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Intro: 00:00 From ABC News Radio, KIBT 1490 in Southern California, this is BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio, with your host, Tyler Jorgenson.
Tyler: 00:17 Welcome out to BizNinja Entrepreneur Radio. My name is Tyler Jorgenson and today I have the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Geoff Cly, the Honest OBGYN. We’re going to hit a couple of really amazing points about Dr. Cly’s journey, not only about becoming what is the Honest OBGYN, but also just his entire entrepreneurial journey. Cause it’s not the path that a lot of doctors are taking these days. Yeah. So I believe Dr. Cly, I’m gonna call you Geoff, if that’s okay. Sure. You’ve delivered over 3000 babies, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. Did you always know that? Yeah. Like growing up that you wanted to be a doctor?
Geoff: 00:55 Great question. I get that a lot and no, I didn’t think that I wanted. I didn’t even know about being a doctor when I was a kid. I actually wanted to be a lawyer because I have several uncles who are lawyers and I kind of looked up to them. So always thought, oh yeah, I’m going to go be a lawyer. When I grew up and I was in school actually, and that’s when it hit me. I was in a pre-law major and I saw a video of a live birth of a baby. Never had seen anything like that, never really been around babies that much. And when I saw that baby pop out in class, there was a biology lab class. That was it. I said, that’s it. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to deliver babies. I know I’ve got to be a doctor, some kind, but I’m leaving this class. I’m going to figure out how to do it. And I wanted to let her babies rest of my life. Wow. And that was it. That was the day that I made the change and never looked back. It just rang true. I guess with my passion. It was something that I love doing. And then the other parts that came along with it fit me because I’ve always been in the friend zone with girls. I mean literally. So naturally I as an ob-gyn, you develop relationships with women. Maybe that’s because I was raised by my mom mainly, but that fit. And then I love doing surgery and, and building things and fixing things. And you get to do surgery as an ob-gyn. So it’s been a fantastic journey.
Tyler: 02:18 So you now go by the title, you’ve built a business called Honest OBGYN. And this is, it’s something really significant because it highlights and implies that there are a handful of people in your industry that may not be that honest. Tell us a little bit about, like your realization of that situation and yeah, like what made you decide to do something about it?
Geoff: 02:43 Oh man, a great question. Powerful story. And I’ve been doing this for 20 years, so I’ve been in practice for 20 years now. And it’s crazy because now I’m, I’m delivering babies that although they’re young moms, have I delivered as a baby? Right. So along the journey, several things happen that were huge in, impacted me positively and negatively. Two of them that I’ll just go into real briefly is that both of my parents died prematurely from malpractice and bad doctors. That happened about 1918 years ago, real early in my career. And that, as you can imagine, without going into the emotions of it, rocked my world, my family’s world, and I trusted these two docs and found out that they just flat out didn’t care and flat out called one of them called my mom crazy and ended up she had horrible cancer that took her life six months later. And had he not, how do you listen to her? Then she would have had more time with us. So what I realized early was if I can’t trust my colleagues, then what’s going on? So as people who have been through a loss like that, you just do what you got to do. You just survive. You just, you help your family, you pick up the pieces. Right? And so that’s opened my eyes to the fact that wait, just because someone’s a doctor doesn’t mean they’re going to do what they’re supposed to do. And so early on.
Geoff: 04:12 Then shortly after that I found this amazing technology called the Da Vinci robotic system. It’s a virtual reality, three-dimensional laparoscopic surgery tool that most hospitals in America have. They do all kinds of surgeries with that hard surgery, prostate surgery, colon and gynecology. And so what happened was I jumped on that 15 years ago as one of the first docs to adopt it because I like technology, I like new things. And quickly found that again, that there were colleagues of mine lying to their patients that are telling their patients they couldn’t do that surgery because those colleagues didn’t want to learn it and to would lose money if they had sent the patients somewhere else. So over those last 15 years until about four years ago ish, I’ve been trying to teach doctors about doing the right thing, you know, t I teach young residents and medical students and help my colleagues. And what finally kicked it for me, this was the moment that I said I’ve got to do something more than just telling people in my office. Telling people in my small town was just a story where I did surgery in and I did a Da Vinci hysterectomy and the lady went home the same day. So good. Drove the next day back to life in about a week. My partner who I didn’t know was doing this cause we were not allowed to really know what each other’s doing because of the privacy laws. Didn’t old fashioned surgery on, on his patient. She was in the hospital for three days, cut her open like a c section. A lot of pain. Couldn’t drive for two weeks, six-week recovery. And what kicked it for me was I had to cover him for the weekend. Right. Cause we share weekend call. So it was my weekend and so on Saturday and Sunday, I go to see her and deal with her pain, help her out, you know, get her assessed for discharge. And when I was looking through the chart to figure out what to do, how to help her, that’s when I, I saw that he had flat out lied to her, that she wasn’t a candidate for the newer daVinci technology or other surgeries that eight of my partners do. He had chosen not to learn that technology. This is about three years ago. And I was like, enough is enough. So I felt it effect my honor, cause I, I didn’t want to tell her, oh my gosh, if only you would have met one of my other
Tyler: 06:35 [inaudible] would have talked to anybody else in the office. Yeah.
Geoff: 06:38 So that’s when I said to myself, enough is enough. I got to tell the world. I got to tell the people all over America, the country, my attorney, I want to do the world. My attorneys say I got to only tell America, but I’m still working to get that out. These are your options. And if that woman had known what her options are, she could have seen the other nine of us who would have helped her to have a better procedure. And so that started this idea of a website to give women their options. And that’s where Honest OBGYN really came from that, that culmination of years. And finally, even a few years ago, someone just not telling the truth, I was tired of it.
Tyler: 07:19 So I used the, actually the doctor analogy a lot when I talk about marketing and business with people. So somebody will come, if you’re looking for an example and a, if somebody is looking to grow their business and they talk to someone who is a Facebook ad specialist, well then they’re going to tell them they should use, oh, you should use Facebook ads. Or they talked to someone as a funnel specialist. Oh, you should. You need a funnel. And if they go to someone who’s branding experts, like all you need a whole logo package and you need all of this. Yeah, and the same thing, you know, I use that to explain that to people in business. I use the medical example and I’ll say, yeah, well if your back hurts and you’d go to a chiropractor, they’re going to tell you you need an adjustment. If you go to a spinal surgeon, they’re going to say you need surgery. If you go to an acupuncturist, they’re gonna say you need acupuncture. And you know, I learned a long time ago like in my teens that doctors have their own bias and that and that all humans do and that we all present from our lens of what’s really what’s best for us. And so just recognizing that it kind of opened my eyes to just how things work in general, but it’s still knowing all of that. It baffles me that, I mean this doctor that you’re describing, patient came in and that patient had within that hospital, right, multiple options. But with that one doctor, they happen to be seeing, they got given the more difficult of the options and didn’t even know. I mean it sounds like they knew it existed, but they were told it’s not going to be good for you. Right. Just, it literally, it boggles my mind. And I think there’s probably countless daily examples that are just like that.
Geoff: 08:53 Yeah, you’re absolutely right. And that the medical system, see it allows for this wide range of techniques. The techniques have to fit inside of this wide range. But the reason that is, is it’s, it is an old boys club and it is really, a lot of it is about money and cost because if you’re in an area where you don’t have a Devinci in your hospital or you only have one community doctor, you know, in the old days, 30 40 years ago, that was all you had. Right? But now we have the, we have, we have, you know, bigger systems where you could drive two hours easily and get the newer stuff, right. So the system still allows that old procedure to be done without violating an ethics principle. But as you know, we all know that it’s, if you go to buy a car right now and the dealer sells you a car with a roll-up the window, it’s still gonna work, but you sure are going to be upset when you find out for the same price. You could have gotten a car with automatic windows like most other people are getting. So yeah, it’s crazy. And in a way,
Tyler: 09:57 Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting you said that violates ethics principles and that and you’re implying like the ethics boards and the medical boards like would they view as ethics, right. Cause ethics are relatively subjective. Like to me knowing that there’s a better option for someone and not presenting that to them. I feel that’s an ethical but I’m not on the medical board so
Geoff: 10:17 Well yeah it is unethical that and that’s where the trickiness gets to because of all the privacy laws for example. So if I would not have been a been rounding on that patient that weekend, I would not have been allowed to ever look at her chart. And so only if anybody would’ve ever questioned or if she ever had a complication, would anyone else know? So those privacy laws is part of why these doctors can hide behind their medical degrees and act like or try to pass off that their ethical when the real reason is, and I asked this person, I said, why don’t you go get trained, you can be trained, it’s Wednesday and you can be trained by Friday. Literally two days. He was like, I’m close to retirement. I’m gonna retire in 10 years. I don’t know,
Tyler: 11:04 10 years, 10 years is his version of close to retirement. How many, roughly how many procedures will that doctor do in 10 years? Pick up a thousand so to several thousand surgeries. Oh, I don’t need to make all of those. Yeah, 3000 people’s life better. I’m close to retirement like, oh man. Okay, so this highlights really what I think [inaudible] is the entrepreneurial spirit, right? The entrepreneurial spirit looks at that situation and says, that’s not okay. I’m going to take action and do something about it. The non-entrepreneurial spirit, I don’t know what even call that is. The guy who just sits with complacency. I’m fine. It’s okay. I agree. You’ve got that spirit. You started building Honest OBGYN over the last few years. You’ve also done some really cool other entrepreneurial things to diversify your, your portfolio and to create, what are some other things that you’ve created?
Geoff: 11:57 Yeah. And as a doc, I guess a lot of times we do these things and don’t realize they’re entrepreneurial, but really many times they are. So as joy, when I was younger, I got into a practice and inside the practice we’re looking at ways to expand our business unit to bring in more revenue to cover costs. And so we would look at business lines. One was cosmetic lasers, you know, for hair removal, uh, aging. That was one thing that we did. And that was a kind of an entrepreneurial thing because it wasn’t being done very commonly. This is probably 15 years ago. We also decided to build a surgery center because we knew that we could offer some really quality surgeries at a lower cost. So going out and you know, learning that curve and how do you buy the land, how do you build a surgery center, how do you meet all the regulations is some of the things, opening new offices and then working with the hospitals to come up with new units in new buildings and new construction and labor delivery in new techniques. So all that can fall inside of that and then it’s kind of cool looking back that I guess I never thought of myself because I was in this organization, but, but really the spirit is still there. How we think about doing it in a better way, a new way.
Tyler: 13:08 Well, and I think now more than ever, it’s almost like doctors have gone all the way full circle back to when they had to almost be independent practitioners because you do, you’re isolated like you just talked about from privacy laws, but you also, you have, you have to grow your practice. You have to take care of yourself because I mean we live in a world where things change rapidly. You’re going through this right now. All right. What’s one of the major pieces of advice that when you go and speak to new residents that you say, hey, you’re about to embark on a 30 40 year career?
Geoff: 13:41 Yeah, no, yeah, the major change. For example, for me, I helped to build this massive system where we went from 70 doctors to over a thousand doctors. And with that comes along with a hundred offices of seven hospitals and a massive multispecialty group and which was a fantastic journey. And so along those lines that also after doing that, really being on the board of directors for five years, I was able to step off the board and focus on some of this kind of venture. And then the family, I’ve got a bunch of kids running around also. And so what I would tell the residents and the students and do tell them is that you’ve got to go with what is in your gut, the right thing and what you believe is honest, true and just, and that’s going to be the guiding principle. If you go with that, everything else will fall in place looking for money as your guiding principle, as a doctor, you’re in the wrong profession and you’re not that smart because there you can make a lot more money. And I’m talking, you know, the big money in the stocks and other areas. So I tell them that and that’s helped me at least because I’m glad I’ve said that for so many years because when I launched this website, the system that I helped to create this massive system, they basically freaked out about it and they said, give us your website or turn it off. And I’m like, Whoa, wait ha, I’m not going to give it to you. They were going to rebrand it. We’re going to make it our website, but you’re not allowed to have it yourself. And I said, hold up. I’d done mess with. What I’m trying to do is tell people honest stuff. And they said, well why can’t you just tell people in your office every week the honest information, why do you have to tell the world? I go, why I’m a doctor? Because I help people, not doctor for you, only your you as my employer. And so in the end what happened was they said, it says, I want you to give it to them. If I didn’t turn it off in 48 hours, I was terminated without cause Outta here. Get your stuff out, clean out your office, get your of the Palomas off the wall that had been there for 16 years.
Tyler: 15:51 Yeah. This isn’t [inaudible]. Just to highlight that point, this isn’t some like random job that you’d gotten. You helped build this.
Geoff: 15:58 Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. I mean I teach my fellow partners how to do Da Vinci Surgery. I teach other doctors. I did the most Da Vinci gynecology surgeries in the hospital and the system, and so I guess I’m not sure exactly what it is, but I think what scared them, this is what I think scared them because it doesn’t make sense other than this, is that this idea that I have a cause, there’s nothing else out there. I’ve taken my doctor knowledge and put it in the Internet and a very concise package like you, I would tell you in my office and capitalizing on that, trying to offer it at a very low value or a low cost so that from any one from anywhere they’ll get the diagnosis from their own doctor. Right. But I’m going to provide them the guidance with the treatment plan that their doctors on the right track or if their doctor’s off like that. My one former colleague, they can either change doctors or ask him or her, hey what? I don’t want that outdated surgery. So I think the entrepreneurial spirit is what ultimately scared the system. That’s my assessment and ended up saying, Hey, well you can’t do that here. Cause if other doctors did it, maybe it threatens,
Tyler: 17:15 well I think, I mean bottom line they knew there was a percentage of people within their practice that we’re not going to align with the data you were publishing. That’s absolutely true as well. And so those people don’t want to look bad. Don’t make us look bad Geoff, stop it. Stop making us growth. I only had 10 more years. Right. That that blows my mind and the fear of growth. Yeah. Just so people know, like honest ob, gyn.com and I know that Geoff has put together a really package that kind of gives deep information and plans on some of the most common things. If you click on members and become a member, it’s got a really cool thing going so definitely check that out. We’ll put links in the show notes and everything. Tell us a little bit about that. You’ve put together this amazing program where people get this, I think the women’s guide to ob, Gyn health and empowerment and it covers quite a few subjects. What are some of those subjects and maybe what’s like one of the most surprising misunderstandings of one of those subjects?
Geoff: 18:19 Yeah, it covers a hysterectomy, bleeding, cramping, pain, pelvic prolapse, and miscarriage prevention. And so that’s right now. And then we’re adding to that all the time, which is really cool because my goal is that if a woman has any ob Gyn issue, she can come to our site and get the doctors guidance plan, treatment plan for it. So she instantly knows some answers and to make sure her, her doctor’s on the right track. But miscarriage prevention is one that might be a little surprising. And I’ve been working on preventing miscarriages for 20 years, and most of my pregnant women are those who have been told from other doctors. You’re never going to have a baby. You just forget about, you’re gonna have to adopt. And it’s sad, but when they come to me, I know that in a high, 90% of the time on those exact women, I can find the answer, the reason, and we can fix it. Any reason.
Tyler: 19:18 Yeah. And Yeah, because yeah, I’m like, I’m interrupting only because that’s such a staggering number. So 90% of these women that come to you, if they didn’t find you, they would live in this perpetual state of believing they would. They could never have a child
Geoff: 19:36 right until now. And let me tell you this, cause it’s not ego that I’m saying this boy, right? Because on that women’s guide to health and empowerment, I’ve put together the entire treatment plan, lab plan, medication plan that I’ve been doing for 20 years. So now a woman can get that for $37. They know what labs they can get, where they can get them in the country without a doctor’s order, what medications they should use and at what times during the pregnancy and the milligrams, the exact steps. And then how do they protect their baby as they get close to delivery? The exact things. So that’s one number one. One I’m excited and it’s not ego that why I say they come to me because for some unknown reason, doctors, ob Gyn don’t like to deal with miscarriages. And there they blow women off. And so the women who are taking care of properly, they’ve already found their answers because their doctor has done what I’ve done. I’ve learned this stuff at conferences. I did not invent this stuff. I just heard it from other people and their doctors are taking care of them and preventing, but so many people from around the country are telling me right now that their own doctors are refusing to acknowledge this, refusing to order the labs. There’s, I don’t know why we don’t lose anything or for labs.
Tyler: 21:01 No. I think that’s why almost every story that I’ve heard from some, a friend or a loved one who’s gone through marriage has always been, you know, it’s very sad. They’re dealing with emotion. But then when they talk about the doctor, they’re like, yeah, they just told us to go home and call them if you need anything. But there was no plan. No. Here’s what we’re going to do to prevent this going forward. It was just better luck next time. Yeah, I know. Like they were playing a video game. Yeah, go sad.
Geoff: 21:28 So it’s kind of weird, but so we’re taught in med school, we’re even taught now in residency to let a woman have two miscarriages before we look into why they’re having miscarriages. Now I’m not on that committee, but I sure would like to make a difference. That’s crazy, right? Why? Why not me? First one, right. To save money. I mean we spend so much money on so many nonsense things in medicine, you know, so in a five in that much money to do the lab test and find out. So I think that’s part of the reason a lot of doctors are taught in brain. They’re told you’re don’t work it up. But man, by looking at someone’s history and working it up, you can find it out before they even have a miscarriage because inevitably their family members are going to have shown a pattern of that. So we can make a difference before it happens. And I’m excited because we’re about to launch because of what you just said. Women don’t know what to do and they have a miscarriage. We’re about to launch a miscarriage protocol and miscarriage system where anywhere in the country, if a woman has a miscarriage, if they get me their address on the website, we’re going to send them a miscarriage kit overnight. So the next day they have a miscarriage kit. What does that include? It includes a container for the baby or the specimen or the early tissue, something for burial. It includes if you want to take it in to get it evaluated. The lab container includes something for your toilet to help prevent this from happening. You know, before you realize and have information about how to help you go through it with dignity and how to help you kind of get through this loss. It’s a loss of a family member and then how do you prevent it next time? So I’m excited about that because that’s gonna make a difference for women all over the country. And we’re getting grants, grant money to pay for that. But to help someone in their time of need is what it’s all about for me.
Tyler: 23:26 Yeah, it’s absolutely amazing what you’re working on and what you’re doing. And so I highly, highly encourage people to go to Honest OBGYN.com you’re also on Facebook? Yep. Are those the two main places people should go to find you?
Geoff: 23:38 Yeah, Honest OBGYN is our Facebook page. We’re, we’re on Twitter and we’re on Instagram, but mainly right now is Facebook. We’re working on building out other avenues.
Tyler: 23:47 Awesome, and then please check out onto honestobgyn.com if you’re interested in getting that information. Just click on, there’s a link at the top that says become a member and it’s an amazing deal that just ridiculous amount of information that really goes to support this amazing cause of empowering women with the information they needed to have the best health and care that they can have. Absolutely. I really appreciate you coming out on the show. It’s been phenomenal talking with you and getting to know a little about this journey and your mission. Thank you. Last question. Yeah, because I think all of this is about us building the life that we want. What’s one major item on Dr Geoff Cly’s bucket lists that you’re going to do in the next 12 months?
Geoff: 24:27 Wow, great question. Okay, so on the bucket list is something I just had just happened. I invited to do, I’m helping to organize the world’s largest medical and cancer screening event in India on January 26. In one day we’re going to see and treat 15,000 people and it’s Guinness Book of World Records will be there. But it’s people who live two and three hours away from a doctor and they can’t leave their job because there’ll be fired and won’t be able to feed their family. So in one day we’re going to fill up a 747 jet with volunteers. Fly over there on Thursday. Do this treatment on Saturday and just help so many people and then fly back on Monday. So that’s something I’m proud to be honored to be part of. But it’s life-changing stuff. So that is the biggest thing on my bucket list.
Tyler: 25:23 Absolutely. Love it. Thank you so much, Geoff. We really appreciate you and all of you out there in the radio, podcast, Internet world, wherever you’re listening. Thank you. And it’s your turn to go out and do something.
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