Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here, and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, with great shows like the Salesman Podcast. Today, we'll be sharing how our guest pivoted his business to $100 million during a pandemic. To drop these value bombs, I have brought Avi Lazaro into EO Fire Studios.
Avi is a health entrepreneur who succeeded in pivoting the business to $100 million during the pandemic and played a crucial role in getting written back to work, both travel and play. And today, we will be talking about that pivot to $100 million because there's so many lessons to learn, Fire Nation, as soon as we get back from thinking our sponsors. If you're a business owner, it can be tough to hire top talent, but when you post a job on ZipRecruiter, you get qualified candidates sent to you. Then you can easily invite your top choice to apply.
Just visit ziprecruiter.com slash fire now to try ZipRecruiter for free. Wondering what to do when you need motivation? Wish you had a go-to guide when it comes to preventing burnouts? Tune in to Jenna Kutcher's The Goal Digger Podcast, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Listen to The Goal Digger Podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Avi, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. What's up, Fire Nation? Success is defined in many ways, and in the context of my recent 18 months at Prenetics, we grew our company to north of $100 million business.
And as the company grows, and as you get to certain stages in their growth, you have to put in certain management structures that give you good governance, good oversight, and a good drumbeat in terms of how you should run your business. And actually, as you implement these structures and you bring in a management team that come from different backgrounds, it can tend to slow down the agile, moving, entrepreneurial spirit. And at this size, often you feel some sort of discord or disagreement as to the speed you should go, and sometimes the risks you should be taking based on the speed that you're going. And most people disagree and say, you shouldn't move that fast necessarily at this stage.
You maybe shouldn't take as many risks, and you should process sometimes drive decision-making as opposed to some of the usual things entrepreneurs have, like instinct and drive and all that intuition that you feel and see and act upon. And I believe that you still need to find a way to maintain that regardless of the size of the business you create. Well, I teased Fire Nation with a little bit of your story when I gave the introduction here, but I want to really go into your backstory because this is pretty fascinating and walk us all the way through to your entry into the health industry. I've been working in the health industry now for just over 10 years, actually.
Hard to say that, as you all know, I think as entrepreneurs in your own business, time just goes so fast because you're so focused that you turn around and suddenly so much time has passed, right? But actually, I got into the DNA testing business because I went through a personal experience and that personal experience made me realize that going through a DNA testing experience in terms of, in my case, was a paternity side issue. I sort of realized that that experience was not great and I could do better for people that found themselves in my situation. So I did that, you know, I succeeded, did it well.
It was one of the first online companies offering. At the time, it was DNA paternity testing, actually, but it was so much more. It was ancestry, family testing, immigration testing. And that's sort of how I started in that space.
And then very quickly, that company didn't succeed as I intended. What I took from that company was a ton of lessons in what I shouldn't do and what I can do better. So very quickly, I set up a testing business focused on testing hair for the purpose of drug testing. And while I was in that business, I knew there was an opportunity to also probably investigate the ability to test hair for alcohol testing that no one had ever done before.
So it really created a complete new market segment where we used and innovated to create hair alcohol testing, which was a great success. And ended up selling that business in 2012. And then very, very quickly, after that, that was my first real success in terms of a full business exit. I didn't have a lot to do.
It was my first success. You know, sort of I was questioning myself, was it just luck? Was I in the right place at the right time? Can I do it again?
What do I do next? Then I set up this business called DNA Fit, which essentially was the first, genetic testing companies that focused on commercialization of weight and nutrition use using your genetics and exercise using your genetics. And in fact, we went on to publish the first ever genetic exercise intervention study, which was quite difficult to get published, actually, because of the same market force, as let's call it. And, you know, we got that published.
We won a number of Queen's Awards, which is the highest accolade you can get here in the UK. As the name says, it's an award from the Queen's organization. And, you know, that business got some great success. And then very quickly into that business, we went into equity just over two years.
We then exited that business into Pranetics, and Pranetics stands for preventative genetics. That's where I am now, and that's where I love doing what I do every day. Well, as you mentioned, Pranetics is your main focus right now, and it's also your passion. So let's talk about the mission of Pranetics.
Pranetics' core mission, really, is about bringing health closer to the consumer and decentralizing healthcare. And I think as you, and as we all now know, because of the pandemic, that consumers globally are just familiar with self-testing, with COVID-19 testing, with lateral flow testing, or PCR testing. You know, consumers are, or have had a lot of time over the last 18 months to really reflect upon their own health because of this environment that we've all found ourselves in. And as a result of that, you know, there's no better time now than to essentially democratize and also decentralize laboratory testing and bring it into the home.
So we very much focus on exactly that. Our roots come from DNA testing, genetic sequencing, as I indicated, fitness nutrition, but we obviously expanded that into genetic testing for pharmacogenomics, i.e. what drugs you should take, genetic testing for family health, for wellness, and for a whole host of predispositions that you get by the time you're born. So, you know, the pandemic has really helped us achieve this mission and move closer to the goal of this mission, which is exactly what I said, is bringing, you know, health closer to the consumer and into the home.
So Farhan, I love how you can combine passion with real impact in this world. And to me, that's exactly what Avi's doing here with Prenetics. And let's be honest, COVID threw a wrench in a lot of people's lives and their business plans as well. And I'm sure, you know, Prenetics had to have a couple sit-down conversations about what was going on during this new world that we live in.
So can you share how your business adapted to COVID? I sold DNA Fit as part of a strategy into Prenetics. And, you know, that's the team out of Hong Kong. And Danny Young, who himself is a really fantastic entrepreneur and a group CEO, he's based in Hong Kong.
And when the pandemic influenced and sort of arrived here in Europe in the UK in particular, Hong Kong was really three weeks to a month ahead of experiencing that impact. So, of course, at that time, the team in Hong Kong was saying, hey, you know, can we send you masks? There's a real problem. And there was lots of signals that there's a big issue sort of heading that direction.
And I don't think at that time we really understood what that meant until such time, you know, obviously impacted us here in the UK. And I'm sure you felt the same where you are and our colleagues in other countries we work with. We're quite in a similar situation. But just to sort of take it further.
So at the time, the team in Hong Kong, as a DNA testing company, repositioned their laboratory capability to start testing for PCR testing and COVID generally. And as a result of being first in the market, you know, one of the first in the market in Hong Kong, they started to really get some great community initiatives going, start working with some, you know, well-known brands, well-known hospitals, a brand that might not be familiar to some of your audience. And certainly there'll be others that will be known as a company, say, for example, Deliveroo, which is well-known for delivering food. And so they started helping, for example, the community hospitals and people delivering food.
So people just try and keep some sort of novelty. So this experience and mobilization of that in the country helped us in the UK very quickly start working on a proposition. At the time in the UK we have 30 people and there's this concept of furlough where, you know, if you put people on the furlough scheme they still get paid a percentage of their salary by government while the pandemic has impacted the companies that are, you know, trying to still operate. So what we did was very, very quickly we came up with that proposition and just being in the market.
So there were six of us left really on a daily basis really passionately working out what can we offer in this market? How can we help? How can we make an impact? And according to our mission, the COVID pandemic sort of didn't change what that mission was.
This was something where we could do our social bit but also make a difference and therefore just stay true to their vision. And so really, you know, information is very important. As a company that was working in the world of sport with genetic testing we heard that's one of the most famous, one of the most famous leads in the world that the UK Premier League were looking to do some sort of testing or some of the clubs were. So I can't remember exactly what it was.
Maybe Manchester United, footballing, some of the famous ones. And so very quickly we came up with the strategy and we're very successful in winning the Premier League and why that was so significant. I'm going to be into football by the way. So for me it was like, yeah, I knew they were a big old well-known organisation but I didn't quite really garner the extent of how big.
And what was really important at the time the UK was on full lockdown so you actually couldn't leave your house. You know, companies were closed. You know, just transport was closed. It was a real big deal of course.
And the project restart as it was labelled was about getting the Premier League back. And what was so important about that in the world of football and the most well-loved and watched sports globally in the UK was that it was about mental health. And there was a real passion to get sport back behind closed doors because if you could do that you could help the whole society's population of mental health by virtue of and give them something to do. So we got that back and when we won that contract there wasn't a lot of information about how to do it but we had information from our team in Hong Kong.
We partnered up with our university and in a period of two weeks we rolled out 20 sites across the whole country to build up the national infrastructure to build an electronic health passport and a number of other methods to make sure we could do this and do it well. And at that point the whole country was actually watching. In fact, people from around the world were watching and we just had no option but to make this a success. And actually we made it a success.
You know, we rolled out our methodology and, you know, continue doing this work with them until today. But most importantly it just opened up so many doors for us and we're really privileged to have an opportunity to do that. I mean, when you keep your eyes open Fire Nation and your ears open you just look for opportunities and then you jump at them when they present themselves great things can happen. And we're going to be getting Maintaining unique customer needs even personalizing the customer experience.
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When you post a job on ZipRecruiter you start getting the most qualified people sent directly to you then you can easily review recommended candidates and invite your top choices to apply with just one click. Next key marketing manager Erin Hartje loves Invite to Apply. She says they get my job posting in front of the right people I instantly see great candidates and I can invite them to apply to my job and according to ZipRecruiter internal data on average for 2020 jobs where employers use ZipRecruiter's Invite to Apply get two and a half times more candidates helping make for a faster hiring process see it for yourself just go to this exclusive web address ZipRecruiter.com slash fire to try ZipRecruiter for free that's ZipRecruiter.com slash fire ZipRecruiter the smartest way to hire Avi, we're back and we've been talking about some opportunities you guys took advantage of some pivots you made but let's get real specific I mean as I said in the intro you pivoted to a hundred million dollars let's get some more specifics around this yeah so just to also further give you detail on that we pivoted to a hundred million dollars just in the UK and I can tell you that out of our Hong Kong office we did the same thing so actually from a relatively small unknown company we developed a brand capability and revenue stream with the privilege of doing our subacuity which is actually making an impact when people really needed us to do so but I mean I think just to say in order to do that in pivots you had to move fast you had to deliver tons of tons of just passion in all aspects of what we were doing it would be adaptive we had to be very very sort of as I'm actually trying to get the words of my mouth I'm actually thinking about all these things we had to do but ultimately we had to just really be super passionate super dedicated and just make things happen and it wasn't just pivoting to COVID because the first success for us was the Premier League but of course we then rolled out our systems into different sports across the UK different sectors you know film production some of the most major film production brands in the world we essentially are running all their productions here in the UK and internationally we started sectors we won a number of film sorry cruise line business so we opened up the travel sector we have laboratories at some of the most major airports in the world Heathrow Airport for example here in the UK and others and to do that each of those different segments had their own methodology of where they do things and we had to learn and pivot within each of those segments and at the same time you've got to cope with scaling a team from 30 people to in some cases over 500 people depending on what you're working on but as a core team today we have 500 people here in the UK and with that comes also lots of other sorts of pressures I can't compare it to a lightning bolt that comes through your organisation as it comes in at the top you've got to ask very quickly you've got to mobilize you've got to execute you've got to deliver and deliver well because you're in the public eye in a pandemic learning new things and new technology all the time as well as the science is evolving you've got to keep your eye on that as well and adapt within that as to what you're offering and how you offer it as well as legislation those important things and as this lightning bolt comes through your organisation you have to work closely with people to make sure they're okay as well because of course in delivering a successful business it comes down to people it comes down to teamwork it comes down to our colleagues in Hong Kong and how you all collaborate together and in the context of that mental health mental wellness is so important so for example at first we've been here for 18 months and in the first six months everybody's doing it because every day you are living this we are making history every day we look back on this in 10 years time akin to a war or World War II our children might say what did you do during the pandemic so every day is history making in what we do but then suddenly you're in you realise this could become the norm and you have to find some sort of balance for the people around you in terms of their mental health and all these interesting but important things to do and that's also a bit of a challenge we overcame and have succeeded upon So this is a very fascinating topic and again you touched on a little bit of this but I really want to get specific for Fire Nation what's the future? What's the future for Prenetics?
What's the future for Avi? What are you seeing right around that corner? Yeah so in terms of the future I've got to tell you that we actually have filed for a fact listing so with good order we should be a NASDAQ-lessed company in the coming months so that's really exciting and I've always said in all the ideas that I've created and taken to markets that it's about making a difference and a social impact and you can do that everything else falls into place and my partner he's the guy that really acquired initially Danny Young he said to me at the time we're going to create $1 billion business and there wasn't a minute that I did not believe that and now him and I talk and he says because now effectively it's in the public domain our valuation is $1.2 billion and what he said to me he said Avi we're going to create $10 billion and I believe him because I know we can do it so in terms of the future of Prenetics we're living our mission we are making an impact we've done just put this in context we've done more than 6 million COVID tests since the pandemic started and we have operations in major airports around the world to include Hong Kong, UK and otherwise we're working in Spartan in many different sectors but actually again it's all about continued social impact and what feels great about what we do every day not just do we make history we're taking innovation to market because the market innovations are happening so fast and in the context of that we're actually helping people in their daily lives just get on with their daily lives in terms of me personally what I can tell you is that I'm very committed to living my entrepreneurship desires through creating even a bigger Prenetics brand and I think we can do that and hopefully you will hear more about us Avi I know we will hear a lot more about you and I want you to share with Fire Nation the one message the one core theme the one takeaway that you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today then share the best way that we can connect with you any call to action you have and then we'll say goodbye around you are people that care about you and love you and what you aspire to do in business as an entrepreneur in making an impact and I think sometimes when you're so focused on your mission without realizing subconsciously you might not give as much attention as needed to those people around you they could be friends they could be family they could be children they could be mums and dads and I think in this pandemic we've all got to reflect on all of these things that companies like ourselves that are so heavily involved in delivery of helping within this pandemic might have been some of the companies and people in those companies who tend to not necessarily give attention to those around you if you want to reach out to me I'd love to hear from you you can contact me at Lazaro A on Instagram Fire Nation you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with you've been hanging out with AL and JLD today so keep up the heat head over to eofire.com type Avi AVI in the search bar this channel's page will pop right up with everything we've been chatting about here today links to his Instagram and more Avi thank you for sharing your truth knowledge value with Fire Nation today for that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side thanks so much Ron I really appreciate the opportunity to be here hey Fire Nation today's value bomb content was brought to you by Avi and Fire Nation if you've ever thought about creating a podcast of your own the podcast journal is for you it is gorgeous it is full leather and it will guide you step by step in the creation and launch of your podcast in 50 days visit thepodcastjournal.com and I'll catch you there or I'll catch you on the flip side if you're a business owner it can be tough to hire top talent but when you post a job on ZipRecruiter you get qualified candidates sent to you then you can easily invite your top choices to apply just visit ziprecruiter.com slash fire now to try ZipRecruiter for free wondering what to do when you need motivation wish you had a go-to guy when it comes to preventing burnouts tune in to Jenna Couture's The Goal Digger Podcast brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network listen to The Goal Digger Podcast wherever you get your podcasts