Looking up Home Remedies Has Never Been Easier with Serena Oppenheim, Founder at Good Zing

Hey Outcomes Rocket friends, thanks for tuning in to the podcast once again. As a leader in health care, you have big ideas great products, a story to tell, and are looking for ways to improve your reach and scale your business. However there’s one tiny problem. Health care is tough to navigate and the typical sales cycle is low. That’s why you should consider starting your own podcast as part of your sales and marketing strategy. At the Outcomes Rocket, I’ve been able to reach thousands of people every single month that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach if I had not started my podcast. Having this organic reach enables me to get the feedback necessary to create a podcast that delivers value that you are looking for. And the same thing goes if you start a podcast for what you could learn from your customers. The best thing about podcasting in healthcare is that we are currently at the ground level, meaning that the number of people in healthcare listening to podcasts is small but growing rapidly. I put together a free checklist for you to check out the steps on what it takes to create your own podcast. You could find that at outcomesrocket.health/podcast. Check it out today and find a new way to leverage the sales, marketing and outcomes of your business. That’s outcomesrocket.health/podcast.

: Welcome back once again to the outcomes rocket podcast where we chat with today’s most successful and inspiring health leaders. Today I have an outstanding guest for you. Her name is Serena Oppenheim. She’s the founder and Good Zing. She’s the CEO there as well and what they do. Good Zhing is that there are tech enabled platform democratizing health information. Good Zing gives users access to a greater degree of self care while improving health literacy. The expert and user generated content. The platform brings the world of health and wellness together. Now this topic of wellness continues to come up in the discussions that we have with our guests and in the general health care conversations out there. So this is a podcast that you’re going to want to tune into Serena at Good zing won the 2016 business of wellness pitch contest and was voted people choice before it launched in 2017 spring. She’s been featured in The Evening Standard the Huffington Post and Virgin. So thought further ado. It’s true pleasure to welcome you on the podcast Serena.

: Thank you so much for having me. Absolutely. Now did I leave anything out in the intro that you want to share with the listeners.

: Not really when it comes to good zing. I’m sort of more I guess from a personal background which is unlike most people who come into the house space. You know I haven’t come in as a doctor haven’t come. And not from the medical angle I’ve come in because I know what it’s like to lose your health. And you know what you’ve got into the house gone. So my personal background is that in 2005 when I graduated from college in the U.S. I partied a bit too much and I ended up with viral meningitis which developed into chronic fatigue syndrome and fibromyalgia both serious issues but not sort of have any medical not something that a drug can cure. Not something that is life threatening but is life altering. And so when I started this business which is largely by accident is I realized that I’m totally obsessed with the health space because this is what actually has a huge impact on people’s lives. Yes there’s some great businesses in hotels or in food or in shopping but actually without health you’re nothing. So that’s why I’m so passionate about this industry and it’s great that people like you are doing podcasts like that it’s bringing communities together.

: Serena, what a great call out and listeners you’re healthy. Most likely you’re listening to this and you’re healthy and maybe you’re taking for granted that health and Serena’s message here is strong right. I mean without that health wealth is insignificant. It’s a basis that we all need to continue building on and keeping strong. It’s clear why you got into the business Serena. What about a hot topic that you feel that needs to be on every medical leaders agenda today and how are you guys at Good Zing addressing it?

: So I’m pretty much obsessed about this one plan is improving health literacy because if we don’t have strong health literacy than all the other things we’re doing around it just don’t like strong health literacy to have the positive housing health outcomes. So I was doing some research around this a couple of months ago. And I read this report which said that only 12 percent of Americans and I know the figure is roughly similar. And U.K. and central Europe as well can be expected to fully understand the health and the implications. So whether that comes down to navigating health systems understanding what the doctors are telling them understanding what they should eat what they should do is it turns out the top many wonderful things in school and an education but in the way that actually gives people people on Sunday and health literacy were not taught that. And so if my one big bug is that every medical leader and everyone in the house should actually be thinking how do we improve everyone. We’re not just talking about the elite and we’re not just talking about the poor but everyone’s health literacy. So they can actually take a stronger directive to the cost of the road in health. A stronger understanding that you know if they are sick and they get told to take pills why they have to take those pills at that time why they have to eat before that pill why they have to exercise. Because just for my own health experience when a doctor says to me you should exercise more and I guess what they all say. But actually why more impact does it actually have. And it all comes down to health literacy and I’m sorry I’m totally obsessed with the Zarya now.

: You know what. It’s great to be obsessed with this area and for the providers listening for the med device companies really, pharma companies everybody listening this health literacy is a serious thing. We as healthcare leaders suffer from the curse of knowledge and the curse of knowledge is that we know the topics inside and out. We’re at a level 10 and companies like Serena’s help us touch our end user our patient our customer at level 2 which is really where we need to be and so many of us are missing the mark. So I’m excited to really dive into some of these things that Serena speaks to us about in particular Serena, I love to hear about an example that you and your company have done to improve outcomes by doing things differently in literacy.

: What before I even get to that point I should point out that I’m definitely not at level 10 I’m. So you know I was I did not do well in science at school. My concept basic biology is very low. So what I’m building Good Zing and when we’re looking at the platform when we’re editing articles that the doctors have written or editing articles that nutritionist writing looking at health tips we always say bring it back to layman’s terms that someone says you should eat fiber. Really. I’m pretty educated person. But this isn’t my area of expertise. What the hell do they mean by fiber? How much should I be having sup for munch? Should I not? It’s breaking it down idiot proof and it’s the same in any industry. So I used to work in renewable energy. I remember my first couple of weeks working the space at home with the road jogging to me and you slowly get it. But the bomb in the health space is there a Sermanni job. There’s so much jargon. And there’s sort of a wonderful thing that doctors are gods because they save our lives which is like the doctors that have saved my life I’ve had nine operations I’ve had a whole bunch of other issues that I haven’t mentioned I freakin love all my doctors. But at the same time the ones that have had most impact, the ones I’ve broken it down for me. So I’ve actually understood what’s going on in my own body without having the fear that I’m too stupid to get it or that they know everything when actually you know your own body but going back to your question I guess it’s the biggest thing that is when people come to us and say they found a tip on the zing that helped. So there’s one story that always makes me smile which is so occasionally we get sort of messages, e-mails, via social media people saying and they found tips that worked. There’s one story I’ve really loved because it was a mother of three young kids based in Amsterdam and she emailed us to say that her 2 or 3 year old daughter had really really bad x mind seen lots of different doctors and a kid had been put on very strong medicines for it.I think it was steroids and she wrote say that she got good zing found a whole bunch different eczema related remedies from the bats and had gone to the doctor and said Hey can I try some of these. And she started putting her kid and a box or something and I turned around and home remedy. Now the kids Eczema is actually dramatically improved. And she had taken some of the nutrition steps and the kid is not actually on drugs anymore for the eczema and they have it under control. I quite frankly thought only happened to one person I believe. OK. We fulfilled it, that the mission of the company. But the fact is that it’s happening a lot more. But what’s quite interesting is when we started this it was only for common ailments so things like eczema or insomnia and would put up things like fibromyalgia chronic fatigue syndrome because I had those and I knew how hard it was to find that health contents without sort of being a blog space where people were ranting and raving about how terrible they felt. Know I will not call solutions not was the point. But then actually a friend came to me and said I think you should put mental health up there. It was a couple of years ago when we were still in beta still an idea was before mental health become trendy. And that is the area that we’re seeing the most results because mental health is still something that people are how to go around saying they’ve got eczema they don’t have it around so they’ve got embarrassing things like constipation. But it’s most of the day to day issues that when it comes to mental health people in the UK and I know from my experience in the U.S. they’re not that happy to talk about the fact that they are struggling with panic attacks or anxiety being vulnerable is very hard in our western society. What we’re saying is people coming to us saying that they found a great meditation on good zing or they found a psychiatrist talking about why you should see a psychiatrist they’ve started saying one it has really helped them. So the whole point is that one heals differently. And what we’re saying is that people are using good zing very differently to find tips that help. And that makes me very happy.

: That’s pretty cool. Folks, if you go to goodzing.com you’re going to see they have a very easy to navigate site. You can search topics from a to z.

: I’m going to push back on that and I apologize if anyone is looking at good zing. It’s like one of our biggest screw ups.

: I don’t think it’s bad will cause I think it’s pretty straightforward but hey you know we’re our own worst critics.

: We’re an anti bootstraps starters we didn’t take a… because if we did a couple of big VCs in New York said they light up. They were and they wanted us to charge people for access to the well-being tips which went against every core belief of why we’re starting this which was giving access to people who didn’t always have it. So we decided just to bootstrap it. And it’s been a great decision on some reasons. But we are currently working on fixing our UXO. Hopefully in the next two months.

: Well folks I’ll tell you it’s not that bad. You go to the website. goodzing.com whatever it is that you’re feeling right maybe you have a sore tooth today or a migraine or an ear or whatever you go there you find it and you click on it you click on to take for instance and similar to a blog page where you have all the blog posts on it. You have solutions that pop up for that particular one kind of cool and definitely beats googling and getting a bunch of ads and random things try. Good zing next time. Definitely a fascinating platform to find those solutions to the things that may pop up for you or your kids. Very nice. Very nicely done Serena.

: Thank you. The big thing is also that it’s user generated so let’s say someone out there you have a great tit for eczema just because we were on that topic that your grandmother will buy or that your nurse told you about. Put it and the system is the whole point is user generated content because we all have these great tips on our own hands. Think about all the times you’ve been sitting around having lunch with friends or at a brunch and someone says I’ve got a sore throat. You know I can’t tell time to be sick. Someone will always come up with a solution. That’s the whole thing about it is like let’s bring all these solutions into one place and set them all rated and reviewed with all these experts from different backgrounds. Also putting in that helps. So ultimately let’s have a top ten list and that’s the aim of that.

: Love it. Serena you guys are doing a great job. Can you share time with the listeners when you had a setback or something didn’t go well besides your UX of course.

: Yeah. So we’ve made so many mistakes on the way

: What did you learn from it?

: What do we learn from it as is many. But it’s basically as an entrepreneur it’s about resilience. It’s about philosophy and just getting back up. A year ago we sent out an e-mail that wasn’t necessarily the quality that should have been. We got on a bit of negative attention from some UK lawyers and it was actually great because it made us take a step back and think actually we’ve got to be ten times more responsible than we thought this is. This is how content this has health information and lot of incredibly vulnerable young people out there that any knowledge of health or any knowledge of everything is via Google. So we sort of looked around in different ways we could be about content that we came across something good the well-spoken mark which is in the UK and in the U.S. And basically they’re looking at is wellbeing contents and wellness content which as we all know you know you only have to flick through Instagram and you have a young beautiful blogger doing an amazing yoga pose on the beach who’s giving a whole bunch of health advice but it’s probably not qualified to do so. So what we’ve watched with this company whilst Berrigan is to ensure that our platform is as keen and who’s responsible as possible so all these people are well-spoken man of all work in pharma or health and we’ve just been clearing things up so it certain topics that were not really going into anymore. We’re checking absolutely every expert certification. No tip goes live on the site without our approval. You know we’re doing all these things just to be as responsible as possible but you know we should have done that from day one but it was a mistake and we’ve learned from that and we’ve actually improved the product as a result.

: That’s awesome and the important thing is that you get out there start something and iterate as you go forward.

: Yes and as every startup founder knows no matter what space it is you’re constantly learning and you constantly iterating because you think you know what you’re building. But actually once people start touching feeling that product, it’s a whole different kettle of fish.

: Absolutely. And this message has come up a lot listeners. So hopefully you’re taking note don’t build it fully and expect them to come. You’ve got to build it somewhat get some feedback and keep iterating. Just like Serena and her team have. Serena, what would you say when are your proudest medical leadership experiences to date is?

: You see, I would never put myself in the word medical costs for me medical is all the wonderful doctors, it’s the wonderful nurses it’s the wonderful people who run the hospitals and run sort of what you do you know within sort of medical devices. For me it’s more about wellbeing but I would say one of the proudest things is sort of reaching personal milestones so when we launched in May last year May 2017 you know we had a feeling of where we wanted to be a year later in terms of numbers unique to the site and we blew through the roof in five months and then we blew through the roof of our second year goal and actually at the end of year one says the proud moment is reaching those and knowing that we’re reaching so many consumers. But the other aspect is this very proud to see people in the medical community starting to reach out to us speaking at different conferences. Basically the medical community. What makes me proud is when they realize that actually sometimes people like me who were the patient were the consumers that were coming at it from a different angle and that we are generally trying to help people when not trying to innovate in a way to get rid of them we’re just trying to be there to help people and sort of when names that I really really respect in the industry have given us the OK that they’ve liked tarsal they’ve invited us to speak. That’s when I get very proud. But I’ll be a proud when 100 million people every month coming to this and finding all that solutions. That’s what I’ll be proud.

: That’s awesome. You’ve done a lot and a lot more to go. What would you say right now is an exciting project or focus that you guys are working on?

: Something quite excited about. So at the moment we’ve got four categories: habits, emotions, beauty, and common elements which is the one we Sonson off that. what we’re beginning to look at now is what are the other categories we should be looking at. So obviously pregnancy and baby two of the biggest ones but there’s so many different topics were that. And so we’re starting to look at how we can roll that out in the coming year but with that we’ve got to find a whole lot more experts say you know we’re puting for midwives, nurses, pediatricians, doctors we want a lot more mothers as users on the platform so that they can share their experience as you know from babies, teething or what to do when yout ankles are swollen when you’re pregnant. So all those kind of topics and sort of continually adding more content to the platform. That’s what I’m excited about.

: That is exciting and if you had that category you know I’ve got a 16 month old I know my wife and I would have been on your good zing constantly. There’s always something new.

: That we realize. But you know that’s a mistake. You know I didn’t have kids. And so when I started this I was like well these are the issues I struggle with. My friend came to me saying mental health. And you know so I went with the ones when you brought in a product you go with what you know and that now a lot more of my friends have kids you know my sisters have lots of beautiful children. So now I’m realizing that actually it’s the pregnancy and baby category which you know so many people are struggling, struggling with confidence and we used to raise children in a village. So there were always different people you could talk to.

: Right.

: Now we’re all living away from our families and it’s a small family units. So who do you turn to for sort of what to do for your kids teething when you find that doesn’t work but there might be another roots. So yeah that’s our next big project which is terrifying.

: I love it now. It’s super exciting as well. Terrifying and exciting and I know you guys will do well. Serena getting to the end of this here. Let’s pretend you and I are building a course on wellness and what it takes to be successful in health. It’s the 101 Serena. So we’re going to write a syllabus four questions that I’ll ask you. Lightning round style followed by a book that you recommend to the listeners. You ready?

: Ready.

: All right. What’s the best way to improve healthcare outcomes?

: Health literacy.

: What’s the biggest mistake or pitfalls to avoid?

: Not trusting your own gut. You know what’s best for you.

: How do you stay relevant as an organization despite constant change?

: Constantly innovate.

: What’s one area of focus that should drive everything in your company?

: Content, content, content. I might have talked about the UX but at the end of the day we’re a content play and all we want is the best content from a variety of sources that people have the best information available to them.

: Amen. I’m right there with his sister. What book would you recommend to the listeners?

: There’s two one which I’m halfway through at the moment it’s called you True North: Describe your authentic leadership by Bill George.

: Love that one.

: It’s so good conscience.

: Gosh it’s so good. Yeah.

: And the other one from the wellbeing space is Why we sleep by Matthew Walker.

: Interesting.

: Everyone should read this. If you weren’t already obsessed with sleep you will be after reading this.

: Oh boy.

: Even my problem her existed on three or four hours sleep has to change having read this so everyone go and read it.

: Love it. Ok. There you go listeners why we sleep. And true north. All of these things that you’ll be able to find on our website just go to outcomesrocket.health/goodzing and you’re going to be able to find the transcript, links to those books, link to the website Good zing where you could find trusted ailments from the community that Serena has built. Serena, before we conclude I love if you could just share a closing thought. And then the best place for the listeners can get in touch with you.

: So the best place to get in touch with me is either my email serena@goodzing.com or serenopp on social media. I really just want to say thank you because healthcare is really about bringing people together and so often it’s quite a siloed industry so every conference I get into is the medical health, or wellness. It’s actually in podcasts and groups like this and if we can bring those two together then we can really enact some really exciting change for the next generation when it comes to health. So really like if we can all work together that’s where we can have really good impact.

: Love it, Serena. This has been a blast. Listeners called the action check out goodzing.com for your next little thing that bothers you. You’re going to find some good solutions there. So Serena big thanks to you for making time for us really appreciate it.

: And thank you for having me. Stay in touch.

Hey Outcomes Rocket friends, thanks for tuning in to the podcast once again. As a leader in health care, you have big ideas great products, a story to tell, and are looking for ways to improve your reach and scale your business. However there’s one tiny problem. Health care is tough to navigate and the typical sales cycle is low. That’s why you should consider starting your own podcast as part of your sales and marketing strategy. At the Outcomes Rocket, I’ve been able to reach thousands of people every single month that I wouldn’t have otherwise been able to reach if I had not started my podcast. Having this organic reach enables me to get the feedback necessary to create a podcast that delivers value that you are looking for. And the same thing goes if you start a podcast for what you could learn from your customers. The best thing about podcasting in healthcare is that we are currently at the ground level, meaning that the number of people in healthcare listening to podcasts is small but growing rapidly. I put together a free checklist for you to check out the steps on what it takes to create your own podcast. You could find that at outcomesrocket.health/podcast. Check it out today and find a new way to leverage the sales, marketing and outcomes of your business. That’s outcomesrocket.health/podcast.

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