Maximizing Student’s Ability to Pursue & Achieve their Career Goals

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Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  0:00  

My mission is fairly simple and It’s assisting students with getting into medical school so that they can pursue their dream career. I’ve never seen my job as deciding who should or shouldn’t get in or anything like that my goal is to help people who have this dream to achieve it, because in my space as I said, it’s not a matter of oh if you don’t get into this medical school, it’s okay, you’ll still become a doctor, no, some of our students are legit, without our support might not become a physician. And so I just think it’s an enormous responsibility and one that I’m very grateful for, to help people achieve their academic and career goals. And then yet there are other students who are rock stars complete rock stars, and for them, their goal is to get into a top 10 or top 20 Medical School, and our job is to help maximize that thing.

 

Richard Matthews  0:55  

Heroes are an inspiring group of people, every one of them from the larger than life comic book heroes you see on the big silver screen, the everyday heroes that let us live the privileged lives we do. Every hero has a story to tell, the doctor saving lives at your local hospital, the war veteran down the street, who risked his life for our freedom to the police officers, and the firefighters who risked their safety to ensure ours every hero is special and every story worth telling. But there was one class of heroes that I think is often ignored the entrepreneur, the creator, the producer, the ones who look at the problems in this world and think to themselves, you know what, I can fix that, I can help people, I can make a difference. And they go out and do exactly that by creating a new product or introducing a new service. Some go on to change the world, others make a world of difference to their customers. Welcome to the Hero Show. Join us as we pull back the masks on the world’s finest hero preneurs and learn the secrets to their powers, their success, and their influence. So you can use those secrets to attract more sales, make more money, and experience more freedom in your business. I’m your host, Richard Matthews, and we are on in 3…2…1…

 

Richard Matthews  1:50  

Welcome back to the Hero Show. My name is Richard Matthews. Today I have the pleasure of having on the line Dr. Shirag Shemmassian. Did I get that right?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  1:58  

Yeah, that works great. Thank you. It’s Dr. Shemmassian. Thank you, Richard. 

 

Richard Matthews  2:02  

Dr. Shemmassian

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Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  2:02  

It’s a tough one.

 

Richard Matthews  2:04  

Yeah, and you were telling me, you have Lebanese heritage. Is that right?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  2:09  

Yeah. So we’re ethnically Armenian. But my parents were born and raised in Lebanon. So they actually immigrated to the states from Lebanon in the late 70s. But I was born and raised here specifically in Los Angeles.

 

Richard Matthews  2:22  

Nice. Yeah. I grew up just south of Los Angeles, in the Riverside area. I’m from Marietta. So not too far from where you grew up. So where are you now?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  2:34  

So we’re in San Diego, forming a triangle with urine, my old stomping grounds. Richard. So yeah, about an hour south of Temecula.

 

Richard Matthews  2:46  

We travel full time with my family. And San Diego is my favorite of all the big cities because it’s clean, and it’s beautiful, and the weather’s nice.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  2:57  

Yep, it’s pretty awesome. We feel very fortunate to live here. I feel like a couple of weeks in when my wife and I moved down here about five and a half years ago, we got here and we’re like, alright, I think we’re good. It’s sort of hard to leave.

 

Richard Matthews  3:09  

I brought my wife out to Temecula, California, when we first got married, it was about five years after we got married. And we moved in in October. And if you’ve ever been to California in October, which I know you have, but it’s heavenly. And she’s like, I keep looking forward to winter to start. And I’m like, oh, this is winter, dear the depths of winter. It’s 72 degrees and sitting with a light breeze and we’re at the park and you can go to the beach and get ice cream. Like that’s winter.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  3:35  

Yeah, you can choose that life. Absolutely.

 

Richard Matthews  3:38  

So for those of you who are following along with our podcast, and my wife and I travels, we are no longer in Florida. We’re in Central Texas now. For what we’re doing, we’re actually on our way back to San Diego here shortly. We should be there for the holidays, which is really cool. But what I want to do is do just a very brief introduction of you, and then we’ll dive into your story and find out a little bit about what you do. So Dr. Shemmassian is the founder of ShemmassianAcademy consulting, one of the world’s foremost experts on medical school admissions, college admissions, and Graduate School Admissions, nearly 20 years, you and your team have helped 1000s of students get into med school and top colleges using your systematic and proprietary approach. So what I want you to start off with is why don’t you tell me what it is that you’re known for? What do you do? Who do you serve? How do you do it for them?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  4:22  

Yeah, so we’re best known for medical school admissions, I would say, and also residency admissions, so people who are going from medical school into residency, and we’ve been doing this for a long, long time, and we assist students with every aspect of that process. So as early as freshman year when students have just started college and they’re looking for assistance on course selection and extracurricular activity development and making sure that they’re building relationships with the best rec letter writers and things of that nature. And then over time, it changes because students will then go on to study for the MCAT, the MCAT for those who aren’t familiar, you can think of it like the SAT or the ACT, but for medical school, so it’s a big standardized test, it’s very difficult. So we help tutor with that. And then we also help with every aspect of the application process. So assisting students with brainstorming, and outlining, and editing all of their essays we assist with interview coaching, developing the right school lists. The whole nine yards really. And by taking a very hands-on dedicated approach like this, our students have been very successful over time.

 

Richard Matthews  5:29  

That’s interesting. So what I want to find out is how you got into medical school admissions as a career. We talked on the show, every hero has their origin story. It’s a thing that made you into the hero you are today, we want to know, basically, where you came from. Were you bit by a radioactive spider that made you want to get into academic admissions? Or did you start in a job and eventually move your way over? Basically, how did you get to where you are now?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  5:54  

Yeah, so no, it was a more genetic mutation, Allah X Men, I’m kidding. But it just kind of happened organically out of necessity, Richard. I was going through my primary and secondary education, and going back to my parents story about them immigrating to the states, they left Lebanon during a civil war in the late 70s. And when they came to this country, they did so, because my dad actually was able to get into a master’s program outside of St. Louis. And they were there two years before moving to LA. And so, education allowed them to leave a war torn country, to have stability here, to have an opportunity to really make a better life for my brother and me. And so they were all about education, go to school, get a good job, something that’s respected, be a doctor, dentist, lawyer, any immigrants out there listening or any kids of immigrants, you’re probably chuckling because I feel like every kid in my shoes, sort of has that same story of like, my parents told me to do X, Y, or Z, these were the options, almost like a limited menu. And so when we got to the stage of high school, we went to a small Armenian school our entire lives, my brother and me, and so our teachers were immigrants, my college counselor was an immigrant. And so no one had really gone to school here. So when it was like, alright, cool teachers, alright, parents, like how do I do this? How do I go to school? How do I fulfill this dream you guys have for me? Like, I don’t know, we didn’t go to school here. And it was sort of up to us to figure it out. So it was like, do this thing, oh, by the way, you also have to figure out how to do it. And, all right, because that was what we figured we had to do, our parents told us to do X, we’re like, alright, we’re gonna do that thing. And so I was self-taught in that regard of learning what it takes to get into top colleges. And because if you wanted something outside of the LA area like if you want to go somewhere other than UCLA, or UC Irvine, or USC, or something like that, you’re kind of on your own, I think, my high school has been around, I think, around 60 years, I’m still the only person to have gone to an Ivy League school. So it’s ultra rare for that kind of thing to happen. And so I went to Cornell, I was pre-med there, and again, was studying everything I could because I wanted to go to medical school and didn’t have a mentor to lean on. And I actually did very well there but I decided to have a shift where I decided to go into clinical psychology because I was doing a lot of work in mental health. But along the way, I was self-taught with pre-med and helping other people get into medical school. Over time, word of mouth groups, people told people, a friend told their cousin who was reaching out to me, and so on. And around grad school time too I sort of caught entrepreneurial slash self-help, self-development kind of bug and started reading a lot of books and as the requests were growing and growing. I was like, I think I really enjoy this, my students are finding great value and they’re getting in, so maybe I should do something here. And that’s really what it was born out of. I wasn’t masterminding this at 10 years old, being like, I want to be a med school admissions consultant when I grew up, there was nothing like that. And so I very, fortunately, I guess, work my way into it.

 

Richard Matthews  9:14  

That’s interesting. And so you’ve been doing this now for 20 years, right?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  9:18  

Almost there. Yeah. Between 15 and 20. I believe about it is year 18 now.

 

Richard Matthews  9:25  

Yeah, that’s pretty amazing because they’re very few businesses that make it even past the first year let alone the first five and to be doing this for 18 years is impressive. That means you’re doing something right and your customers like what you’re doing, but I want to find out is over the course of those years. Have you discovered your superpower in this space? We talked on this show every time every hero has a superpower whether that’s a fancy flying suit made by genius intellect or the ability to call down thunder from the sky or super strength. In the real world, heroes have what I call a zone of genius, which is either a skill or a set of skills that you were born with or you developed over time that really helps energize all your other skills. And it’s the superpower that allows you to help your clients slay their villains and come out on top in their journeys. The way I like to frame that is if you look at the skills that you have or you’ve developed, there’s probably a common thread between all of those skills and that common thread is where your superpower lies. So with that framing what do you think your superpower is?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  10:21  

Yeah, I had a chance to think about this. And I think the clearest thread for me, the thing that cuts across all the different things that I do well, is really just being a good listener. And when I thought of that, I was like, Man, that sounds a little bit cliche, I’m a good listener. But no, I mean, in an applied way, it’s actually very critical for the work that I do. So if you think about everything from our customer journey, like from people, when they first learn about us to when they begin working with us, and all that kind of stuff all the way through their application cycle. I think that critical listening is probably the single most important thing in the work that I do. I’ve had a lot of conversations with students and prospective applicants to medical school, to colleges, to residency. And you’ll notice that a lot of them have the same hopes, fears, and dreams. They hope for similar things, they worry about the same thing, they’re in a very tense period, they’ve been working their tail off for years. And now they’re at the stage where they’re applying to a particular set of programs. And this is it, this is for all the marbles, and they have to now do it. And they’re in a really tough spot. They also communicate things in very similar ways. So in every customer base, I found that people tend to use similar words to describe their problems, probably because they’re part of the same community, they use the same language and stuff like that. Even from the way we produce our blog content to YouTube content, really using our customers language, and their verbalized concerns and their dreams and stuff like that, allows us to write our content in such a way, that’s as though we’re speaking with them, I think that’s a very critical piece already and for people to understand that, hey, this person gets me they know what I’m going through, they probably know what I need. And then when I have a consultation with a family, just again, really listen, because every student’s situation is different. One student has a higher GPA than others, others have a better extracurricular profile than others, others have better rec letters than others. And this is sort of this amalgamation of things that allows us to figure out how to best support this person. And by taking all that information in, and putting it together, we can best help our students. And then, of course, at the application stage, students come to us, Richard with their resume and their grades, and they’re like, alright, what do I write about? I’m staring at a blank piece of paper. I don’t know what to produce, can you help me get to know their path to medicine? What makes them tick? What was the genesis of that thing, and piecing together different aspects of their story that makes them, them? And so, when thinking about superpowers, it’s really that one piece, that’s the foundation of really everything we do. Because if you rush things, you don’t listen, you don’t put the student first, you don’t actually hear what they’re telling you as far as their concerns or how to position them, everything falls apart.

 

Richard Matthews  13:16  

Yeah, that’s really interesting. And one of the things that I like about that is, I work in the marketing space where we help other businesses reach their marketing and communicate with them. And one of the things I find myself repeating over and over again, to clients, no matter what it is we’re doing, or what we’re marketing, and what space we’re in, is, what is the language of your community? Because language is really what ties a community together. And so we do things on both sides of the community aspect of when someone’s a prospect to when they become a client or become a member of your community, is what is the language that they’re using. So you can communicate with them in that language. And then once they become a customer, or they become a member of your community, what is the type of language that you use as a community member to invite them in because the way that you get someone to take ownership in whatever it is that you do, and whatever community that you have a part of, is you build them into the language when they understand your jargon and all the different little words that we use in our communities. That’s how people become a part of that. So it’s interesting that one of the things you’ve noticed is the foundational piece in your business is that ability to listen and communicate because it’s foundational for the entire human experience, but particularly with marketing and sales and growing a company.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  14:44  

For sure, and it’s hard, it’s one of those things, Richard, I will defer to you as the expert on that. But I found a lot of times when I’ve talked to friends who want to maybe start an organization and they’re like, how do I find prospective customers and all these kinds of things. I’m like, well go listen to your market and actually talk to people. They’re like, okay, okay, and like almost no one does. They keep trying, ahh, nothing’s working, I’m going to switch this sign up for a new newsletter, email software, and all this kind of stuff. I’m like, No, at the end of the day, our stuff is very simple, as far as our structure behind marketing stuff, and all this kind of stuff, but the language and the psychology is very complicated. And so a mentor of mine, Ramit Sethi, whose courses I signed up four years ago, and who’ve just been terrific. And he’s the person who really just emphasizes the things that I intuitively sense like, actually, these people that you’re going to observe, they’re going to tell you what they need. And he obviously puts a great package around how to actually do that deliberately. But he’s just taught me so, so much about how to go about doing that. And an excellent resource.

 

Richard Matthews  15:59  

Yeah, I went through one course of his that I implemented right after I went through it and made me over $100,000 a year for the next couple of years. So I’m a fan of Ramit Sethi.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  16:10  

That’s great! Congratulations.

 

Richard Matthews  16:14  

So I want to talk about the flip side of your superpower. The flip side of every superpower is the fatal flaw. Just like Superman has his kryptonite, or wonder woman can’t remove her bracelets of victory without going mad, you probably had something that’s held you back and growing your business, something you struggled with, for me, it was a couple of things as I grew my company, I struggled with perfectionism for a lot of years, which means I wasn’t shipping product. And I struggled with lack of self-care, which means that I had poor boundaries, I had poor boundaries with my time, poor boundaries with my clients, and other things that sort of kept me from actually being able to grow the way that I wanted to and needed to. So what do you think your fatal flaw has been? And how have you worked to overcome it? So that our audience might learn a little from your growth.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  16:58  

Yeah, I think, symptom wise, kind of similar to what you just said, Richard about the boundary issue, it’s hard for me to unplug, my mind’s always thinking about things, I wake up, I’m thinking about issues and all these different things. And maybe not having as much fun or spending as much time with my family, as I always want to, those are all true. And I’ve thought about, why is this? And I think that a lot of it is almost like, I don’t know how to quite put it, but maybe being too emotional about the business, in the sense that when you have an intense level of caring, you’re like, this has to work, you’re basically really obsessive about making sure that it works. And that has those ripple effects, like, working on things way later, harder to stop thinking about some of these issues, and so on and so forth. And also, having a hard time pulling back, as we’ve hired more staff and assisted more people, we’ve added more pieces to our team. And there are people on our team who even after training and stuff like that, I found myself at times, not quite letting go of certain things that I used to do. And I think again, it points to that. Just maybe being perfectionistic, like you say, or having that intense investment, emotionally and otherwise in the business and making sure that you’re going to do whatever it takes for it to not only work but to work well. Those are also the things that resonated with me. So everything you said was like, man, he sounds like me. So thank you for sharing that.

 

Richard Matthews  18:30  

Yeah, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that your superpower and your fatal flaw a lot of times are just opposites of the same core aspect. So for me, my superpower is the systems and seeing how to develop and build systems and automations and underpinnings of how things work, that’s what I’m really good at. And because I’m that way, I’m very interested in efficiency and things that work exactly the way that I want them to. So the problem that comes out of that is it manifests itself in being a perfectionist, which means that things never get shipped. So I have to overcome that. And it sounds like yours is very similar if your superpower is listening, which is really a form of empathy, and the ability to really care deeply about someone else. That caring deeply means that when it goes too far, you can’t disconnect, you can’t unplug, you can’t turn yourself off enough to actually take care of yourself. And yeah, it’s interesting how your superpower also becomes a little bit of your fatal flaw.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  19:41  

Yeah, absolutely. Different sides of the same coin.

 

Richard Matthews  19:45  

Absolutely. So I want to talk a little bit then about your clients and one of the enemies that they have to fight. We call this your common enemy. Every superhero has an arch-nemesis, it’s the thing that they constantly have to fight against in their world. In the world of business, we generally put it in the context of your clients, and it’s a mindset or a flaw that you regularly have to fight against once they sign on the dotted line with you. So that you can actually get them the result they came to you for. And if you had your magic wand, and you could just bop every new client on the head and be like, boop, you don’t have to deal with that anymore. What is that common enemy that you constantly see rearing its head in your business?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  20:21  

Oh, preconceived notions about what it takes to get in. And I sort of pin it on just the stuff that people hear and read and the echo chambers that they’re in. So speaking about the students that we serve, there’s so much hearsay within the premed community. It’s a high anxiety group of people, these people might not be anxious in other areas of their life, necessarily, but they’re very, very, very anxious, usually, when it comes to medical school admissions because again, it’s not like a thing where if you don’t work out, one story will work out another it’s not like that, this is the difference between you get to become a doctor, or you do a completely different career. And so there’s a lot of intensity in this community and a lot of concern, and they go to school with students who are very high achieving, they might have been top of the heap and their high school, but then they go to a good school, and they’re just one of many students who are top of the heap and their high school. And so the competition is high. There are a lot of rumors that circulate oftentimes, they’re wrong. They read stuff on Reddit and other message boards about are they in a strong enough position to get in or not? And there’s all this hearsay that’s sort of transmitted from one person to another. And what ends up happening is they bring that to their work with you. And they’ll talk about hey, what are my chances, strengths, and weaknesses, you talk about, hey, this is a concern, but is actually not a concern, whatever. Or it’s not all about grades, it’s about extracurriculars, as well, and essays and they’re like, yeah, I totally get it. And then the moment you’re helping them, they’re like, but my grades. But it’s almost like they get pulled back to the anxiety that they came in with. And it’s very hard to help them unlearn some of those preconceived notions that they came in with. In other words, it’s not just an issue of providing correct information. I mean, how many things do we know in this world where it’s like, someone believes wrong information. You provide them with the right information. But it’s not just the lack of information that’s the issue. It’s the emotionality behind it, the group they identify with that really makes it difficult for them to let it go. And so that’s the kind of thing that we’re always fighting against. I’m like, hey, look, believe me, I’ve done this many, many times, with many, many students, I promise, in your case, you don’t need to worry about this thing. They’re like, but I read online. And I’m like, well, is it what you read online? Or this person who’s done it millions of times, so that’s the kind of tide we’re fighting against. And I wish it was the case of like, hey, you know, student, this is the correct answer. And they’re like, got it, thanks, coach, and you move on, but it just doesn’t work that way. And that’s just true of everyone, right? Like, if you’re a weight loss coach, or in fitness or something like this, it’s not just that someone doesn’t know what to eat, or doesn’t know what workout to do. And once you provide them the info, everything, no, there’s so much stuff about adherence and patterns that you have to break and emotions around their weight, and exercise and responsibilities. Those are the real challenges that we see in our work.

 

Richard Matthews  23:35  

It’s interesting, it reminds me of one of my favorite metaphors I use because one of the things we do is I help businesses take their expertise, and then package it up into education that helps their students accomplish whatever goal they teach, whether that’s weight loss, or college admissions, or whatever. And one of the baseline metaphors we use for helping experts teach other people is when you’re teaching something, we’re not generally teaching English skills or math skills that you just have to learn, we’re teaching stuff that someone has to change who they are as a person and take action on new things, in order to get the result that they’re looking for. So it’s an identity thing. And so when you’re teaching things that change people’s identities, you have to teach differently. The metaphor that I use for that is something I call the crocodile-infested river. On one side of the crocodile-infested river, you have the person and their levels of awareness, whatever problem that they have. And the levels of awareness are what, why, how and now, I’ll talk about that in just a second. And then you have the actual crocodile-infested River, which is the problem that they have to overcome, and your case college admissions. And then the other side of the river is the promised land. That’s like, I’ve already been admitted to college, I’m going to school, I’m doing whatever I want to do, that’s life in the Promised Land life afterward. So we use our job as the ones who’s communicating to these people that have this problem. The other side of the crocodile-infested rivers to find out, where are they with the levels of awareness? And so the levels of awareness are the what, why, how and now, and the what is, the first part of that awareness is do I know what that problem is? So you show up for the doctor one day, and the doctor says, well, you’re fat Sick, and Nearly Dead, and your responses what? Because that’s the very first level of awareness, they have to be aware that there is a problem. And then the next level of awareness is Why, why do I have that problem? And that’s where you identify the enemies. And if you’re Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead, maybe it’s your diet and your lack of exercise or whatnot. And so you have, you have enemies you’ve identified, and then you have the how, which is okay, now that I know that I have a problem. And the reason I have the problem, how do I fix it? Well, you’re gonna have to change your diet and change your exercise, or you’re gonna have to do extracurriculars and and not worry so much about your grades or whatever it is, you get to college admissions, and then you have the NOW, now it’s okay, I have all those things down, I’m standing on the precipice on the edge of the river, looking out of the crocodile-infested river, and I actually have to swim across, and I have to fight the crocodiles and avoid the tide pools and all those things, how am I ever gonna make it across this river? That’s where you come in. Because you have a boat, a captain, you’re a captain of a boat. It’s like I’ve been across this river 100 times and I have a boat with cool lasers, I’ve got the crocodile disintegrating lasers, and we have GPS that helps us navigate the tide pools, and the whole bit, and you can get on the boat with me and I can help you across this journey. And so you help take them to the promised land. So anyway, when you were talking about that problem that you run into is these preconceived notions that people have, they may not even know what the problems are, they don’t even know what it looks like to cross the river. And that’s where you have to come in and really help educate them and show them what it looks like. And you have to communicate that with them, depending on where they are in those levels of awareness.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  26:49  

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it’s understanding why someone is dealing with something is so critical, because you might think they have an information problem, but they don’t, it’s something completely different. Or maybe they do have an informational problem. And so getting at the crux of that is key.

 

Richard Matthews  27:07  

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s an interesting thing to deal with because you can’t just change someone’s thoughts and attitudes on things, they have to do that work themselves, all you can do is bring them the information and show them where the blind spots are, and then they have to take that and do something with it.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  27:29  

Yep. Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s our job.

 

Richard Matthews  27:33  

Yeah. So if your common enemy is something that you fight against, then your driving force is something that you fight for. Just like Spider Man fights to save New York or Batman fights to save Gotham, or Google fights to index and categorize all the world’s information. I want to know what it is that you fight for, in your company, your mission, so to speak.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  27:50  

Yeah, my mission is fairly simple, it’s assisting students with getting into medical school so that they can pursue their dream career. I’ve never seen my job as deciding who should or shouldn’t get in or anything like that. My goal is to help people who have this dream, to achieve it, because in my space, as I said, it’s not a matter of oh if you don’t get into this medical school, it’s okay, you’ll still become a doctor, no, some of our students are legit, without our support might not become a physician. And so, I just think it’s an enormous responsibility, and one that I’m very grateful for, to help people achieve their academic and career goals. And then yet, there are other students who are rock stars, complete rock stars. And for them, their goal is to get into a top 10, or top 20 Medical School. And our job is to help maximize that thing. And ultimately, the thing that’s changed for us over time, Richard, when you’re earlier on, you want to help people, you want to hone your craft, you want to help people get in and increase word of mouth, and all those different things and serve people well. But as things have grown for us, and we’ve had the opportunity to touch and to reach more people, I’ve sort of been thinking more and more critically about values and sort of the impact we want to make on this community at large. And one of the big, big things that we have focused on as of late is increasing diversity in medicine. Because we found that, there are the obvious things like our one on one services. They don’t require a trivial investment. In other words, they’re not cheap. And so there’s a subset of families who can afford them and other families who simply can’t. And there are a few ways we’ve started to combat this in recent years. Number one is people who qualify for fee assistance with their applications. We also give need based financial aid. We give partial financial aid to people. We started to produce more and more free materials for people like for test prep, so that even if someone can’t afford a test prep book, everything they need to know about the MCAT is on our website. That’s something that now exists. We’ve also pledged $100,000, to move forward diversity initiatives within our company and within the medical community. So recruiting more students from low income backgrounds to get our services. We’re working on some initiatives to help doctors who do come from minority backgrounds and help them get better jobs and to be leaders in their field. Because it’s not just about helping people who are traditionally unrepresented to become doctors, that’s just the first step. It’s about making sure that they’re in the community doing great things so that others see them and realize, like, hey, even these people who are traditionally underrepresented, they’re just as good as everybody else. And they should have the same level of authority as everybody else. And that’s some of the stuff that I’ve been really obsessed with lately.

 

Richard Matthews  30:50  

Yeah, that’s really interesting. And it’s a bigger mission than just getting people into college. This is potentially a rumor. I don’t know if this is true or not. But I had heard that while the medical community is incredibly competitive, there have been less people getting into it, there’s a shortage of people going into the medical community, and that we need more of them. Is that true? Or that’s just a rumor that I’ve heard?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  31:18  

It’s true, but it requires more explanation, there’s a lot more nuance. Whether a community is underserved really depends on which community you’re talking about. So if I go to Boston or San Diego, there isn’t really a shortage of physicians in those places. There are certainly a lot of physicians in primary care and specialists and stuff like that. So there are more than two issues that plague our country, as far as representation and care and stuff like that. Of course, there’s the issue of not enough doctors in rural areas, that’s huge. So if you go somewhere that’s sparsely populated, there are just very, very few doctors supporting those people. Another big problem is that we have so many specialists in this country, and not enough primary care physicians. And we’re very unique in that way. So we have a lot of surgeons, dermatologists and all these kinds of things. But we have relatively few generalists or internists or family medicine physicians and stuff like that, who can see more people for more common issues before they even become more serious issues before they require cancer surgery or whatever the case might be, those are really critical things. I mean, not that long ago, female students were underrepresented in medical school. Now, we actually have more female students in medical schools than males. But obviously, it takes time for stuff to balance out within the workforce because these people have to actually get jobs, they have to go up the ranks and stuff like this. So we have to break certain gender barriers, and those are really critical, minority individuals or people from minority backgrounds, whether low income or people of color, traditionally underrepresented in medicine, still underrepresented in medicine, certainly in key leadership roles. So these are the kinds of things that really plagued us, as a country within medicine, in addition to all the usual stuff around like, health insurance and access and things of this nature. But even from the admission standpoint, yes, you can make a change today. But for those people to not only become doctors but to assume leadership positions and change things. That’s decades long work, you might make a decision today to change the way you recruit students, but you might not see the full benefit of that until 20 to 30 years from now and beyond.

 

Richard Matthews  33:38  

Yeah, so the work you’re doing now is going to have an impact for a long time in our medical community.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  33:47  

Yeah, that’s the goal. And I know sometimes it’s like, man, you gotta have that long-term horizon, and you want more immediate impact and stuff like that. But again, healthcare is not something that’s going to get old in 20 years. So focusing on the long game, I think, is just so critical.

 

Richard Matthews  34:01  

People will go gray and old in 20 years.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  34:04  

Yeah, that’s right.

 

Richard Matthews  34:07  

So I want to completely shift gears and talk about some practical things for running your business. I call this your hero’s tool belt. And just like every superhero has a tool belt with awesome gadgets like batarangs and web slingers and laser eyes, or even big magical hammers. I want to talk about the top one or two tools you use everyday that you couldn’t live without to run your business could be anything from your notepads, your calendar to something you use for marketing or your product delivery, your service delivery, something you think is essential to getting your job done.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  34:39  

Oh, for me, I’m a big email nerd. And so I love using something called Mozilla Thunderbird. So if people are familiar with Firefox, it’s the same people who develop Thunderbird. It’s essentially a place where you can have multiple email addresses that are integrated, and you can just jump from one address to another. It also itemizes emails, I really dislike how in Gmail in the web browser, emails get clumped together. And it’s very easy to miss stuff. And it’s hard to know who is CC’d and which email you need to respond to. Thunderbird makes that a cinch. And I love using Thunderbird. Beyond that, I mean, I’m a pretty simple guy. I’ve sort of optimized the way I do email and, I code messages with certain subject lines, and that works exceptionally well for me. Other things, I use MailChimp for email marketing that’s been valuable to me. So nothing, I don’t know that I have a secret gadget or anything like that. But those tools, I’ve optimized them for my workflow, and I’m really happy with the way they work.

 

Richard Matthews  35:43  

Yeah, it’s interesting. Probably the first person has mentioned anything related to email in almost 200 episodes, the most common tool that people refer to as entrepreneurs is their calendar.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  35:54  

Oh yeah, I use Calendly. I love that!

 

Richard Matthews  35:58  

Yeah, I think yeah, calendar stuff is super important. But the email, email is one of those things that I like, I use Gmail, and I hate it. But I hate everything that I’ve tried that’s not Gmail. I haven’t tried Thunderbird yet, though. So maybe that’s my solution. I need to try pulling my email into something like that.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  36:17  

And I’ll warn you sometimes people who I recommend to they’re like, I don’t know how to use it, I’m like, so if you ever want to chat, Thunderbird. They don’t pay me to say any of this. I don’t know anybody who works there. But I love love, love their software, and it just makes my work so much easier.

 

Richard Matthews  36:34  

Yeah, that’s good to know. I’ll have to test that out. I’ve been trying one called Spark. And I thought it was working really well for about a week. And then I just started missing things and things started going away. And I’m like, that’s not gonna work. I gotta go back to my Gmail stuff. And it’s like, Gmail is like the standard and it’s not that great. But everything else is sort of like the same.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  36:55  

Yeah, why have a horizontal move. 

 

Richard Matthews  37:00  

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Now, back to the Hero Show. 

 

 

Richard Matthews  38:32  

So I want to talk about your own personal heroes. Every hero has their mentors, Frodo had Gandalf, Luke had Obi Wan Kenobi, Robert Kiyosaki had his Rich Dad and even Spiderman had his Uncle Ben, who were some of your heroes, were they peers? Were they speakers, authors, real life mentors? And how important were they to what you’ve accomplished so far, in the last 18 years growing your consulting business?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  38:57  

Yeah, people asked me who do you look up to, or who you meant or whatnot. And I used to struggle to identify one person who has been this key mentor to me along the way. And, frankly, I’ve had different mentors at different stages. And I found that I have different mentors for different things. So I might have one mentor whom I love getting business advice from, but I would never go to them for advice on family, or Christianity, or anything like that. And then there are other people that I would go to for spiritual leadership that I would never ask business questions. And all over the place, but I mean, there have been some critical people in my life for sure. So you mentioned Robert Kiyosaki and people really debate how good is Rich Dad, Poor Dad? Is the advice good and all this kind of stuff? But, I mean, that was the first book that I read that really sparked my entrepreneurial journey. That’s been a foundational sort of piece for me, and so that was sort of my initial mentor if you will. Dale Carnegie is another author whose work has just really inspired me How to Win Friends and Influence People is probably my single favorite book. As far as entrepreneurship goes, people read it. And sounds so, so simple. And it does sound simple. But it’s not simple to implement it as a whole different thing, then people struggle with it all the time. And then Ramit Sethi who has been exceptionally influential in my life, as far as learning, marketing and sales, and how to listen to your customers, how to build a business that’s sustainable and grows and does so comfortably. And he’s just been an exceptional mentor. A gentlemen, Ron Reagan Stryfe, who was introduced to me by my pastor, my pastor in San Diego, knew this gentleman at a sister church up in LA, and this guy, he basically started a lighting company, and they do like commercial lighting. So like, if you’re going to build a theme park or a big office building, they do all the lighting, soup to nuts, basically. And he has three grown sons, and I think eight grandchildren. He’s taught me a lot about not only how to think about a company, but how to grow something in a way that also blesses your family. And where you maintain a relationship with Christ along the way and prioritize those things. He’s been an exceptional mentor to me. So again, it’s just like, there are so many people along the way, and I look to different people for different things. And it’s just been a real blessing to have that person or those people in my life.

 

Richard Matthews  41:34  

Yeah, that’s one of the things that I learned early on, I was like, 14, or 15 when I got that lesson about having to pick your mentors based on the area that you wanted to learn from them in. And I remember it was kind of a shocking thing, to realize that someone that I respected and really looked up to in certain areas of my life when it came to other areas they weren’t great mentors. And I remember I was young at the time, it was like, oh, it was very surprising, and I didn’t quite know how to deal with it at that point in my life. But I remember, very specifically, learning that lesson at about 14 or 15 years old, and realizing that I’ve got areas of my life, I have spiritual mentors, and I have business mentors, and I have family mentors, like raising kids and that kind of stuff. And they don’t have to be the same person. Because not everyone is perfect. No one is actually. But we all have our strengths and weaknesses and the people that you have to choose where to learn from people. So yeah, it’s an important lesson to learn. And I know a lot of entrepreneurs struggle with that. Because you think I’ll have to find a mentor, cuz you hear that all the time. And in a space, you should have a mentor or coach, and then you try to look for that perfect person, and they don’t exist.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  42:53  

Yeah, you also might not be ready for them. I remember when learning about mentors,  I reached out to a few people and like will you be my mentor? It was weird, I was very awkward. I was like, will you be my girlfriend? laying that kind of question. But like way too early kind of thing. And I didn’t quite know what I needed, or what I wanted. So my requests were nonspecific. And so there has to be an alignment between what you’re looking for, who the person is, and if they’re also in a stage where they can devote that energy to you. And if you can actually implement what they say and follow up with them. I mean, all this stuff is critical. But you’re right, Richard, I’m so glad that you learned that lesson earlier than I did, as far as you know, having different mentors for different things. Because it’s almost like realizing, the way I’ve read about it in some books is that moment when you realize your dad’s not perfect like you look up to him when you’re really little. And then you realize, oh, he’s not perfect, or my mom’s not perfect, or whatever, or my favorite athlete. I grew up a big Laker fan, Kobe Bryant, he’s not perfect, oh, my gosh, that’s weird. And so having those realizations really just allows you to think about, okay, what do I want to build for my life and for my family’s life? And then, who are the people who I look up to, and what do I look up to them for? And then seek their specific mentorship for those things. And it can actually be a really beautiful friendship, like, this gentleman, Ron, I don’t quite know his age, but I would venture the early to mid-70s. And I generally consider him a friend, and I talk to him every week, and we have a really nice relationship. And that’s not something that I would have been able to have had. I did not seek it and had not been specific in my intention for that. So he’s just been an exceptional blessing.

 

Richard Matthews  44:34  

Yeah, that’s very true. So speaking of mentors, one of the things that I learned from some of my mentors are some of my guiding principles. And one of the things that make heroes heroic is that they live by a code. For instance, Batman never kills his enemies; he only ever brings them to Arkham Asylum. So as we wrap up the interview, getting to the end of this, I want to talk about the top one or two principles that you live your life by. Maybe something you wish you knew when you first started out 20 years years ago with your consultancy, growing this, what’re some of your guiding principles?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  45:06  

I mean, probably the single biggest guiding principle and this has been, I think, pretty true since we started, putting student’s best interest first. Whenever that’s been applied, it yields excellent results in the good and the bad times. Sometimes a student might fall off the map, and they’ll come back and whatnot. And you have to do what’s in your students best interest, it also sometimes means that putting your students best interest first means tough love, about them not pulling their weight maybe and checking in more and being like, if you really want, this is what you have to do, because that’s how you’re going to coach them up. And it’s been hard, our response times on emails and essays are really fast. We work nights, we work weekends and that’s been hard, I think on our team at times, especially during crunch times. But when we’ve put our student’s best interests first, they’re more successful, and we can celebrate them and good things happen for the company, but when you use that foundationally, for us, it’s worked wonders.

 

Richard Matthews  46:19  

Yeah, and it’s such an important thing for I think every business to realize is that you are not in business for yourself, you’re in business to help your customers, your clients, overcome some sort of a problem, and to solve something. And it doesn’t matter which business you’re in, that’s the truth to the truth of it. So really your customers are, for lack of a better term, your customers are the boss, and you work for them. And so when you put their interests first, that’s when your business is going to grow and thrive.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  46:55  

Yeah, absolutely. It’s hard to really apply that rule. Because sometimes we want what’s in it for us, and we want to maybe take that night off or whatever. But doing it the hard way, so long as it’s the right way, usually pays off.

 

Richard Matthews  47:12  

Yeah, that reminds me of the Sermon on the Mount. And people all the time they think that Jesus was up on the Sermon of the mount and giving the commandments on this is how you should live life. And I think that’s a misconception. I think the proper way to think about that is he’s like, hey, I authored the universe, and these are the laws of the land. And if you want to operate under the laws of the land, this is how it works. First you give, then you shall receive, it’s not like, you should do this. It’s just how the world works. If you jump off a building you’re gonna go down, gravity is a thing. And so anyway, that’s the way I like to think about that. And I think that the guiding principle is, that’s how businesses work. Is there an exchange of value and you have to put your customers first, in order for your business to grow?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  47:58  

Sure, I’m with you.

 

Richard Matthews  48:01  

So that’s basically a wrap on our interview. But I do finish every interview with a challenge, a simple challenge I call the hero’s challenge. And I do this to help get access to stories I might not otherwise find on my own because not everyone’s out doing the podcast rounds like you and I might be doing. So the question is simple. Do you have someone in your life or in your network that you think has a cool entrepreneurial story? Who are they? First names are fine, and why should they come and share their story with us here on the Hero Show. First person that comes to mind for you.

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  48:29  

I would nominate my buddy, Zahir Dossa. It might be hard to get in touch with him because he had a new beautiful baby girl. But he’s someone that I met through the same fellowship that we received over a decade ago. It’s called the Soros fellowship. And so here’s a really fascinating guy, who went to MIT for his undergrad and for his Ph.D., and he started a personalized hair care company. And I think it’s probably valued over a billion dollars now. And he’s done very well for himself. So he builds custom shampoos for people and what I really admire about him is just the way he has so deliberately grown his company and the risks he’s taken on in terms of capital and whatnot and been very intentional for where he needs to recently hire a CEO so that he can be Chairman the of Board. He’s just someone that I really look up to as far as his thoughtfulness and the way he approaches some people would consider risky decisions. He has a calm about him. He’s like, I know it’s gonna work, I’ve thought about it and he takes very educated bets in doing things. So he’s someone that I really really admire in that way. So if you can get them on man, I would totally applaud you and I would love to listen in on that.

 

Richard Matthews  49:44  

Awesome, we’ll reach out later and see if maybe we can get the introduction going. Not everyone says yes, but when they do, they tend to be some of our coolest episodes. So in comic books, there’s always the crowd of people who clap and cheer for the acts of heroism so are analogous to that is where can people find you? Where can they light up the bat signal so to speak, and say, hey, how can you help us with our college admissions? And I think more importantly than where can they go is who are the right types of people to reach out and actually light up that bat signal and ask for your help?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  50:16  

Yeah, as far as where to find us, visit our website, ShemmassianConsulting.com. Richard, I assume you will post it in the show notes because hard to spell, but 

 

Richard Matthews  50:26  

Yeah, will put links to the show notes. 

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  50:27  

And going back to no formal business knowledge, it’s like name my business Shemmassian Consulting, it’s hard to say, I don’t know if that’s the best idea. But here we are. And they’re easy contact forms to find and things like that and our email address. As far as the ideal student or customer, I mean, it’s really anyone who really, really, really wants to become a doctor. Again, I don’t discriminate based on oh, this person has this grade, or that grade, or anything like that. My job is to help you maximize your odds of pursuing your dream career. So that’s your actual passion, and you’re willing to work your tail off for it, then we’ll do the same.

 

Richard Matthews  51:08  

Awesome, thank you so much for that, we’ll definitely make sure there are links to your website and everything in the show notes. Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your story today and getting to hear a little bit about what you do. I said that we have people from all sorts of industries all over the place over the course of this show. And I’ve never had anyone who does medical school admissions before. That’s a very tight niche. And it’s fascinating to hear what it is you do and the problems that you guys run into and again, how similar businesses no matter where you put it. So again, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story today. Do you have any final words of wisdom for my audience before I hit this stop record button?

 

Dr. Shirag Shemmassian  51:49  

No, I think we’ve covered so much and if people just take one thing away, just listen to your customers and put their best interest first. You’ll probably be fine.

 

Richard Matthews  51:59  

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on today.