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Welcome to The Pivot Point, a student-led podcast that shines a spotlight on the vibrant city of Las Vegas while exploring the transformative journeys of students, professors, and executives. My name is Bardia Eivazi, an MBA student at UNLV. Join me as I delve into the stories of those who have embraced change, overcome obstacles, and made significant strides in their academic and professional lives. We're more than just a podcast - we are a community dedicated to empowering student voices and inspiring the next generation of leaders. Tweet us @pivotpointunlv!
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You're listening to locally produced programming created in KUNV Studios on public radio. KUNV 91.5.
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The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 Jazz & More, the University of Nevada Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education.
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Welcome to The Pivot Point, where we talk about all things pivot, all things business, and all things Vegas. I'm your host, Bardea. Let's get the ball rolling. Hello everyone, and welcome back to The Pivot Point. I am Bardea, and the topic on everyone's mind today is health and wellness. I'm sitting with a very special guest. His company is called American Medical Wellness and his name is Eitan Klepec. Thank you for being here today.
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Thank you, Bardia. It's a pleasure to be here.
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Thank you. So you've significantly grown your business in the last couple of years and you have been running health care clinics in Las Vegas. Can you just briefly tell us your career story?
0:01:16
Yes, sure.
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So, funny story, I call it a series of mistakes.
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Nice.
0:01:22
That's a great story.
0:01:23
Yes.
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But at the end of the day, nothing is a mistake. It's happened for a reason, I guess. My first business venture probably was around when I was 13 years old. Nice. And summertime, me and my friend, we said, okay, let's do something and make some money and we decided to sell some ice bucket to water or something like that. And that's kind of was like, I think, the first experience in business. That's the time to start. That's when I guess I think I realized that I'll be an entrepreneur. Starting from one lemonade to handle. Growing up in Israel, we have to go to an army and everyone wants part of that. When you finish the army, it's kind of like a known thing that everybody going to their backpack trip after that. For me, it was a different story. I jumped into the business right away. So I kind of started with a construction company initially, got familiar with that side of the world, and then at one point I decided to move to America. It was around 2007. And one thing I had set in mind is setting goals, you know. So basically I remember even that day until today very clearly as flying in the plane to a new country with barely English and don't know anyone and anything, but I had a goal. I said to myself, doesn't matter what, in two years I have to have my own business in America. I don't know how and why I said it to myself, but I set this goal. And amazingly, it's exactly that timeline, it happened. I started our first business here, it was a cell phone repair company, which that was a growing business at that time. Me and my previous partner at the time, we kinda build that small company, but we actually build it locally into a few stores here in Vegas. Eventually, we converted it also to a wholesale department, which is operating until today. It was cool stories to start with. One thing leads to another, and at one point, I had an opportunity to jump into the wellness industry. Yes. And I kind of took this on myself as well and got really involved into the medical field without knowing nothing about medical initially. But obviously, being open-minded to business opportunities.
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Right, that's what's really important.
0:04:19
That was really important, yes. It's not that you're doing one thing and you focus just on that and you're kind of in a comfort zone, you would say. But sometimes you have to step out of those comfort zone and start learning some other stuff and taking opportunities and challenges on yourself.
0:04:34
Exactly, and I think your company has grown into multiple areas now. So what are the main services you provide?
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So we grew a lot because we started our business basically at the medical clinic, started as a male health clinic. In the middle of everything, we realized that a lot of things have changed and it's not only about men, because the issues that men experience, women experience them as well. And what happens is we were helping a lot of these men and at the end of the day, they come happy and they say, hey, can you do something for my wife? Because now I'm feeling great, but it feels like she doesn't want to do anything. So we recognize the need, and we understand that the root cause of the problems, it's not just, you know, if we're talking about sexual health for men, like ED and stuff like that, there is usually a root cause of the issues, and those are just the symptoms of the problems, and how we treat the root causes of the problem. So slowly it's evolved in that. And slowly we kinda, I also require on the way with all this expansion and development and we started to realize what we're doing, we branched out into a pharmacy field as well now. So basically now we have a really big uniqueness because we're actually providing the medications, we're actually making the medication also and applying to our patients. That's awesome. I was going to ask you about that.
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So, how does that work? Is it like an in-house pharmacy in your clinic or is it a separate building or how does it work?
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No, it's a completely separate entity and a separate building. It's a compound pharmacy, basically, and we're not supplying only to our clinic, by the way. We're actually supplying to other states also, other wellness clinics now as well. We actually now are trying to be on the frontier of that industry as far as bringing that knowledge up to date because there are a lot of doctors out there that are not really familiar with all these protocols. Whatever they've been taught in medical school, it's a little bit antiquated, I would say probably 20 years behind in the medical industry field, especially in the big pharma, you know, pushing their own bill. So we're trying to change that narrative and bring that knowledge, you know, bring this to the patient directly, and that's what we're doing today.
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So what's that, like you work with medical professionals like parts of your clinic, like as partners?
0:07:13
Yeah, well, not necessarily. Basically, even our competitors today are buying from us as well. So yes, because we are actually trying to position ourselves as the innovators in that field. So, I don't know if you're familiar with peptides or heard about that. This is a very new and upcoming industry in the medical field as well. So peptides, basically, it's a small amino acid sequences that science discovered, and today, basically, we know that they're responsible for different functionality in your body. And with the help of peptides today, we can activate those functionalities on a natural level instead of like traditional medications that can mimic in those functionalities and giving you side effects and other issues, peptides won't do that. They just go into your body and they knock on your body's door and say, hey, can you wake up that testosterone sequence, please? Or can you make that guy a little bit more active? Oh, cool. So now we actually producing those peptides and we have probably the biggest variety of peptides available in the US that we're providing and we're actually making them. So this is basically gonna be the next level of medicine for sure. That's awesome.
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How long have you been serving Las Vegas?
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So the clinic was established about four years ago. The pharmacy was established prior my coming, 10 years ago, but we acquired, basically I partner up with the pharmacy and I have another partner there, that basically we combine those efforts from the pharmacy standpoint and the clinical standpoint in the clinic what we do, and now basically we can take this both ends and connect them together, which is usually there's a huge disconnect between, like I said, doctors that are not familiar that there is medications like that sometimes and it happens a lot. Or they do know the medication, like the peptides, but they have no idea how to apply it because they don't have the medical protocols for it.
0:09:24
Because it usually, does it come from like brand new research that they maybe haven't seen since medical school?
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Correct. It's, this industry is growing rapidly right now, especially with longevity. longevity and we have actually a new protocol now called live beyond 100 which we're applying for our patients so now we're actually recognizing that we can not just slow down aging we can actually even reverse it. Wow. So it's
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crazy. Yes. I'm signing up for that. Live beyond 100. I want to do that. That sounds great. So what are some of the biggest challenges you've had to deal with? I mean, right now you say that your competitors buy from you, which is, that's the dream. So how did you get to this point?
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Well, there was a lot of challenges, definitely. One of the biggest challenges, obviously, was COVID. And that was in a very delicate situation for us because it was a time when we were still growing as a company, and we're still growing, but that time was really, we were little, and it was right before our first expansion into a bigger location, and COVID hit, and we didn't know what's going to happen, and at that point I was pretty, you know, unsure myself at that time, very scared. I was going home every night and telling my wife, listen, I don't know what's gonna happen, but we are invested here very heavily. And what do you think, should we continue? But luckily, I have a strong wife. And she believes in me as well. So she said, hey, we're already here. Let's make it happen. So we just pushed forward. I'm happy to have done that. Yeah, at this point now, looking back, sorry, yes, to start with it. Yes, because there was times during covid that there was a lot of doubts.
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So do you think also arising from covid, do you think people were more interested in their health care before or after?
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So I think even before they've been interested in definitely covid push that a little bit further today, but if we take just the men's health industry, which we started with, it was a growing industry, and until now it's growing because especially men kind of have been neglected a little bit on the sidelines because for some reason, a woman, if she has a hormonal issue, she can go to a gynecologist, it's going to be addressed. But for men, there is nothing like that.
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They don't speak up about it?
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Well, that's part of the issue. We like to bury our head in the sand sometimes. But on the other hand, also on the medical side, those issues not being addressed from the standpoint of insurances, if you look at it, and the way they treat men with deficient hormones, they don't call it a necessity for some reason. You know, so that's something that's kinda changing, and today a lot of men start to realize that. So before, like for example, if we take testosterone again, it's kinda used to be a taboo, because it was associated always to bodybuilders, and you know, it didn't have a good name in the market, because of the 90s, I guess, you know, all the bodybuilders
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out there.
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But now today, it's been actually already studied and recognized by the medical professionals that it's a necessity. It basically will be responsible for your longevity, for everything as a man. And now we're trying to address that issue, and this is a definitely growing industry that's happening.
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Awesome.
0:13:19
So, what would you say, I mean, you probably went through this a little bit with COVID, but the continued success of your business, how would you say you kept such a strong reputation? I've seen your website and you have such great reviews. How do you maintain this strong patient satisfaction?
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So, I think again we're coming back to the innovation because we're trying to be the best in our field and that's part of the success. You have to push all the time and try to be the best because if you get stuck in the same place, obviously you start losing the uniqueness of your identity as a business and the patient will look and seek for something else. But when we're coming up with constantly new protocols and we're trying to be innovative in the medical treatments we provide, that's what kind of we're keeping those patients are usually our life type patients for us because they're not just coming. We're not treating sick people. We're treating people that want to be, you know, feel well. That's what we're treating.
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Yeah, so actually that's a great question. All of your sort of ventures include the word wellness. So what does that word wellness mean to you?
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Well, obviously wellness, it's a, you know, I see it as a, today for example, if we take the longevity part again, longevity is, we're treating it as a disease. And we want to kind of be different in that again because we want to treat the disease and find a cure for it. So this is wellness. If somebody can live to his 120 and be active in his lifestyle, this is wellness. You know, there's different ways of how you're gonna age. So we want to see people that aging in a well way and basically
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staying healthy and active and productive. Yeah, yeah. Going back to some of your products, like the peptides that you mentioned. Yes. Some of these I haven't even heard of. Like I've seen like maybe on websites or something, but like they must, sometimes they can be maybe so niche that people in like general public may not have heard of them. So I assume a lot of education also goes into, like you know, telling people, oh, this would be great for your specific, like tailored to you kind of medicine.
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Definitely, definitely, because this is a patient education, because people, like you said, and I'm very familiar, and we had this, you know, on the marketing side of the business, we always had this issue of how we present it there, because if I start talking in medical terms, not people are gonna lose it after 10 seconds, you know? But this is a lot of patient education. So we kind of started in a very basic way. When you come into the clinic, the first process is that the patient will just do, we'll do the regular blood work, what we like to check, you know, we'll check the hormone panel, we'll check the cholesterol, the lipid panels, all that type of stuff. And from there, we can see and guide the patient towards his needs and his goals. If, let's say, even there's no significant issues in that patient, but he wanna improve, let's say sports performance. We know how to guide the conversation and what type of peptides would be probably better for him and educate him on that. So we always have this, and we kind of divided it by categories, so it's very easy to understand today that we have gut health, sexual health, again sports performance, healing performance or injury healings, stuff like that. So it's easy to guide a conversation, explain to the patient when they're in clinic already what they should do.
0:17:20
Yeah, I bet. I bet it's really helpful for them. Have you seen on social media anything about this Ozempic craze? Anything about weight loss drugs recently?
0:17:30
Oh yeah, we actually, so Ozempic, it's a peptide. Yeah. So you know. Yes. And we actually used to make the generic version of Ozempek in the pharmacy, which is called semi-glutite. So, it's actually probably one of the biggest crazes right now in the world. And for us as a business on the pharmacy end, it was one of the biggest sellers for sure. Basically, again, big pharma and FDA, they're trying to push it back on our end because they're trying to push Ozempic instead. But we're fighting it back because we still have other solutions, which is, I would say, not less good than Ozempic or semi-glutide right now, which we already found and start to implement to our patients again. So, and we'll see, right now it's kinda in the fog what are gonna happen with semi-glutide because FDA just kinda froze this for uncertain time for unknown reason. So they didn't give any explanation yet and we'll see if it might come back to the market or not.
0:18:48
Interesting, yeah, because I didn't know why it was so popular, like was it the safety profile? Like what was it about Ozempic?
0:18:56
No, so Ozempic, it's still out there. Only basically why it's so popular because this drug is really works. Because what it does is basically it can reverse type two diabetes, which we never had a drug before that could do that. Before, if you had diabetes, type 2 diabetes, that's it. You had to live with that and manage it. That's the only medication that was available. Suddenly, when this medication came out, basically what happened is that we were able to reverse that because what it does, the semi-glutate, it has an active ingredient of reducing your insulin resistance in the body and starts to regulate it correctly. At the same time, lowers your sugar level, lowers your craving, so the results are amazing.
0:19:45
That's insane.
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Yeah, I didn't know too much about that drug, but that's really cool. Okay, so, would you like to play a quick lightning round with me? Okay. Just quick questions for you. Okay, so, first question. Cats or dogs?
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Dogs. Nice, me too. What's your go-to stress relief technique? My kids. Nice, nice. How many kids? Two. Cool. Favorite healthy snack or meal? Without advertising names, but I like one of the healthy places in Summerlin called Flower Child. Oh, I've heard of that. Pretty good and healthy food there. Nice, got to check that out. Last thing you do before going to bed? Usually trying to read a book. And any good books recently? Well, yes, Anti-Fragile.
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And last question, what's the dream travel destination you'd like to go to?
0:20:48
Alaska. Nice, why Alaska? I find the wilderness, you know, very quiet and peaceful, you know, although my wife likes the beaches and in the end we end up usually there. I can't imagine the beaches but with the beaches in Alaska. Yes, it's going to be a little bit different. So, just kind of closing up the show here, what advice would you give to a young professional,
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maybe even your younger self, looking to go into the healthcare industry, a young businessman?
0:21:23
So I would say three things. Lead by example. And this is the first thing they teach you in the Army. It's the lesson that whatever you do, and you're trying to achieve you have to show example You're not gonna know how to do it or willing to do something none of your employees co-workers will do it So definitely that set clear goals in mind because Like many times it happened in my personal life that some things that I just said to myself In my mind without even meaning them, they happened. And it just showed me personally that our mind is a very powerful thing. And whatever you put in there, it probably will happen. And the last one is embrace innovation. That's definitely coming and coming strong right now with all the AI that's happening. But, and I always say, you know, don't try to reinvent the wheel, just improve.
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You know? Yes, sometimes it's just taking a smaller step. Smaller steps. Then, then you might have an idea that just like builds upon something that's already there maybe, but you make it better somehow. Yes. I think you can always improve. You can always improve something that's out there. But I really like the first one you said. What was it? Like take the,
0:22:48
lead by example. Lead by example.
0:22:49
Lead by example, yes. That's so interesting because even if you may not know much about the industry you want to go into, you can still go in with an open mind like you talked about, and you can embrace all of it and learn. And you can surprise yourself really with how far you come.
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You cannot even imagine how. I would never dream that I will be one day in a medical field, because I've never been in a medical field before. I'm not a doctor. I'm a businessman. But yeah, you take up the challenge and you just roll up the sleeves and start learning, you know, and it will come.
0:23:27
And then talking about one of your other points was innovation. How do you continue to breed innovation? Do you just sort of like sit down, think of a bunch of new ideas and try to experiment with that? Or what do you do for innovation?
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Yes, so definitely I'm always thinking about new ideas. That's something that my mind personally never stops about it. So I'm thinking how we can improve some things in the company or things that we do here. And we also have a small, like the lab that we do researches and are on the medical side, but on the business end, yes, definitely, you wanna always think ahead of time what's gonna happen, how can I improve it, if there is something better out there, you know?
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Yeah, yeah, the last thing I do before bed is, I usually, my thoughts tend to reel before I go to bed, all my ideas just come out, like, right when my head hits the pillow. It's like weird, it's like flipped for some reason, like, I don't know why my thoughts, my brain starts working when I go to bed. But I like to, if that happens, then I do like to just make a note in my phone before sleeping. If it tends to be a really cool idea, I want to put on a podcast or maybe do a video about it on social media or something like that. But sometimes that's where maybe I'll start, just an idea that you have.
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Actually, I think you're not the first one or the only one that happens to him because I am the same way. The moment you close your eyes and I start dreaming about business.
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I know.
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I literally couldn't sleep last night. It's funny.
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So, and yeah, and lately I start doing the same thing. I got a small notepad and I even like to write it down sometimes. Just so I won't forget it in the morning. And it's definitely helped, yeah.
0:25:19
Yes, and then I like to review it as well. Sometimes it could be just a stupid idea. So the next day I'll read it and I'll be like, oh, that was a horrible idea, but maybe not. And it could be, I could just like, maybe have someone else look at it too. It'll be a cool idea, we can do it together or something. Yeah, but yeah, that's basically how I guess my brain works. I don't know So what's in store for you next? What kind of impact you hope to have on Las Vegas in the next two years? So we're looking to
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basically Expand the practice right now We're looking into another location in Henderson and maybe the southwest as well But the main play we're trying to go now is actually on a national level, that we actually, I think, finally ready to expand our business into the national strategy. So we started to develop this type of partnership business model.
0:26:15
So you've only been in Nevada so far?
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Yeah, so far we're in Nevada and we're looking into branching out into other states now. The pharmacy actually already kind of branched out, so we're already supplying other states with medications now, is the cleaning side that needs to come up.
0:26:30
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that a difficult challenge, you think, to, like is it nearby states, or how big do you tend to branch out?
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So, because it's a medical field, it's not like, you know, franchises of a Taco Bell, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little bit different. So we're probably looking into, you know, if we take an average major city in America, probably would be three to four locations per city. I don't think it's really, we really care how far it is right now. We probably would like to start close by, but if somebody comes from Montana and interesting in doing it with us, we'll definitely go and do it. We definitely have the knowledge today. We kind of already even designed this whole thing as a almost business in a box I would say. Wow. That I can take it and copy it to anywhere we want. Into other places. Yes. Yeah, that sounds awesome. Well, looking
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forward to that. Where can people go if they're interested in coming to your
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clinics? So they can visit our website AmericanMedicalWellness.com. We have also the mail portion of it. We have another website. It's AmericanMailWellness.com.
0:27:41
Awesome, and I think you can find their locations on that website as well. Correct. But thank you so much for being here today. It was great to learn about all these things about the healthcare industry.
0:27:53
Thank you, Bardia, for having me.
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And you can always find us wherever you find your podcasts, including Apple and Spotify. Just search for The Pivot Point. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you all for listening to The Pivot Point. You can follow us at Pivot Point UNLV on Twitter, Thank you all for listening to The Pivot Point. You can follow us at Pivot Point UNLV on Twitter, all one word, and hope you enjoyed the show.