"If you're passionate about it, do it."
Dr Lisa Beckett is dedicated, curious and ambitious doctor passionate about medicine and technology. Constantly learning and always keen to take on new challenges, she has a goal to balance comprehensive care with innovation which has led to founding Candor Medical; an online platform providing healthcare and education Australia-wide.
Taking on this role has involved a broad range of skills including web development and coding, public relations, health writing and business development. Lisa is an Australian trained specialist GP with further qualifications including a Diploma of Child Health and a Bachelor of BioMedical Science, is an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant and works as a medical educator for GP registrars and junior doctors.
Lisa has strong interests in medtech and health innovation, reproductive and family medicine, sexuality and fertility medicine, medical education and mentorship. Chasing the elusive work/life balance, Lisa is also an artist and mum of two.
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Table of Contents
Thank you for joining us, please introduce yourself to our readers.
Lisa Beckett: Thank you for having me! I’m Lisa Beckett, I’m a general practitioner and the founder and managing director of Candor Medical; an online platform that provides consultations, prescriptions and education to patients. I am fellowed with the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, have a Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery and Bachelor of BioMedical Science, a Diploma of Child Health, and I’m an International Board Certified Lactation Consultant.
Candor is my first venture as an entrepreneur. It has been an exciting experience taking on so many new roles and I’m really proud of what we’re doing.
Outside of medicine and business I’m also an artist and a mum of two boys.
To get us started, can you tell our readers what does your company solve differently in the crowded marketplace? Give an example or share a story.
Lisa Beckett: Our goal is to provide online consults and treatments while maintaining the same high ethical standards you would expect from your trusted family doctor.
Medtech is a fast growing field. When I started to come across companies in this space it was surprising the amount of anti-doctor rhetoric in their marketing. They seemed to feel that the best way to get patients to use an online service was to demonise traditional medical professionals. Research shows a lot of these companies are run by marketing executives with no prior medical experience.
This concerns me. When you see your doctor you expect patient care to be their highest priority. When you use an online service designed by a marketing professional, their highest priority is likely growth or profits.
We can see this in the way the service is provided. There’s a tendency to upsell patients into expensive and unproven treatments. Side-effects of the treatments are downplayed and benefits are over emphasised. There are reports of companies pressuring doctors to prescribe unnecessary or dangerous treatments to meet KPI’s.
I created Candor because I didn’t want this approach to become the future of medicine. At Candor we don’t vilify traditional medical practitioners, our treatments are evidence-based, and we won’t ever give our doctors KPI’s for prescriptions. We want to ease the burden on the existing medical system without severing the patients connection to their existing GP.
While your company is growing, what are some of the challenges you face? Hiring? Tech development? Raising capital? Branding? Tell us more about the journey.
Lisa Beckett: Hiring in the tech industry is always challenging. In this environment there are a lot of attractive companies competing for top talent. It’s a great time to be a University graduate in the STEM fields!
As a small company it can be hard to make a case why someone should choose you over a much larger company. Google or Microsoft look great on a resume and they spare no expense when it comes to employee benefits. But there’s definitely a certain type of person who’s drawn to the magic of the start-up environment. Identifying that talent before they get snapped up is the tricky part.
Everyone has a different story, what influenced your decision to be an entrepreneur, what would you have done differently?
Lisa Beckett: I’d never intended to become an entrepreneur. I love being a doctor.
Several things coincided for me. There is a high level of burnout in medicine. Even after finding an amazing practice and team, I was finding it difficult and contemplated leaving.
It was around the same time I gained insight into the way other online platforms were being run. I’d devoted myself to medicine and when I realised the importance of a service like Candor the decision was made for me.
I definitely had doubts. It’s scary to go out on your own. I would sometimes stop and ask myself, ‘can I really take this risk?’. But I was so confident in the idea that over time that question became ‘can I really risk not taking this risk?’
The timing of our launch couldn’t have been worse though. We launched a week after I had my second child. I’m an avid learner and keen to wear many hats, but I’m also a perfectionist. Unfortunately it’s impossible to do everything and do it well, so learning to delegate and recognise my limits has been important.
Now for the main focus of this interview: what qualities or characteristics do women entrepreneurs have that make them great leaders? Please share some examples.
Lisa Beckett: A lot of women are prepared for the challenges of running a business without even realizing it. Sociologists talk about the concept of the ‘mental load’ women take on in a typical family. It’s as cognitive labor of running a household. The anticipating of needs, identifying options to fill them, making decisions, and monitoring progress. All skills that are highly translatable to entrepreneurship.
These days I think most men are actually pretty happy to help with the household chores, but the classic line is ‘just tell me what needs to be done’. So then it’s the woman doing the delegating. I think that’s why for a lot of women, the managerial challenges of running a company don’t feel that foreign to them. We’re very used to juggling all the important things.
What are some of the biggest challenges you still see women face while conducting business, compared to their male counterparts? What would you like to see change, and how would you make it happen?
Lisa Beckett: Women have made great strides in my lifetime, especially in the field of medicine. But women are still expected to be the main caregivers of children, even when working full time. Men still receive far less parental leave than women in Australia and around the world. A lot of women still feel the pressure to give up on their careers when they start a family.
Equal parental leave would empower a lot of women. And send the message that men and women can have an equal role in breadwinning and childrearing.
With all of your experience as a business leader, what is the most important thing you can tell fellow entrepreneurs that you’d like to share with aspiring women entrepreneurs?
Lisa Beckett: This journey has made me appreciate the value of entrepreneurship. Your business doesn’t have to change the world. But if you can see a way to improve people’s lives, to make a process easier, or more enjoyable or sustainable, then you have to go for it. If you’re passionate about it, do it.
Self doubt is normal. There will be many times when you consider giving up. But once you start seeing your product or service helping people it will light a fire inside you and you will find a way to make it work.
What do you plan on tackling during 2022? Share your goals and battles you expect to face.
Lisa Beckett: 2022 is going to be a big year. We aim to grow our business to be a major player in the industry and we plan to expand our services to offer more consultations and treatment options. We have a number of avenues for expansion planned out. Sometimes it feels like we have more ideas than hours in the day!
The other challenge is balancing all that with funding. Big dreams are great but we have to keep the lights on too. The critical thing this year will be putting talented people in key positions so we can make those dreams reality.
How do you keep learning? Podcast? Books? Audiobooks? Videos? Share some of your greatest sources of inspiration? Share an impactful story.
Lisa Beckett: After studying for more than 10 years to gain my Fellowship I found myself with a lot of spare time when I finished. But it was great to be able to fill that time with new interests. When starting Candor I used Codecademy to help understand the platform that needed to be built. It was an invaluable resource and the skills I learned have allowed me to be involved with every aspect of our technology. I’ve learnt marketing skills through Skillshare and similar platforms. After spending the majority of my adult life at university it’s exciting how much you can learn online, often for free or at a very low cost.
I’m sure our readers will be very thankful for the insights you have shared. Where can our readers follow up with you?
Lisa Beckett: To contact me directly I can be reached at: [email protected]
Mike Weiss, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Lisa Beckett for taking the time to do this interview and share her knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Lisa Beckett or her company, you can do it through her – Instagram
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