The Shaker spoke with Canberran, ACT Australian of the Year nominee, and successful entrepreneur, Glenn Keys

Congratulations on your nomination for ACT Australian of the Year. You’ve done a lot as an individual to support the Special Olympics, but it’s clear this philosophy runs through Aspen Medical as well…

It was certainly a surprise and an honour. As for Aspen, I believe that all business exists in a community. And therefore it’s important that we reflect that community. That can be as simple as a one-person company that gives an hour to a charity or in support of it, through to companies our size who should have a very positive affirmation about employing people with disabilities – both physical and intellectual.

Aspen Medical is a business that has to be responsive. How do you manage this need in day-to-day operations?

The key element of our business is being flexible. An issue can walk through the door or call through on the phone today, and we need to be able to respond to an issue immediately. We’re used to having to do this in the middle of the day or the middle of the night or on the weekend. The flexibility and adaptability of our staff and their willingness to jump on a plane without notice and realise they’re going to be somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time is invaluable.

The flexibility and responsiveness of our staff is the key to our success.

Has the recent Ebola contract had a structural effect on Aspen Medical?

It hasn’t forced us to change. We already had a primary care clinic in Liberia, so we understood the local environment. Being able to stand up quickly in remote environments is something we have been able to do since Day One.

This is a bigger contract with a little more profile, but as one of my team said, “We do this. We always do this.” This stand up/short notice/make it happen is what we commit to. We’re certainly not taking it lightly – not by any means… but we know how to do this work.

Media management can be incredibly important for businesses operating in high-profile markets. What did you learn out of the Ebola announcement and subsequent coverage?

We knew that the media would be interested and we were ready. We had both social media and the website prepared for the announcement by the Prime Minister. We coordinated with our marketing team to manage the media interviews and organise press conferences.

The key thing that we did that was important was that we knew what we could and couldn’t say. By focussing on the key message and avoiding details that were still really deep in planning – such as when we would stand up and how many people would go. Also, relationships needed to be established between the British Government, the Australian Government and the Government of Sierra Leone.

Realising that a journalist is always going to come with the one question in five different ways in order to try and get an unguarded answer meant we had to stick to our guns and keep focussed on what we could and couldn’t say.

And that’s the same for any media interview.

It’s great to see a local company involved in global issues. Was this always the strategy of Aspen Medical, or has the growth in that direction been more organic?

We were born global, so our first three contracts were all overseas: two in the UK and one in the Solomon Islands. That’s why we can operate around the world. It’s something we’re good at… and it’s something I think Australians are good at.

I think that Australians generally – as companies and as individuals – are used to operating outside of home. I run into Canberran companies in the airport in Dubai or in restaurants in London. That’s because if you’re going to run a serious business, you’re going to have to get out of Canberra and go and sell… and serious markets are overseas.

Being here, being in Canberra and being Australian are great pre-requisites for being able to sell offshore.

Canberra is sometimes seen as a regional city, but we have incredible access to the rest of the country (and the world) through the seat of government. Do you think Canberra businesses recognise these opportunities?

To be able to answer a call from the head of the Department of Health or Customs and be able to say, “I’ll be in your office in 15 minutes,” is very powerful. It also means you get to understand the environment that they are working in.

I talk to friends who work in Sydney and Melbourne about understanding how Government operates and they’re just not across it unless they take an enormous amount of interest. They just don’t connect with the machinery of Government.

Here, it happens almost by osmosis. You come across these conversations all the time, because someone who works high up at Defence might also be on the P&C with you, so you get to understand those nuances that maybe those from out of town don’t see.

Technology is the most expensive part of healthcare. What advances do you predict will bring back the balance to cost v benefit?

I think it’s already starting to happen and there are pressures both ways. You hear discussion around tailored pharmaceuticals. They just drive the cost through the roof. If you invented Lipidil, you’ve got 220 million people through which to amortise your research investment. For drugs that are highly specific, you’ve got to do the same amount of research and qualification to bring it to market, while only perhaps having a million people who can absorb that cost.

That’s a real danger, so I think there needs to be some really clever thinking around how we tailor and price unique pharmaceuticals in a way that brings the benefits to the community without bankrupting the individual or the government.

The other side is the integration of technology into healthcare which is getting really, really exciting. There’s some really neat stuff going on around tele-health and tele-consulting. There’s a lot of research that shows if you do psych consulting – particularly for men – via a tele-health model it is actually more efficient than doing it face-to-face.

So, how do we integrate that? I’ve obviously got an interest in disability care. While there are already some really good assistive technologies for people in wheelchairs or with really, really severe disabilities, they are just at the fringe. The integration of technology into disability care is just exciting, and I think it’s the little things that will change everything: the apps, the reduction of cost for technology housing. Those things will have a big effect on aged care and general health care as well.                                                                                                                   

I think we’re on the cusp. The next ten or fifteen years for healthcare, aged care and disability care and the integration of technology is just going to be enormous.

Using data to keep people out of hospitals, out of GP clinics and off pharmaceuticals, multiple pharmaceuticals and out of surgery is also going to be a game changer.

With promises of big government job losses in 2015, what do you see as the key challenges for Canberra business?

Getting business! That’s really it! Business will get tighter, margins will get tighter… the danger will be those companies that just think, “Right, I’ll cut my margins to the bone.” That’s bad business.

You need margins in order to grow your business and soak up problems. Perhaps what is not realised by some customers is that when businesses do that and the client takes the cheapest option, it means that when something goes wrong there is no capacity for the company to think “Right, I’ll cop that cost while we work through this challenge and pick it up on the other side.”

This is particularly evident in many companies that went into the mining sector. We’ve probably seen half of them disappear this year, either through acquisition or simply just winding up. So, businesses need resilience… It’s not about being ‘future-proof.’ It’s much more important to be ‘future-resilient’. If you aren’t planning now for the next two years to be resilient, it’s already too late.

Who in Canberra business do you most admire?

There are quite a few people I’m really impressed with.

John Hindmarsh, for me, is a standout. He does great construction business internationally. He could have packed up and lived anywhere. He could have moved to Sydney and bought an enormous house on the harbour somewhere, but he lives in Canberra and does a lot for the arts community and for charities. He invests in lots of local businesses, so John is, in my opinion, a great Canberran.

The guys from Seeing Machines are also amazing. They’re great and they demonstrate that Canberra has a real ‘leg-up’ when it comes to developing and marketing technology. So Seeing Machines and Intellidox are two companies that do it really well.

I also love the businesses that have come out of the research facilities such as Wink Labs. These are just some examples of what Canberrans can do with great opportunities – whether its selling wine around the world, selling IT technology, green technology, health technology… you know there is a lot more happening in this city than most people would recognise.

It’s exciting, and I love it!