Meet The Disruptors: Kolin Ozonian Of Global Premier Fertility On The Five Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
Vision, don’t get bogged down with day-to-day tasks, don’t forget to think big, that’s where ideas and innovation happen.
As a part of our series about business leaders who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kolin Ozonian.
Kolin Ozonian is the Founder and CEO of Global Premier Fertility, an innovative platform that builds, acquires and manages fertility clinics and adjacent businesses with the ultimate objective of helping individuals reach their family planning goals through world-class clinical care and an astounding patient experience. Ozonian’s extensive experience in the healthcare space with an emphasis on fertility care has propelled him to succeed in his current role. Previously, he served as the Executive Vice President of IntegraMed Fertility and was responsible for all Development and M&A across North America. Prior to this, Ozonian held positions at Nobilis Health as Executive Vice President responsible for overseeing the Corporate Development division and also spent seven years growing a division of McKesson Global Consulting, focused on providing M&A advisory services for world-class healthcare organizations around the globe. Ozonian holds a Bachelor of Science in Cognitive Neuroscience from the University of California San Diego and earned his Masters in Business Administration with a concentration in Finance from San Diego State University. Ozonian currently resides in Orange County, CA with his family.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I went to school to be a doctor. I have a Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience Pre-Med from the University of California San Diego. I decided that after working for doctors and hearing their advice, I could have a bigger impact on medicine through the business of innovative healthcare. After receiving my MBA in Finance, I pursued healthcare investing and acquisitions. I started managing a large network of fertility clinics, and along my professional journey, my wife and I became patients of infertility as well. I saw firsthand that the old way of treatments and processes can very damaging and could be improved with new technology and treatment innovation.
My personal infertility experience inspired me to start Global Premier Fertility, an innovative fertility organization that builds, acquires and manages fertility clinics throughout the country. My wife and I had dated for a long time, got married, and decided we were ready to start a family. Starting a family didn’t happen right away, and after two years of trying we were still unsuccessful. We thought maybe we weren’t meant to have kids, so we weighed out our options on what our lives may look like if we didn’t have kids, and that took an emotional toll on both of us. That’s when we decided to give IVF a chance and meet with specialists to make our dream of becoming parents a reality. As we were going through the IVF process, we realized that the process was far more complicating then it should have been. From booking the first appointment, learning about the insane prices, and recommended procedures that invasive, the entire process was complicated and frustrating. It was truly a nightmare experience, and we didn’t feel like the process was going to be successful because it was such a confusing experience with a lot of possibilities in question. Going through the IVF process and experiencing all the complications was the moment I realized this industry needs innovation to improve the patient experience and treatments being offered. If fertility practices had smart business operations and innovative care, the industry could be revolutionized. That’s when I decided I would be the one to revolutionize the industry through innovation and effective business operations that makes the patient experience highly-personalized and seamless.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
IVF was founded in the late 1970s and early 80s. In the early days of IVF, doctors would use five embryos at a time and sometimes two or three of those embryos would stick, which often times created twins or triplets. Fast forward to 40 years later, the innovation with fertility education and technology has become much more advanced that doctors are able to modify treatment protocols that can suit each patient’s needs to reach the goal of creating a healthy baby. What’s disheartening is that there are a lot of practices that recommend the same treatment for every patient, which can lead to frustration, expensive medical bills, and disappointment. If the fertility industry has access to advanced technology and innovative treatments, why not use it to create a personalized patient experience to change the trajectory of frustration and disappointment, providing a much more relaxed and positive experience?
That’s where Global Premier Fertility is disruptive. Working with top fertility specialists with a customer-centric mission to provide highly-personalized, innovative, gold-standard care, we strive to change the industry through each of our clinics around the nation to recommend treatments that are created specifically to each patient based on their needs. There is no one singular model of fertility treatment at Global Premier Fertility, but instead, highly-recognized doctors that build an advanced plan based on the goals and needs of each patient.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
I wouldn’t say this is a funny mistake but it did teach me an important lesson. The biggest mistake we made when starting Global Premier Fertility was when we had a Silicon Valley investment group give us an aggressive offer within six months of starting the company, an offer that was almost impossible to refuse. Looking back now, we shouldn’t have entertained the offer, because ultimately they wanted to take the business out from under us, bring in a new CEO, and change business operations that didn’t align with Global Premier Fertility’s mission. Thankfully we did detailed research on the investment group and didn’t sign on the dotted line. What our team learned from this experience was that we must do our due diligence with partnerships and business queries and have our radar up since everyone doesn’t have the best intentions and will try to capitalize on a vulnerable industry.
The fertility industry has such a genuine mission — helping people build their families — but it’s overrun with investors who want to make babies to make a fortune. At Global Premier Fertility, we do everything we can to keep greedy private equity investors away from our business. We learned to never entertain any business queries without doing our research to protect our mission here at Global Premier Fertility.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
My mentors are my Father and Phil Harkins. All have been tremendous mentors in very different ways. With my father, I’m the first son and I’ve always looked up to him. He’s an extremely successful businessperson in real estate and banking, and has been a fantastic father as well. He is the role model I strive to be for my four children, showing that I can be both a successful CEO and an amazing father.
Another mentor, Phil Harkins, is probably the top executive coach for CEOs around the world. He was my father’s coach, and a mentor to me since I was in high school, helping to guide my professional career with lessons like how to lead, implement change, and what career moves to make.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
Disruption is only positive if it leads to better outcomes. At Global Premier Fertility, we’re in the business of positive disruption by providing highly-personalized care to every patient through individualizing each treatment based on their needs and goals. We’re modernizing fertility from both the clinical side and the patient experience side, which is not a common occurrence for other fertility practices across the country. A few ways Global Premier Fertility is being disruptive is through affordability of treatments through a financing platform, and user friendly technology to make the office visit process seamless, such as creating QR codes for more information and payment options.
You may also notice a lot of fertility practices feel old and run-down with those hard, plastic waiting room chairs, mundane office buildings, and older equipment. At Global Premier Fertility, our priority is to make every patient feel comfortable and at ease with every step of the process, knowing they are taken care of as soon as they walk into our office. We aim to feel like a boutique spa with all the modern technology a patient would expect from a top-tier fertility clinic.
Can you share five of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
- Persistence, just when you think you have failed, push harder.
- Risk, it’s a perspective, your idea of risk is probably not that risky.
- Vision, don’t get bogged down with day-to-day tasks, don’t forget to think big, that’s where ideas and innovation happen.
- Leadership, you must be an effective leader to lead a team that collaborates together and works towards success.
- Lonely, it’s lonely at the top, learn how to manage that feeling and find a team that believes in the mission as much as you do.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
- Global Premier Fertility is expanding our network nationwide! Most of our clinics are in Southern California as of Fall 2022, but we have plans to expand across the country over the next year and have our sights on global expansion near after! Everyone should have access to highly-personalized and innovative fertility care, and we look forward to taking our mission worldwide to achieve this goal.
Do you have a book, podcast, or talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us? Can you explain why it was so resonant with you?
“Everybody Wins” by Phil Harkins has had an enormous impact on my way of thinking, and often times I refer to his insight when working with our successful business model.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life
My favorite life lesson quote is “fortune favors the bold.” I try to apply this quote every day and it has been fundamental to taking the necessary risks to build Global Premier Fertility’s successful business model. For context, a lot of healthcare practices and treatments are very old school. People who run healthcare don’t try a lot of new innovation, because if the treatment works why fix it? From my perspective, “Fortune favors the hold” helps our organization focus on being bold, disruptive, innovative, and knowing that change is necessary to grow and be successful. I continue to preach that and live by that.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
I want to inspire improving healthcare through encouraging innovation with the patient experience. We will all be healthcare patients at some point in our lives, and we deserve to have the best experience through innovative treatments and personalized care, which often times leads to referrals on how great a doctor or practice is. Through our work at Global Premier Fertility, we’re helping patients who are building their families have the best experience possible during what can be a very stressful and unknown time in their lives. In healthcare, providing the best patient experience along with innovative treatments should be a top priority for everyone in the fertility industry.
How can our readers follow you online?
Follow our journey on our Global Premier Fertility website to see all the great work we’re achieving and when we’ll be opening up a fertility practice near them!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
Meet The Disruptors: Kolin Ozonian Of Global Premier Fertility On The Five Things You Need To Shake… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
