https://youtu.be/JsOU7BBkzSs
Abdullah Boulad is the Founder and CEO of The Balance, an exclusive luxury rehabilitation and recovery treatment center specially designed for Ultra High Net Worth Individuals, VIPs, and celebrities. He is also the author of Living a Life in Balance. We discuss the basics of psychological management, how to live a life of balance, and dealing with toxic traits in your business.
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Practice Psychological Management With Abdullah Boulad
Our guest is Abdullah Boulad, the Founder and CEO of THE BALANCE, the world's most exclusive luxury rehabilitation and recovery treatment center that is specially designed for ultra-high net source individuals, VIPs and celebrities, treating addictions, mental health issues, and eating disorders. He's also the author of Living A Life In Balance. Welcome to the show, Abdullah.
Thank you for having me.
I think you are going to bring us some unique and interesting information. I always like to learn about the background and the entrepreneurial journey of our guests. Yours is interesting because you were born in Lebanon and grew up in Switzerland. You went from investment banking to running a larger rehab and recovery center in Mallorca. That is a unique path. Can you share with us how you got here?
I was born in Beirut, Lebanon. I was a little boy when we moved to Switzerland, around seven years old. In Switzerland, I had my journey as a foreigner growing up in a different country, but also bringing with me the burden of the war-turned country where I spent the first years of my life. What I think over the years has shaped me personally growing up in different cultures. To understand and develop the idea of why different cultures, ideas, perceptions, limited beliefs especially, and racism could affect a person.
In my case, it was pushing me further to achieve more. This is where in Switzerland, my journey continued. I studied Architecture first, then Business Administration with two MBAs later on. I went into Healthcare Psychology at a later stage after different incidences in my life where I thought it was time to change. This is it in a nutshell. From an entrepreneurial perspective, I feel that I have always had a mind of creation and productivity and wanted always to do something to create.
That's a defining feature of entrepreneurs in many cases. What strikes me is that you started your career as a venture capitalist, private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and it feels like 180 turnarounds towards the healthcare field, and now you are taking care of people who have mental health issues and other health issues. What caused that turnaround?
I was very successful in what I was doing. I was helping entrepreneurs, startup companies, venture capital and businesses to accelerate into growth where I invested my own money and co-investing with others. I loved what I do on the one-hand side, but I was completely overworking. I was doing too much. As an entrepreneur, you tend to work 24/7. You don't have breaks, reflection, or relaxation time. With some other health incidents within my family, my son when he was born, and my wife during her pregnancy issues and these health issues brought me together with overworking and lacking focus on my business.
I landed with a heart attack in a hospital. That was my turning point. To think about, “What if that was it of my life being here on Earth and is it what I wanted to achieve? Have I achieved what I want to achieve? Not in terms of creation, but in terms of fulfillment, and is it the right time to go?” This is where I started thinking about, “What is it I want to do here on Earth?”
This is a bit now spiritual and philosophical but I think this is a question every one of us has to ask ourselves at some point, even as an entrepreneur or a business manager because you want to know where you are going in the first place. I started to dig into the psychological side, what makes us human and interact with each other and a lot into healthcare, how holistic health could help individuals, not just traditional evidence-based health. You can imagine that growing up in Switzerland, I had the best healthcare system in the world, one could say, but still, I was lacking some holistic aspect of how the doctors deal.
I love your awareness of having this wake-up moment quite early in your life that, “What I'm here for? What do I want to achieve?” I see the younger generations growing up, Millennials and Gen Zs. They have this awareness much faster than perhaps my generation. You often see people in midlife crises because they realize that they are on the wrong path and they have to change. If you get this awareness early, you can avoid this landmine.
I love that you made this turnaround. You created THE BALANCE. One of the things that you mentioned to me is that you deliberately structured your business to be digital, global, and marketing-oriented. It struck a chord with me. How did you find these concepts, and why are they critical in your view for business in the 2020s?
In my journey doing business myself, starting at the age of fourteen, I was always trying to create something valuable to sell. Later on, when I looked at businesses, business plans, and entrepreneurs, it was always the same thing. What brings companies, businesses, and business ideas to success? In the end, it's whether you know how to market it. There are great ideas around, but if you don't bring them to the market, they stay great but not succeeding in the market.
Marketing is key. How do you communicate what you're doing? The other aspect you mentioned is digital and global. We don't sit in Switzerland, Spain, Lebanon, the US, or the UK. We are global. We are now talking about countries across the world. Why don't you profit from this? I have employees in different areas. I have in Pakistan, Lebanon, Switzerland, the UK and the US. People are supporting what is needed. I have to think about myself, “What is necessary where I'm providing my service and where the client is?”
There are great ideas around, but if you don't bring them to the market, they stay just being great but not succeeding. So marketing is key.Share on X
In everything else, there are many specialists around the world we can profit from. Digital is important because I can build processes very lean. To make it clear, not depending on individual people, even myself or anything, doing something digitally and having a funnel where a system comes into play is crucial for any business. It's like you put something on top, and then everything is clear on how to flow. It's the Law of Gravity.
In your world, is digital synonymous with processes and playbooks, perhaps, with how you structure your business? Digital is the medium of creating that consistency and scalability in the business.
On the one hand side, and on the other hand side, it's marketing. In marketing, you have to be online, be present and rule the market. Be a specialist in what you do and grow from there. Communicate this properly, but online, you need to rule your niche.
Especially when you run a global business, the only way to market it is digital, unless you are Coca-Cola and you have practically unlimited budgets to do brand advertising, you have a niche market that you're targeting. You need a digital capability for that. I'd like to switch gears here and talk a little bit about the framework that we discussed, which we called Psychological Management. What do you mean by this concept of psychological management, and how does one puts it into practice?
My idea and concept of psychological management is about what every leader should know about when leading a business. We are not talking here about the technical understanding of the different terms and the product. We're talking about leading businesses and serving people. We have lots to do and interact with human beings.
This is a psychological level in whatever we do, whether we focus on our employees, the clients or the community. I come to believe that leaders and managers need to understand psychology. They need to not just understand it. They need to live it. They need to be in balance themself. Self-development is key. Every leader or manager should work on his own self-development in that sense. Psychologically speaking, every management trainee should include psychology.
You have to understand people and empathize with them. You have to treat them the way they need to be treated rather than one size fits all. Is this what psychological management is all about? Is it about listening to people and tailoring your approach to them individually?
It's about also being empathetic. Show compassion in everyday business if it's about an employee. To be seen and be satisfied as an employee or to interact with clients. People are smart. They are not stupid. You cannot just tell them any story. It has to be genuine. It can only be genuine if, within myself, I live it. I'm the role model of what I'm talking about. Management leadership is a lot about motivating people. Motivating people entails understanding people, how they tick in general and how to deal with them. I see sometimes myself as a therapist to the organization talking now in terms of treatment and therapy. This is what the leader today should be capable of.
We talk a lot about listening to people to understand their expectations and what they're trying to achieve in your organization if you can shape their job around achieving their expectations, then that's going to be super motivating for them. It's about listening. Everyone needs a psychologist at some level to be a successful leader. I love that. Psychological management is a great concept. What do business owners do when they are faced with all the negative communication or toxicity that they experience in the news or social media environment?
