Explore Rachid Akiki's journey in the Telehealth Industry

When I hear ‘rootless’, I think of adaptability. The more you can adapt to your circumstances, the better. It’s about improving your strengths and developing the skillset to build things. Being rootless means being an entity and being self-sufficient without following a traditional path or doing what the society imposes on you. Having this rootless mindset is a big power that drives what we do. – Rachid Akiki

So, I am Lebanese. I was born in a small village in Lebanon. I come from a modest family. We are five kids. I went to medical school, studied physics and then decided to come to the U.S so I could pursue my dream of becoming a doctor. During that time, my driving force was my curiosity about the world. I wanted to study why we have gravity, sun, the brain. When I came here, I realized that the world is so big and fascinating that even when we do business, it’s part of life. If you can find or spot opportunities, then why seize them? This is how I started. Afterwards, I did my MBA and started working as a doctor. – Rachid Akiki

I think it all starts by trying to look inside yourself and figure out what life truly means to you. If it means working from 9 to 5 and making money, maybe you should keep doing what you’re doing. However, if you value freedom, a good quality of life or want to bring some changes into people’s lives and make an impact, then you can start thinking outside of the box. You should find out how to define your power, expertise or skillset so you can benefit the world in a more meaningful and efficient way. You don’t have to go through the same path everybody tells you to follow in order to be successful. There is also another pathway which is following your passion and beliefs. You will eventually figure it out. – Rachid Akiki

If you’re curious, take that extra step to try to figure out and learn things by yourself. If you’re not afraid to ask questions, no matter how simple it is, if you build immunity towards the judgment of other people, you can definitely go forward. When I was a kid, I used to stutter a lot and was bullied in high school. One of my skills is being immune to judgment because I had to endure it for some part of my childhood. People used to laugh at me, imitate me during that time. Nowadays, I don’t stutter anymore. I didn’t need the help of a psychologist. I just created my own way of not stuttering. – Rachid Akiki

So, it’s like running a marathon or a triathlon, which I just did. You have to endure the pain of uncertainty. In life, there is a spectrum of uncertainty and certainty. We keep navigating the spectrum. If you have a stable job and career, you’re in the certainty part of the spectrum. Sometimes, we all need some uncertainty to spark our lives but if you have too much of it, you’ll think why are you not like other people and have stability. Embracing the pain of uncertainty makes everything possible. When you are uncertain of anything, then anything can happen. This is what drives me. If you’re too certain about things, you’re too certain about the outcomes too. If you’re too uncertain, you can look at the positive side, say that anything can happen and go there. – Rachid Akiki

Being a doctor definitely helped me get to where I am today. Learning so much about the human being, psychology and anatomy gave me a huge leverage. I’m very grateful I went through this path but you don’t need to do the same. You don’t have to become a doctor or engineer. If you’re curious enough, you can go and figure it out. However, if you have the chance and endurance to go through an engineering or medical doctor degree, go for it because you’ll learn so many things that will be very useful in your path. So, do what you feel is right. Throughout your life you will face adversities and you should learn from these experiences and improve yourself. This is how you do things out of passion and not out of orders. – Rachid Akiki

I think the first step is to find a need in the marketplace. You have to find an opportunity and once you find it, you have to track how you can fill this void. Once you go through the user journey, you can understand what is needed to be built first. When we started building “Bookzdoctor”, we found out that most patients struggle a lot to find a doctor who’s available. Most patients struggle so much with their mental health and all they need is somebody to listen to them. It was impossible to find someone online and even if you did, it took so much time and was really expensive. So, we firstly tried to listen to those patients in order to understand their pain and create a program where we actually care about the patients and are not there just to prescribe medications. We’re here to help them day by day, week by week, month by month until they get better. – Rachid Akiki

You always start by doing it yourself first. If you need to fill a void, you have so many things to do. Once you have too much work, you can start managing other people that can do the same thing you do but in a better way. I’m not a coder or a marketing guy but I know a little bit because I read about it. What I can do is leveraging this to hire somebody that is an expert in marketing or coding that can take it to the next level. You start with slowly learning by yourself until you sequentially get help. Ask the right questions. If you want go from A to B, maybe you can read about it or maybe someone else could take you there in a faster and more efficient way. That’s how you start building a team, a company. I believe that every company should start by a user-centric approach. If you build company to make money, your approach is wrong. If you start a company to build reputation, your approach is also wrong. Always listen to your customers. They’re the ones that will tell you what works and what doesn’t. I believe that one of the greatest skills somebody can have is to listen. The most seekd-out jobs out there are about being a coach, executive coach, doctor, lawyer. Those jobs require so much listening and I think it is undervalued. If you can actively listen to somebody, things can change so much. – Rachid Akiki

Every physician goes through a background check. We have an interview with them, introduced them with our vision, mission and work with them hand in hand so they can adapt to our way of doing things. Every physician usually has his own practice or works at the hospital so working with me is like a side job for them but we make sure that the patient always comes first. We have a 2-week interaction period between the doctor and patient before the chat closes. That’s how it works. – Rachid Akiki

So, we offer 3 services. We connect doctor to patient which is done by 2 types of services, direct care or second opinion. Direct care is when you find out you have a symptom and want to figure out what’s happening so you get in touch with a doctor. That doctor should be licensed where you are located. If you’re in Boston, the doctor should be licensed in Massachusetts. You can talk to the doctor, see him, he can prescribe medications and tell you exactly what you need to do. In the other case, you may have a symptom, go to the doctor but are not convinced. Maybe the doctor had the language barrier, was super-fast and didn’t really explain it right. That’s when we offer a second opinion consult. That doctor who gives the second opinion can be anywhere in the world. Let’s say, if you’re in Albania, you can take second opinion from a doctor from U.S who might really try to connect with you, listen to you and review what has been prescribed to you and give you his opinion. – Rachid Akiki

We are now focused on primary care but we have specialized care as well. We also do group care. For example, if your primary care physician needs to consult with a radiologist, he can join the group and you’ll have two or three physicians that you are chatting with in the same group which is really helpful. The outcome is amazing since it’s a good care and includes input from different types of specialized physicians. – Rachid Akiki

You can never have anything solid, it’s always a work in progress. However, we are embracing something amazing as this, embracing the blockchain technology. So, our web app and app are on AWS hosted servers. We’re working with a big tech company and are decentralizing our processes. We’re going to be announcing really soon big projects about our own blockchain and this is how things will be built. We’re also going to empower patients because they will have all their medical records hashed in the blockchain and they will own it. So, nobody can share or see them unless they get the patient’s approval. The other big thing we are working on are rare diseases. If you meet a patient with a rare disease there is usually no treatment available or it is too expensive. Many companies try to do clinical trials for rare diseases but have difficulties finding diagnosed patients. What we’re trying to do is connect those two pieces. If the clinical trial needs a patient, they will be able to offer this patient an amount of money so he can contribute to science or use the money for his treatment. We are empowering the patient in so many ways because our user is the patient and we are aligning the incentives of the doctors and patients, doctors and hospitals so everybody can work hand in hand. – Rachid Akiki

The ideal user is the patient who is frustrated ab out the whole medical care infrastructure in the U.S and the world. If you are in Albania right now, see a doctor in Albania then come to the U.S, your medical record will probably not be transferrable here. If you’re in Miami, see a doctor there and then come to Boston, they are going to repeat the same tests. There is so much inefficiency and the patients are very tired of this. Having a standardized way of doing medicine that is efficient, fast, accessible is what we aim for. – Rachid Akiki

The doctors use our platform is for free. They are behind the wheel so they can put their own prices. When the patients request to speak to the doctor, they can choose to pay through their insurance or credit card. Immediately before the consult happens, everything is very transparent. The doctor cannot charge a huge amount of money because the patient already knows what the doctor’s going to charge from a bracket of prices, not a fixed price. – Rachid Akiki

It depends on what service you are using. Let’s say you have purchased the “Mind hack” program which is the psychology program. We teach you tools on how to deal with blocks, CBT techniques. We don’t tell you to do those exercises, we tell you why you need to do them, how they can be helpful to you and how you can use what you’ve learned whenever you have another block so you don’t have to use us anymore. The psychologist will always feel the patient’s need to come back whenever they feel bad. However, we want to help, equip, educate everybody to use tools to be independent, rootless. – Rachid Akiki

It depends on so many things but let me break it down to you. If you have a good idea that is innovative, that nobody’s doing, you need to make sure you have a business plan and you can inspire everybody, even your friends, to believe in you. If your grandmother, friends believe in you, probably an investor will believe in you. This is just about the idea. How to meet the investors? Just go to a bar, to a social event, wherever investors go and hang out. The best way to do it is to actually start building something, to show that you have an idea but are not just talking. In that way you’ll show that you’re taking steps. You’ll talk about your first MVP, how you imagine it’s going to work but in order for you to grow it, you’ll need to money to scale it. That’s the second way you can do it. The third way of doing it is to actually build it, start making profit, be operational and tell the investor that you are operational, profitable, show him your numbers and tell him you need his help to scale and be a rocket company. I think the third one is the best. – Rachid Akiki

So, we started with the U.S because it is highly populated. Also, all the doctors are well trained and experienced. Regarding the patients, we tried to focus on regions where rare diseases are more common. For example, in the Middle East, there are a lot of rare blood diseases. The more people we include from the Middle East, the more we increase their chances to have a second opinion from a U.S doctor and find a solution especially if they couldn’t find one in their own country. – Rachid Akiki

I believe that any company should be part of your life. If I am having a drink with somebody, I’ll talk about it. I’ll talk about how my company is adding value to your life and how it can add value into your friend’s life. In our everyday lives we always refer people, ask them about their opinion. Sometimes It’s not an ego battle but it’s more about asking the right questions and waiting to get answers. Let people try your service and let you know what they think. The more you talk about it, so will other people. You’ll have more awareness of what you’re doing and I think that’s vital for every company. Every employee should be a walking billboard if they believe in the company. Aligning people to a certain idea is so important because if people are not aligned then something is not right. The biggest takeaway from my MBA is to have a good and solid culture in your company because sometimes you may not have any profit but people will be working out of passion because they believe in the outcome for the users. If people work just for the money, then they’ll probably just work from 9 to 5. However, if you motivate those people and make them work out of passion, vision, value, then you’ll have a team of lions. – Rachid Akiki

So, this is exactly what we deal with in the “Mind hack” program: we turn every failure into a rocket of huge motivation to keep you going towards your goal. It’s all about the “carrot and the stick”. If you feel like you have the stick on your back, you’ll think you’re a failure and will stop there. If you break down what really motivates people, do you think it’s pleasure or pain? Everybody thinks that if you put the carrot in front of someone, they’ll work hard to get the carrot. However, if you tell them that to avoid the pain or show them the pain they’ll experience if they don’t do something, they will be ten times more motivated. You can put the carrot in front of somebody, let them get it and that’s called motivation in behavioral psychology. However, if someone wants to be super motivated, they have to look at what’s the worst pain they can experience if they don’t do something. For example, when I was in Miami, I used to wake up at 5 am every day and cycle to the beach to look at the sunrise. You can do these three of four times and feel good about it but what can push someone to actually do this for four months, everyday? So, the idea I implemented in my mind was that if I didn’t go and see the sun rise, I was going to have a bad day. So, did I want to have a bad day? No. That’s how I motivated myself to spend one hour doing sports, see a beautiful sunrise and come back. Regardless of how my day was, I always convinced myself it was going to be a good one. So, you motivate yourself by avoiding pain rather than by seeking pleasure. – Rachid Akiki

So, we actually experienced this on our marketing campaign. Credibility is built on trust, referrals. If I show you and ad about any company, it may be attractive and maybe you’ll go ahead and buy it. That’s what everybody does. However, if your brother or sister comes and tells you a product is good, you’ll most probably buy the product because you trust your sibling. How do you build trust? Through conversation. At “BookzDoctor”, when we started the program, we started just like everybody, launching marketing campaigns on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. At first, we were kind of successful but then we had credibility and trust issues. There are so many companies doing the same thing. So many physicians were trying to offer their services online last year because they were home during the pandemic. Who can the customer trust? Why do you go to doctor A but not B? this is where we implemented a conversation marketing strategy. We had people go out there to listen to these patients, understand them, what they’re going through before they’re even part of our platform. Two weeks after doing this, the patients would feel confident that this is exactly where they needed to be and this is the platform they need to be a part of. – Rachid Akiki

The mindset is to always be curious, optimistic but at the same time stay realistic. Everybody has some bad moments and that’s ok. We don’t have to be good all the time. Whenever you are down or feel like a failure, take some time, think about where you are and let this failure motivate you to go even further and not be stuck. This is all about mindset, about how to turn a failure into a rocket of motivation that will propel you towards the next step. – Rachid Akiki

I agree that we live in a world that is not fair. If you’re born in the U.S, you are born with more resources compared to Africa, Lebanon or Albania but we shouldn’t let this injustice or unfairness be the reason to be unsuccessful. If you’re curious enough, trace how successful people were able to make it, you’ll have a blueprint you can follow. I’m sure every country has successful people that started from scratch. It takes a lot of willpower and I understand people with no resources can feel discouraged but if they are very well motivated, they’ll figure it out. It’s all about staying curios and breaking the shell they’re in. – Rachid Akiki

Everybody thinks entrepreneurship is about working hard, trying to hustle 24/7, no sleep and working 80 hours per week. Doctors work like that as well but the fact is, in everything you do in life, you have to do it in a smart and efficient way to avoid burnout. We live in a society where entrepreneurship is overhyped and glorified, the startup state of mindset is widely encouraged but these can also cause burnout. As a physician, I tell young entrepreneurs to think, plan ahead and make sure that their life comes first include yours project in your life. Sometimes I may be full of energy, work all day but doesn’t feel like work to me. Some days, I just brainstorm about what would be the next big idea or approach on how to deal with things. So, it depends on the approach but always try to avoid burnout, try to put yourself first because your health will influence that of your company. If you’re too tired, don’t feel clearly, are burnout you will probably take some wrong decisions. – Rachid Akiki

So, I have a very curious mindset so even if I disagree with what someone’s doing I would actually be willing to listen and figure out why they’re doing it and what are their expectations. Maybe I will learn something and avoid doing it because someone else did it first. It doesn’t mean that what person doing is right or wrong because I am no one to judge if I agree with it or not. – Rachid Akiki

To be rootless, have the rootless mindset, you’ll always be judged by your friends and family that you can do better, that you’re not as successful as you could’ve been. They may wonder why you chose to go through this path. However, it’s very important to have a support system, to have people close to you that understand where you are, what you’re going through and appreciate your goals and passions. This is how you build a support system and I am very lucky to have parents, brothers and friends who support me regardless of other people. People ask why would a doctor go and start a company instead of just working to the hospital and make a good living? The people close to me understand my approach, my vision and they believe in me. Those were my first actual investors. Your support system can also include strangers. Family might sometimes be a block concerning your entrepreneurial ambitions especially if they’re conservative and don’t really understand what’s going on in your mind. Sometimes you’ll meet total strangers who’ll believe so much in what you’re doing because they went through hardships themselves. They’re your biggest fans and you can always count on them to support you. – Rachid Akiki

I would advise them to think what life means to them, what their values are or would like to be. How would you change the lives of the people around you? Do you want to add a lot of good values to the people around you? Do you want to have a good life all by yourself, not talk to people or not? Once you do that, once you define your destiny, work for it. What I mean by that is to ask the right questions, be curious and go fearlessly behind this ideal. Meet people, ask, learn things. You don’t have a website? Learn how to build it. You’ve never taken a sales course in school? Go to a company, offer to be an intern in sales. This is how you build the skillset that will help you develop your ideas and start something even though you may not have the resources to do that. Believe in yourself, define your destiny, define your values and work for it. – Rachid Akiki