Neal Archbold, CEO, MyPulse
Passion, perseverance, courage, and dedication—these words define an entrepreneur. These aspects, combined with curiosity, creativity, and formulate a no-fail recipe for great leadership. True business leaders always look for creative ways to solve problems while changing the lives of millions of people for the better. They recognize the existing problems in society and come up with innovative solutions to resolve those, making a real difference. An evident example of such a passionate and inspirational business leader in healthcare is Neal Archbold, the CEO of MyPulse, a Platform as a Service (PaaS) business that allows healthcare providers to customize a range of digital care pathways for their patients.
A naturally curious and creative disposition has always been a part of Neal and this ultimately led his path towards entrepreneurship. Having worked with very large businesses, several SMBs and as a sole trader, entrepreneurship was the next natural step for him. “I believe that everyone has a great business idea within them and everyone should once in their life take the plunge! I have done it several times, with mixed levels of success – but I wear all my entrepreneurial scars with pride,” asserts Neal. Today, as the CEO of the company, Neal is MyPulse to help clinicians, patients, and providers to use technology to improve systemic service efficiency and effectiveness of health interactions.
Committed To Delivering the Best Healthcare Everywhere
MyPulse began its journey in 2016 driven by a genuine desire to increase digital and clinical collaboration. The company strongly believes that wherever someone lives and whoever they are; they deserve access to high-quality healthcare. Thus, it focuses on delivering telemedicine, remote consultation, prescription management, and scheduling platform solutions that enrich clinical service provision; to maximize the reach, accessibility, and effectiveness of health interactions. “We see ourselves as an enabler. We are primarily technologists and product experts – but complemented with strong clinical expertise and long-established healthcare sector experience. Our technology empowers the creation of innovative and seamless experiences that providers, patients, and clinicians love,” elucidates Neal. What further sets MyPulse apart from the rest is its unique business model where it looks at its platform and proposition strategy through the eyes of genuine emerging customer opportunities and deals. It uses these deals to build or enhance a platform capability and turn this capability into a SaaS product and look to commercialize it to wider customers. This way the healthcare service providers will be validating their proposition through direct, repeatable, revenue-generative customer demand. In addition, MyPulse also offers health services providers 3 core competencies— Transformation empathy, Innovation acceleration, and a “Value over Vanity” mantra. Having an intimate, coal-face experience of the healthcare sector, MyPulse understands that transformation is not easy. It allows healthcare service providers to leverage its product suite or lean on it to fuel their innovation from within and it only advocates low-risk delivery options.
Relishing the Challenges
Like most start-ups, MyPulse has had to face classic challenges in its initial phase including recruitment, sourcing investment, and managing cash flow. However, under the insightful leadership of Neal and with the unwavering commitment of the wider MyPulse team to make digital healthcare accessible to all, the company has been able to navigate all the hurdles along the way while staying true to its vision, mission, and proposition. And with the amazing financial and strategic support of its investors (The Select Group), now it has an even more solid base to grow further. “A lesson learned for me from previous entrepreneurial endeavours is to be opportunity-lead and I think we have done this very well. With changing financial market pressures and investor behaviour shifting, the days of ‘ask for millions, build it and they will come’ are long gone,” adds Neal.
Cultivating a Diverse Value-Centric Culture
While the success of MyPulse comes from its incredible technology and solutions, the vast majority of its success can be attributed to its diligent team and collaborative culture. Backed by a diverse team of 20 from different backgrounds, expertise, and cultures, MyPulse has an authentic, transparent, non-hierarchical, and empowering work environment that enables employees to work and live happily and productively. “We have hired not only the highest calibre technology, product, and commercial experts, but focused massively on how they fit and further enrich our culture. Culture is about authenticity and diversity, not catchphrases,” affirms Neal.
Key Attributes of Good Leadership
As a leader and entrepreneur, Neal sees himself as a “conductor of value” for MyPulse. “I feel I am accountable for maximizing value for employees, customers, and shareholders and my single-minded focus is on this. An amazing set of people, delivering amazing products to amazing customers, will lead to amazing business results. Simple,” opines Neal.
According to Neal, “good leadership” is not a single “level” to achieve but a constantly nurtured and enhanced organic capability and this is something that he tries to work on every day. To support and empower the culture at MyPulse and ensure that he is working as the best version of himself, Neal focuses on 3 core areas— authenticity, transparency, and genuine interest in others. For Neal, authenticity or being true to yourself is one of the most important traits of a leader and he also emphasizes speaking with openness and treating everyone equally. As a leader, he always strives to understand the interests, passions, hobbies, and challenges of his team. “Recently at a team meeting, I remembered to buy a team member a gluten-free snack for them for breakfast, without them asking me for it. I couldn’t believe how positive the response from the individual was,” shares Neal.
The Future
Advancing into the future, Neal is excited to see further growth of the company as MyPulse is rapidly moving to the scale-up stage with the idea of the business growing, gaining more clients, expanding its team, and creating an even more enhanced and sophisticated digital health platform. As the firm continues to expand its ability and pursue new paths for innovation, Neal is also excited about the next ideas that he will be coming up with in the future for new businesses or social enterprises. On a personal level, as a father, Neal is intrigued to watch and support his kids on their journey into adulthood as they are now heading towards university. “I sense many adventures, travel and new family experiences on the horizon and I can’t wait,” concludes Neal.