You founded your first company 24 years ago, now you already employ more than 3,300 people, and BetaMed S.A. has 92 branches in 11 provinces. With such a scale of business, it’s probably not hard to lose heart to it? Or is it that just at the moment when the company acquires such a gigantic size, the heart begins to be stronger?
Beata Drzazga: Jest jeszcze inaczej. My heart has always beaten very strongly for this business – from the very beginning – regardless of whether the business was tiny or is big. And it still beats. Alternatively, there is much more stress.
What – in the main – is this stress due to?
I’ve had business partners from France for the past two years and it’s a little easier for me. But so far I’ve been running the whole business by myself, and the stress has been getting worse every year. I felt a lot of responsibility – especially towards the employees and their families. On top of that, the responsibility for all patients – including tiny children and adolescents under ventilators – is very aggravating. We are on duty 24 hours a day and make sure that these people feel safe. Stress is also associated with constant checks to make sure everything is in order.
On the other hand, it is also important to simply not let the company down anymore. Because it is indeed nice to open a company, but the real success is that it continues to develop, that it grows, goes up. People know that we are a company that pays all transfers every day and I am really proud of that. We are a company that is very well regarded in the market, loyal, solvent and I never want to lose that.
My company is huge in every way. It’s not easy, especially these days, to keep employees happy, their families, patients and still all the offices. Only there was COVID, now the war, inflation… Until recently, I myself had to be able to make every decision in a second, I was the only person to rely on.
And what, then – in addition to nerves of steel – is necessary to get carried away with success in business at all?
In addition to acquired qualities, you also need to have those already innate – above all, you need to be entrepreneurial, have an incredible desire to organize. It takes courage – because what if people dream of owning a business of some kind – but don’t have the courage to take a chance? Especially people who are, for example, after finance, so terribly meticulous and conservative, they will never take a chance in life. And it’s all about having smart courage. There are all sorts of risks – no one knows if you’ll get a contract or lose it, no one knows if any regulations will change… It’s not comparable to anything, you really need to have a lot of self-discipline, courage, positive attitude, patience and sense when hiring people. So that they fall in love with your idea, with your vision and want to do this work together. If you don’t run into such people, one, you have to change them, and two, you won’t get very far.
You mentioned risk, and that’s what I’d like to focus on for a moment. Do you perhaps remember a situation when you took – smaller or larger – risks that did not work out in the end?
Of course! The smaller risks that didn’t work out for me were when I was simultaneously aware that it might not work out. For example, when I enter a competition in a province, I have the attitude that I will win or not. If I didn’t win, I don’t feel disappointment, I try again next year. If I didn’t get some contact, I give up. Risks should be approached in just such a way: “OK, I’m trying, but I know it might not work.” The worst thing is when someone assumes to himself that 100% all his plans will succeed. This is absolutely not the case. You have to assume in your plans that 20-30% will come out). And then you are not surprised and everything is happy.
And the plan will probably change 15 more times along the way.
Yes. I had such plans, dreams, and specifically said: “Well, it is clear that I will not be able to win a contract for 10 million, but to at least 2…”. And suddenly it turned out that I won this 10 million. And that’s how I try to approach everything in life – I have it in my head that something might work out, but I try not to look forward to it. I’m quietly thinking about it, but I’m setting myself up that it may not work out. Then I don’t have any surprise and sadness – it worked out here, it didn’t work out there, I accept everything as it is.
And the greater risk?
After 12 years in business, I decided to get a loan of 60,000,000 zl. In finance it is said that when you have money, at some point it is worth taking a loan. I felt that the moment had come. I had a dream to build a beautiful glass clinic, 8,000 sq. It was a huge risk, but fortunately everything worked out as I dreamed and the clinic is functioning.
About the fact that you have a great passion for business, I think you do not need to convince anyone, I feel it myself even through the earphone… But I wonder where it came from – was it born on its own or maybe someone instilled it in you?
I think it’s a matter of character. When someone tells me that something can’t be done, that something is hard to do, that’s what I want to try. Especially if it involves the thing I love. And I really, at the age of 4, dreamed that I would work in health care, that I would be a doctor or a nurse or a physical therapist. I wanted to be close to the patient, and my grandmother told me that it was as much as 5 years of study… And I thought to myself: so what? This is even more so! That’s why I’m now finishing 7. major, I still want to finish my doctorate, and I finished my MBA because someone kept telling me that it was a lot… In addition to that, I’m a dean at the Medical School because even though I really don’t have time anymore, to people – students who are not yet doctors – I want to open their eyes…
Make them realize that if they don’t love people, they don’t want to serve… This is not the profession for them. I have always felt such love for people, I have always felt sorry when people have serious illnesses, I wanted to lay the world at people’s feet so that they would not worry, I wanted to show them that we are.
When I was working in the hospital, I was saddened that all this does not look like I imagined. That’s why when I created BetaMed, even when it was just me, I already wanted people to know that this was a facility where we would show cordiality. After all, when someone is really sick, they need love, another human being, and they are not afraid to speak up to a doctor or nurse, because they will immediately chastise, they are unmeaningful… Not all of course, but we are talking about the majority. I have experienced it myself. But really can not be a doctor, nurse, rehabilitator a man who gets carried away and exalts himself…
And there is no empathy.
That’s why I rebelled, and that’s where the passion came from. Out of love for humanity, out of a desire to show that it is possible to do things differently. I am a visionary, and I know that in every field you can do something new, completely different. I remember being a child and thinking: “God, why can’t I be some kind of inventor?” It always sat in my head that I would like to be an inventor, I wondered what I could do in life, and I guess that’s what attracted me – I became an inventor of better services. I show how a patient can be treated.
That is, it is really the people who drive your actions.
I always say, on all panels, that after all, this is my company and who will forbid me, for example, to give surprises to employees? Nobody. And because of this, I feel joy, how my wings grow when people smile and are happy.
Recently on Saturday, while baking a cake – I am a normal woman who bakes and cooks – I thought to myself about my employees. About the fact that I myself worked full-time for 11 years and I know what it’s like when you only have 26 days of vacation and short weekends. Well, I came to work on Monday with the CEO’s order that on Fridays we work until 2pm, and on Mondays everyone comes in for the afternoon so that the weekend will be longer. Employees will relax, and for that they will come to work smiling. I, indeed, am grateful to them for their work, for being.
But BetaMed is not the end. You are also active in other industries – completely different from each other – there are real estate, electronics, fashion… Does it come from the desire to prove something – to show that it is possible?
No, it just worked out that way… Day in and day out I worked until 12. night, we were sitting in the office with Asia, who was my first employee – today she is the General Manager – and we were saying that we would soon go out on a limb, and we still didn’t. Only later did I realize that business never goes out of style. There will always be another and another thing. Therefore, one must be very careful not to fall into workaholism. Business is a job without end. I went out when it was dark and came back when it was dark. Months passed, and I didn’t even have time to shop. When I had to speak at a conference or go somewhere, I didn’t have time to buy clothes for myself… That’s why I opened a store.
I said: “I’m going to open a store for myself, I’m going to have my most beautiful collections, I’m going to be my own best customer.” I tak wyszło z pierwszą dodatkową firmą, Gift from Splinter – dono czyli prezent i scheggia – drzazga.
Flying for new collections, I realized that I love airports, I love flying around the world, and my life can’t just be NFZ, because I’ll go crazy. So I took the map and asked myself: “What do I always dream about, where I feel like I’ve lived there before? United States. Then who will forbid me? Nobody. Then maybe Miami? Well it’s Miami”. So I gave myself a goal – I will go to the Open Hearts language school to learn American, the kind they use in Nevada, throat. Well, and I flew for 3 months and that was the end. I fell in love with people with energy like mine – Latinos in Miami are wonderful, polite, smiling, active.
Nothing is impossible?
It doesn’t. I often tell people that this gray day only seems gray to us – elsewhere at this time it is beautiful and the sun is shining. I remember writing my master’s thesis almost 20 years ago and seeing Las Vegas on TV. I thought to myself then: How wonderful, how many lights… I’ll be there.
At that time I pasted to myself in the kitchen various pictures of places I would fly to – these were such promises to myself. And when I flew to Las Vegas, stood at the airport, I raised my hands and shouted: I am! But what I didn’t really envision was that I would be organizing economic missions between Nevada and Poland and that I would be named Nevada’s First Business Ambassador in the Senate and that I would be the one in the middle of Las Vegas to open BetaMed. This is something I never expected.
This means that there will be more companies and more projects?
Now the stage of selling has started for me, I am thinking about transforming what I have. I also opened the Foundation because I want to continue helping, but I have to learn not only with my money, otherwise I will go bankrupt. However, I can’t say that I know something for sure. Knowing myself, now I will tell you that I will not open anything more, but I will immediately sit down and think of what new to create. But if you ask me about plans, I don’t have them. I live spontaneously.
Do you feel that you have already reached the top? Is it on its way Or maybe he’s not going there at all?
Me thinks that people should not think about any peaks – how do we know how long we will live? I think everyone throughout life should develop themselves – just do something – more or less, as much as they enjoy it. Not everyone has the energy to build 50 companies and not everyone who would build would be happy, right? So let everyone do what gives them happiness. And the second thing – someone made a mess in our heads, saying that once you retire, that’s when you rest. This is the biggest mistake – because when we start to relax, we actually start to get old, we get depressed, we don’t want anything, everything seems pointless. So I don’t think about the summit, about whether I’m on it… Rather, I’m still going to go there until I close my eyes. If I thought I had reached the top, patted myself on the shoulder, then I would flail, I would be sad. This is how I feel.
This means that Beata Drzazga is not resting?
Well, it’s worse with that… I’ve been going crazy at work for 30 years now, 7 companies, on top of that three kids, more studies… On weekends I go to Warsaw for classes every now and then… And sometimes I’m surprised why the body is so weak and refuses to obey me. I love to fly on a plane – then I read, sleep, relax – but recently I noticed that the body, every person, however, feels the fatigue of flights. A week ago I flew from one place, the day after tomorrow I fly again… I could use that kind of time here on the ground, but still something new comes out. I auctioned off a trip to Colombia 2 years ago for charity and still don’t have the time to make it happen… I’m also supposed to play tennis with Iga Swiatek and I keep postponing the date… I don’t have time to rest.
Ms. Beata, please tell us what to wish for you?
Health, cheerfulness and loving people around you. The most important thing is to surround yourself with wonderful people and be healthy. Then you can help and keep going.
May it come true in this case!
Source: Success written in lipstick