it with you. Um There's a lot of benefits of opening a company and mainly those benefits are in taxation in pension benefits and in uh claiming expenses back. Um That's the main reason I started my company, I started the company so that I can have taxation benefits. I pay lower uh amount of tax, corporate tax on my limited company on the work I do. Um I have pension benefits. If you're a sole trader, you can pay into the NHS pension if you're a limited company, you're not able to pay into the NHS pension. So you have to do a business, you have to do a separate sort of private pension scheme. Um, but you do get you, if you get, if you can get a limited company, you get a li uh, you get a business bank account, you can get a pretty solid credit line if your credit history is good. Uh, credit scores are good. Um and that credit line can open up a lot of uh different avenues for you. Uh If you want to and or if you want to invest, um you can get credit cards which are uh which have a, a very high um a sort of expense value and then they can also give you benefits like airport lou airport lounges and travel benefits and hotel um schemes and all of that kind of stuff. A lot of the expenses that you can do, you can claim it back. So for example, your courses, your studying courses, um if you want to train, uh if you want to uh you train yourself into becoming something else or specialize in something else, you can claim a lot of the tax um refunds on that uh GMC membership fees, your R CGP fees or your professional membership fees. All of that is tax plan. Um setting up your office at home, you can do a lot of that uh under your company, you can claim a lot of the tax back on that. So there's a lot of benefits. It's a lot of tax benefits that you can get by opening your company. And that should probably be in today's tax environment, which is so bad here in the UK. That should probably be a very important reason for you to be opening a company. When you do open a company, you need to learn a lot about invoicing how you're gonna invoice because I'm a subcontractor. I subcontract myself to different practices, different surgeries and different companies to do the expertise that I do, right? So I need to invoice them. So I need to keep a clear record of what I've done. How many hours I've worked, what I've done for them, how I'm gonna bill them for it. Um I including even mileage, I bill them for my mileage. I need to have business insurance for my car. So all of that stuff is stuff that you learn after, you know, or before you, you start a company, you need to know that stuff really well. And to be honest, the gov.uk website is very good and they explain a lot of that stuff to you very clearly. So do spend some time in going through that and reading about it um before you think about starting a company. Um And then as I said, you can do contracting or subcontracting of work under your company. And then if you wanna expand you can expand it further either within your um within the place where you work or uh expand it internationally. Uh Which is what I plan to do uh in the future. Next slide, please. So what do I do with my company? So as I said, I subcontract a lot of my um my skills or to, to a network. So I work for a network of practices here uh in south coast of England. And I have a very good relation with the people that I work with. I did a lot of my training over there. So I subcontract some of my ser my, my services to them and they allow me to work in their uh in their surgeries in return. So I do a lot of addiction medicine. I do tele gpi, I treat homeless and asylum seekers. Um I work with the British military and, and treat uh uh you know, uh military and, and, and nonmilitary personnel in the, in the camps in the training camps in southern England. Um They're resettled refugees that we treat um who, who've come from Afghanistan after the Afghan war and they've been resettled into different camps over here in the UK. So tho those people are, are being treated joint injections. I, I'm trying to learn how to do ultrasound, guided, guided ones as well. Um And II do a lot of aesthetics um trying to do some media work under the company uh in the future. I'd like to open an online store that sells medical equipment in the UK and abroad. Uh Set up a website which I haven't done yet cause I'm sort of really busy with all this other stuff. Uh And then international expansion uh either into North America or in the Middle East places where I've lived and uh obviously there's licenses required for that. Um And that's a benefit of being a general practitioner. You can get licensing in North America or in, in the Middle East based on your training here in the UK. But you can also get business licenses based on your um nationality, uh a British nationality or other nationalities that you may have. Um And, and so those are the kind of things that you can do. You can also contract other employees and expand your business. And obviously, once you contract other employees, then you have to think about national insurance payments and you have to think about how you, because then you're an employer and you gotta think about business insurance, liability insurance, all of that kind of stuff. So it's not easy, but there is a, but there is a system and uh i it's a, it's a, it's a habitat that allows you to then grow beyond your means. And that's why I tell every doctor that has just graduated or has finished their training. Or even if you haven't finished your training, even if you are in the middle of training a lot of this stuff you can do under your company. Even if you're in F one F two, you can do aesthetics under your company. You can do uh you know, you can, you can sub-contract yourself uh for locums under the company. So a lot of that stuff will save you a lot of money on taxes. Um If you have your own company and you know, if you can combine a few people and then you can make your company bigger and do a lot, lot more stuff and bring in a lot more revenue. Um And then, you know, seek the profits. So that's how it starts. I know I'm in very early stages of this, but all the life experiences I had in my life have brought me to this point and hopefully it'll take me further to expand this company next slide, please. So that's uh that's about it. Uh So the lessons to take away with you tonight, is that nothing that you've done in your life will go waste. Ok, you need to experience all those things to be at this point where you are in your life. And a jo journey of 1000 miles begins with one step. So if you haven't started yet, it's not too late. Ok, it's never too late to live your dream and to make it a reality, uh use every life experience you have. And I want you to do this tonight actually, if you can, before you sleep, think about those life experiences, those major life experiences that you've had, write them down in your diary and say, what was the important lesson that I learned from that, that if I had a company tomorrow I could use in my company, whether it's a skill, whether it's a lesson, whether it's a setback, whatever it is, just write it down, keep it there and let it, let it sort of grow in the back of your mind like that whole that what my friend told me at that point many years ago, you are the product. It let it just stayed in my head and it let it, I let it grow. So do that. Use your every life experience you've had and turn it into an advantage when you do business. And with that, I will end my talk. Thank you. And I am open to any questions you guys may have. Thank you very much, Doctor Veer. Um This was very insightful talk and very interesting um uh topics you you shared. Um We would like to open the floor now for any questions. Um You can feel free please to share your thoughts on the chat. Um and we'll do our best to address them. I'm just gonna go and see. Yeah, can give a couple of minutes. By the way, I do give my, I just read this now. I do give my consent. I don't know if you guys recorded it, but if it has been recorded, I do give my consent for it to be used um on your platform for people to see even after today. Uh Do you think you can achieve similar things while pursuing a different medical specialty? Um So I, what, what, what specialty are you talking about? HIPAA? And I think uh it's, it's definitely doable, it's definitely doable because yes, the, the limiting factor is that you are in a longer training program, as I said, at the start of my, uh, when I started general practice, I chose it because of its duration and because it was uh in and out, you don't just endless sort of, of S ta five ST six ST seven, you're in and then you're out. So, yes, general practice does give you that opportunity to do it, uh sort of faster. But I know orthopedic surgeons that have companies that, and they're, they're minting money. I have, um, obs obs and people that are, are outsourcing their work to private um, contractors even though they're NHS consultants. So it's not impossible. And I, as I said, opening a company will give you an opportunity to do your other skills that you might have gained during your training program. So say you're in an intense training program and say internal medicine or in general in general surgery or orthopedics or whatever you're in and you don't have a lot of time but then you have other skills that you have gained during that program. For example, ultrasound, guided joint injections or even aesthetics or even um you know, uh giving talks on, on, on media channels. You can do all of that through your company. You can be paid for that through your company. You then have limited liability over it because that's what a limited liability does. Limited liability company. You can build an o like stuff like building an online medical store. You don't need to be, um, finished and, uh, be a consultant, uh, in, in orthopedic surgery or in general medicine to do that, right? You don't need to be a cardiologist to do that. These are side things that you can keep building under your company's name as you are training. So, yes, you can. It's doable. Yeah. Uh, is it doable to set up and run a business whilst doing F one and F two? Absolutely. It is 100%. You don't need much. You just need to set up a business is very easy. You just need to go on the website, register your business under the company's house in the UK and boom, you're, you've got, you've got your own company. You do need to be mindful of the accounting of that company. You need to make sure your accounts are clear because the HMRC will come after you. If they're not, you need to keep your receipts. Um, you need to make sure that your accountants are good and they can do the accounts for you. So you do need to hire a few people to sort of help you with that stuff. But, um, at the end of the day, it's very much doable. Has the recent difficulties in general practice in the NHS. Not concerned you with the amount of work available GP partnerships collapsing A RRS. I'm aware of many of my colleagues concerned that the local GP market has dried off. It has, you're absolutely right, ma and this is a very recent trend that has happened. Um And it's quite sad because there is definitely a lot of demand. Um And that's where you know, you, so, so this is very important. So if you're a GP, that is in this situation, you need the company more than you ever, more than ever because that's the, that's what you're gonna use then to get your other source of income. So say you locum GP and your locums are dried up. You don't have enough locums available, but you about these other skills, you know, you can subcontract yourself to tele GP companies like for example, levy or, or um you know, other tele GP companies that do um tele GP sessions, you can subcontract yourself to uh aesthetic clinics. You can, you can take courses to learn ultrasound, guided joint injections, you can take courses to learn minor ops and you can subcontract yourself to private hospitals. So that's where you have to sort of think outside the box. Um And luckily so far the GP environment gives us that ability to do that because it is a very much contract based environment. Um And you're not always in the hospital, like you like some of the other specialties are, but that's where you have to sort of think outside the box that right now things are not going well for locus, not going well for work available. So you need to, and once you get a good place that you work at, you need to keep that relationship going and sort of build that relationship with them so that you can do more work uh for them. To what extent did budget constraints influence your decision to establish your company, particularly during the early stages of your career. Um Budget constraints in terms of like uh uh budget constraints in terms of the money that I had I II think it didn't influence my decision too much because whatever you so paying for a company to start off a company is very little money. You don't need to that much. I can't remember what the amount is at on gov.uk, but you can see that all uh it's not that much but, but the company will save you money because it will save you money through all those things that I said you can claim back on mileage, you can claim back on petrol, you can claim back on taxes. You can claim that adds up. There's a lot of money that you will get. You. You end up paying a lot less tax at the end of the year than your other colleague and that's all money that goes into the pocket or goes into the company. Uh You have to be careful with that where that money goes. You have to have a ledger that says where that money goes. Um because if it's going to your pocket and you're paying personal income tax, but if it's going to the company and if it go, if it goes to other sort of things that you're doing, like setting up your office or expenses that you can claim back, then you can sort of get some help with the company. But this is all written down on gov.uk. Everything is very clearly mentioned, what you can claim back, what you cannot claim back what the tax rates would be all of that. But my first advice would be get a good accountant. Make sure you have got a good accountant that make sure that you are not in trouble with the HMRC because they will come after you. If you, if you play around with it, a lot of people do play around with it. Um Do you see the future of general practice in the UK going private? Absolutely. There's no other choi there's no other sustainable model for general practice. It has to, it has to go either, if not completely private. It has to go at least half and half or, uh, you know, 30 30 70 you know, and, uh, I know a lot of people in England and in, in, in Britain don't agree with that model and they feel that, um, medicine is a right for every person and should be free and everything. And I agree with that. It is a very noble concept. Unfortunately, the world has moved on from when these concepts were made and the population has moved on. The population of the UK is now 70 million people. The NHS is the largest public healthcare system in the world, you know, so there's always a tipping point for every organization. If you're too big, you're gonna collapse and that's what's happening in general practice. So you have to get help from the Corporates, you have to get help from um you know, the, the private, private sector 100%. Yeah. Uh what are the examples of businesses which use our clinical knowledge or skills we've gained, especially related to psych or GP? Um Well, I mean, there's, I don't, I don't know if there's, for example, Levy GP is, is, is someone that I subcontract to and they are a tele GP company. So they allow me um as my company to subcontract myself to them to do tele GP appointments. Babylon Health used to be one of them before and they used to do psychiatric appointments as well. So the telemedicine aspect of it for psych and for GP is very active out there. Um And there's a, a lot of people that are starting their startups. I know at least uh uh at least four or five general practice telemedicine startups that have started in the last one year and they're collecting GPS and after they finish their shift, they come home and they do telemedicine and all you have to do is sign up to their service and then you have 24 hour access to a general practitioner. And you must have seen ads for this with bupa, with Nuffield health with levy. All of these are, are sort of um examples of how A medicine is being privatized and being, getting into that startup environment A I is coming into the picture, artificial intelligence. If any of you have added degrees in, in computers or informatics, you can definitely start your company and start building a model of A I that will integrate into medicine. Um I'll give you an example. There is a, the system one that we use uh in general practice in southern England. I'm not sure if everybody uses that in the in the country system. One was started by a bunch of um Southampton GPS just sitting around in their living room, figuring out how they can um make a, make a sort of an online or sort of a computer system that would help to practice. And now they're, they're millionaires. So it's not impossible. Yes. The current UK environment doesn't, I feel doesn't give its due to entrepreneurship and startups. Um, and I think it should, um, North America is doing it, Middle East is doing it. I don't know why the UK is falling behind on that, uh uh respect, but it is what it is. And, um, uh, you have to find the best of it. There is a huge market to tap into. So, especially with psych. Uh if you want to do, say if you're a fully qualified psychiatrist, you can just, you don't need to be employed by anyone. You can set up your own uh tele telemedicine uh website and start um, taking appointments from people uh all across the country. Um So it's those kind of things that the doctors will now have to do on their own because the system, you know, we have to move away from. Unfortunately, we have to move a little bit away from what the system is telling us to do and sort of think about what we can do on our own to, uh, to grow. Is there anything else I can? Um, did I miss anything? Mhm. Yeah. Well, hopefully that was helpful guys. And uh, if you have any questions, I will give my email and my uh social media and linkedin contact to Nawa and you guys can, uh, you know, get in touch with me at any point. There's no problem at all. Uh Doctor er push for Gupta, you can search me on socials and get in touch with me. Thank you very much for listening to me for 45 minute or one hour almost now. So hope hopefully that was helpful guys. Thank you. Thank you very much. Uh uh It was really nice talking and thank you very much everyone for um joining us. Yeah, I think that's it. Um I don't think we've got more questions. Um Yeah, great, great. We'll call it um a night then. Yes, great. Ok, great. Thank you.