"Knowing the benefits of marketing is one thing; understanding what truly works is everything."
Welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview with Sam Tejada, the visionary entrepreneur behind Liquivida, a dynamic franchise revolutionizing the landscape of preventative health and wellness.
Drawing from a rich background as a firefighter-paramedic, Tejada’s journey into the wellness industry reflects a profound commitment to enhancing individuals’ overall well-being.
Liquivida isn’t merely a wellness center; it’s a testament to Tejada’s unwavering dedication to proactive healthcare, prioritizing preventative measures over reactionary treatments.
In this illuminating discussion, Tejada shares the genesis of Liquivida, charting his trajectory from frontline emergency services to pioneering wellness solutions. His entrepreneurial spirit, coupled with a passion for helping others, propelled him to recognize the pressing need for a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery.
As he navigated the challenges of building a franchise empire, Tejada remained steadfast in his mission to redefine health and wellness. With the recent release of his collaborative book, co-authored with industry luminaries, Tejada seeks to empower individuals and professionals alike in embracing holistic approaches to well-being.
Join us as we embark on a journey through the visionary mind of Sam Tejada and the transformative impact of Liquivida on shaping the future of healthcare.
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Table of Contents
We are thrilled to have you join us today, welcome to ValiantCEO Magazine’s exclusive interview! Let’s start off with a little introduction. Tell our readers a bit about yourself and your company.
Sam Tejada: I’m a retired firefighter/paramedic who started the health and wellness franchise, Liquivida. Liquivida is a full service wellness center that focuses on proactive and preventative measures to health and wellness, rather than reactive medicine, which simply treats symptoms.
From a young age, I have always wanted to help people, both personally and in the type of jobs I chose. I didn’t want to simply make a living, I wanted to make a difference. I started my path in helping people by becoming a firefighter paramedic when I was 19 years old.
That path led me to become increasingly aware of the vast divide between the quality of healthcare services accessible to people from different socioeconomic groups. While working a side job at Cenegenics Health Institute, a pioneer in the functional medicine space, I learned about the benefits of taking a proactive approach to health.
I was inspired and educated by the man who would become my mentor, Dr. Robert D. Willix, Jr,. After attending every seminar and conference I could, I founded Liquivida with $500 in my back pocket, switching gears from helping people recover from being sick to helping prevent illness through natural preventive medicine.
Since then, Liquivida has grown into an established franchise and a recognized brand in the health and wellness industry. I have recently released my first book, “How To Win In Modern Wellness,” which is a collaborative effort with the top CEOs and leaders in the wellness industry.
The purpose is to educate, enlighten and empower medical professionals, aspiring entrepreneurs and health-conscious consumers tired of sick-care, about the innovative solutions and preventative therapies that are available to them. As a leader in this industry, my mission is to redefine health and wellness, and help people to live longer, live better, live healthier and happier lives.
What advice do you wish you had received when you started your business journey and what do you intend on improving in the next quarter?
Sam Tejada: I wish I would have known the importance of PR and marketing. I understood the benefits of marketing, but it was important to understand what really works. Most people never make this a priority.
If I had treated the business as a multimedia company to move our products from the very beginning, we would have been so far ahead of everyone else.
My goal is to focus on having the right team members in place to write, record and televise, and utilize the optimal content outlets to get our message out to the public.
Here is a two-fold question: What is the book that influenced you the most and how? Please share some life lessons you learned. Now what book have you gifted the most and why?
Sam Tejada: For the Culture by Dr. Marcus Collins. I loved this book because it goes deep into breaking down the importance of your messaging as a company when you are producing marketing campaigns or any kind of communications.
At the end of the day, it’s not what you say, it’s what people hear. It’s critical to learn different ways to create an intimate message within the consumer.
He really delves into the idea that “people move people”; so it’s important to influence people to influence other people.
An eye-opening life lesson for me was that I am not the one who creates the culture for my company. No business owner is. It’s the people who buy our products and use our services – our targeted demographic, if you will, who establish what the company culture should be. The employees of the company need to represent who these customers are.
At this point, I would say this is the book I have gifted most. I wanted my entire team to understand the importance of this message.
Christopher Hitchens, an American journalist, is quoted as saying that “everyone has a book in them” Have you written a book? If so, please share with us details about it. If you haven’t, what book would you like to write and how would you like it to benefit the readers?
Sam Tejada: I have recently released my first book, How To Win In Modern Wellness: Delivering Trackable Results to Impatient Consumers.
As I engaged with other leaders in the modern wellness industry, I formed a lot of valuable relationships, sharing visions, discussing standards and regulations, and exploring ways to expand access to preventive treatments and modalities, I knew I had to do more.
It occurred to me that our industry really needed more: more wellness-conscious individuals, more wellness centers, more medspas and preventive healthcare locations to truly create a healthcare transformation.
That is what led to the creation of this book. My vision was to write an educational and inspirational guide that would inspire entrepreneurs and medical professionals to pursue well-care over sick-care.
The best way to deliver this message was to enlist the expertise of the most successful leaders in the wellness space. (Also known as my competitors!) I knew they would join me in a collaboration that had the potential to change and even save millions of lives in this new era of health and wellness.
They showed up, spoke out and each has a chapter filled with invaluable lessons, insights and strategies. Our collaborative goal is for this book to be a game-changer to the healthcare landscape.
In your experience, what tends to be the most underestimated part of running a company? Can you share an example?
Sam Tejada: Marketing and public relations. These are the things that most people don’t realize they need to understand. It doesn’t matter what business you’re in or how much you know about running your company.
Everyone needs to be aware of the importance and value of marketing in order to have the proper visibility and notability of your business. This ties directly into the different systems and processes that then tie into your data so you can evaluate the ROI on the money you’re spending.
Within our company, our Marketing and PR systems and processes offer added value by producing quantifiable data that we then use to implement other systems that all tie into each other, like a CRM and POS system.
On a lighter note, if you had the ability to pick any business superpower, what would it be and how would you put it into practice?
Sam Tejada: I think the best business superpower to have would be the ability to have the absolute best team members in place for every position.
It’s hard to know if you’re picking the right person for a given role and there’s always a learning curve, not just with knowledge, but with personalities and work styles.
The bottom line is that you can’t do it all by yourself, so you need the best of the best team members. I’d like to be able to assess that right out of the gate so they can do their thing and I can move on to the next.
Jerome Knyszewski, VIP Contributor to ValiantCEO and the host of this interview would like to thank Sam Tejada for taking the time to do this interview and share his knowledge and experience with our readers.
If you would like to get in touch with Sam Tejada or his company, you can do it through his – Linkedin Page
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