IN February, Jennifer Holland visited the New Jersey headquarters of Steve Forbes, editor in chief of Forbes business magazine, whose personal net worth was last estimated at $US430 billion.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"It is something I will always remember, to see how and where that magic has happened for so long," says Holland, in obvious awe.
Describing Forbes as a "lovely soul", Holland walked away with a "huge pack" of goodies including a book, an umbrella and a beautiful scarf.
"For someone who is highly intelligent and successful, to give something to someone who is so small in the world..." she says modestly with a chuckle.
Forbes has other predictions.
He first met and watched the Newcastle mother-of-four pitch her medical invention Throat Scope at Pitch Tank 2018 in Las Vegas.
"I am intrigued because I think other companies are going to want to buy you out - you're on to something," the 71-year-old publishing magnate gushed after Holland delivered her five-minute pitch to the second and nabbed the $100,000 prize from Amazon.
Holland reveals she - or "we", given she refers to her three-member board - has plans to potentially list her growing Australian parent company Throat Scope, which owns the US subsidiary Holland Healthcare Inc.
"We do have an exit strategy in place to sell to a bigger company but whether we list before we get there, who knows," she says.
For now, however, her vision - a word she uses often - is to continue growing her medical diagnostic solutions empire.
She is busy preparing to roll out three new products that she describes as "game-changers", and worth billions in the global medical market - the Wound Scope, TelScope and Pap Scope.
The design for all of the individualised products are based upon her original, award-winning invention, the Throat Scope.
"Basically all we want to do is create simple, affordable medical diagnostic solutions to enhance medical examination and communication in clinics, hospitals and homes, and everything we do is about taking the complex and turning it into simple," she says.
Holland, 37, attributes her ability to cut to the chase in part to her childhood.
Born deaf, the first years of her life were a series of medical appointments until around the age of three her hearing returned.
"Even at 11 I had speech and communication problems, but I think that helped me develop skills to be a hands-on person, to make things simple for myself to understand, it stems from that," she says.
"I do look back and think, 'I did this because it was simple.' My brain actually functions differently. People will sit and tell me their problems and [by the end] I'll already have worked out solutions for them."
Her mother, retired family and health nurse Eileen Watson, recalls a bright, organised and happy daughter.
"She was independent and she seemed to have it all together, even as a little girl and I can remember that she taught herself to sew," she recalls.
Holland was working as a financial accountant when she got the idea for the Throat Scope in 2009.
Taking her first child, now 11, to her local GP in Newcastle with a sore throat, she was aghast at the unfolding scene of her doctor trying to hold down her son down while using a pen light and a wooden tongue depressor to to prod and examine his mouth.
By 2010 she was finalising the first prototype of Throat Scope, an all-in-one, illuminated tongue depressant device that she as convinced would take the heartache out of oral cavity examinations for patient and doctor.
Making baby steps on its development due to the demands of her growing family with husband Andrew, her breakthrough came in 2012 when she was a contestant on Channel 10's entrepreneur program Shark Tank.
There, tech start-up multi-millionaire Steve Baxter made a $76,000 investment offer for a 30 per cent stake, plus a 5 per cent royalties of sales up to the investment amount. [He remains an investor].
Through trial and some error, Holland has built a strong Australian business model that she is replicating in the US, Japan and Europe.
"We are four people in Australia and we outsource everything we do, from accounting to marketing and graphic design, and the reason is it's more efficient not having a big team to manage," she says.
In Australia, she has partnered with Sydney-based, family-owned company Team Medical Supplies, using their sales team to market her product.
Throat Scope moved into the US market two years ago, initially with a base in Ohio.
"Originally we were focused on speech pathology as an easy market. Now we are moving into paediatrics and doctors using a wooden tongue compressor - so oncologists, dentists, ENT specialists," she explains.
Describing the US medical system as "difficult and complex" to gain traction quickly, Holland says her company's newly appointed VP Business Development, David Mezera, recently kicked a major goal.
Mezera arranged a visit to the Texas Medical Centre - the world's largest children's hospital - which resulted in the company securing an office in its innovation centre.
"It's an opportunity to get our new products into the marketplace within the US medical system and to meet with 200 mentors across the centre who can provide you with feedback and all the information you need to launch a new product," she says, also grateful for the support of the Australian consulate and Austrade.
While she was once banging on doors trying to get investment, Holland says she now gets requests "all the time" to develop new medical products, which has driven her new range of diagnostic devices.
The idea for the Wound Scope, for example, came from a large US company.
"When looking inside a wound, [doctors] don't have anything that is lighted that can help them see and clean a wound," she says of the device.
Further feedback from surgeons resulted in a measuring device on the end of the Wound Scope, allowing doctors to initially measure and better track how quickly a wound is healing.
"It is a simple tool that will be a game-changer in wound care industries, there is nothing like it," Holland says.
"The wound-care market is worth billions so we've tested a small area in the US and done a few trade shows and we have found the need is there."
"We're providing a solution to a problem which is always a good thing in bringing a new product to market - the industry is ripe for the picking."
A UK hospital based in a remote area approached Holland to develop the Pap Scope, which Holland says is very similar to the Throat Scope but uses different lighting.
"People reach out to us all the time with different ideas but we have to evaluate them," Holland says.
"We have always wanted to have a universal light source that could provide different medical examinations across the board, our customers have just pushed us faster to get there."
In a case of history repeating itself, Holland's second child inspired her development of TelScope - basically a tweaked Throat Scope that combines with an app and allows a person to take a photo or video of their mouth that a doctor or specialist can use in diagnosis.
"My son suffered from tonsillitis so we continuously spent time coming and going from the doctors for a script, and it was so hard packing up four children every time to take him, sitting and waiting in the doctors office (picking up more germs than what we went with) I thought their must be an easier way," she says.
Holland found an online doctor consult service and during her son's online appointment she used the Throat Scope to show the doctor inside her son's mouth and throat before he was diagnosed with tonsillitis.
"This was all from the comfort of my own home - I didn't even have to get out of my - PJS and the online doctor than emailed the script direct to my pharmacy and I went and picked it up," she recalls.
"It was then that I realised parents/carers at home needed help getting a great throat or ear photo to send to an online doctor and TelScope was born."
Holland sees telehealth - the provision of healthcare remotely by means of telecommunications technology - as a ripe market. This year the Throat Scope was launched nationally in hospital outpatient clinics to allow intra-oral examination online. In short, telehealth companies provide clinics with the Throat Scope and they are given to patients who can connect online with their doctors.
"In the US, telehealth companies are becoming large particularly because of insurance costs being so expensive, so having people assessed via an online GP means they can lower costs," she says.
READ MORE: Patience pays off for Throat Scope inventor
She says her lighted, rechargeable TelScope removes the "pain point" that many companies wanting to move into telehealth couldn't deal with.
"One of the biggest problems was not having a photo or being able to depress the tongue to see the back of the tonsils - one of the main reasons someone goes to the doctor is for a sore throat," she says.
"We are providing a product that anyone, anywhere can provide a diagnosis for an oral health concern, from a sore throat or mouth ulcer or sore tooth. You could be at work or home and have an online consultation."
Describing telehealth as "the future of medicine", she notes many medical products are based on outdated technology that are not compatible with digital health.
Being a mum, the journey is greater because they are there by my side. I want them to understand that hard work and determination and persistence is all part of life, and it doesn't matter what you are doing.
- Jennifer Holland
"So we are trying to build a range of products which illuminate different orifices and integrate into telehealth," she says, adding that that also entails working with partners on software that is security compliant with regard to the transfer of patient data.
In August, Holland will join forces with the Australian Dental Association and Sigma Healthcare to run free oral health screening clinics outside pharmacies.
She says her rapport and work with US Oral Cancer Foundation boss Brian Hill, a stage four oral cancer survivor, was instrumental in her desire to raise education on the subject.
"Many people don't visit a dentist or have access to one and I want to make people aware of checking inside their mouths - not just because our product does that, but awareness will save lives," she says simply of the free screenings.
Eileen Watson admires her daughter's ability to seemingly seamlessly switch from work to mum mode.
"She's never had a babysitter beyond myself, her husband and her sister and Andrew's parents," she says. "She is organised and the children have all grown up with the expectation with 'this is how things are'.
How things are, well it's go, go, go.
Hair pulled back in her trademark, practical pony tail, Holland's day starts at 430am, when she starts work, also to coincide with US hours. She then jumps on the treadmill and runs for 20 minutes and reads email. When her children wake, she makes breakfast, lunches, helps with homework and getting them dressed before dropping them to school.
After doing the school pick-up she is the family taxi, dropping everyone to after school sports and dance, then it's homework, dinner, bath, books, bed and back to work for another couple of hours.
"My life is crazy but somehow it works. I love Sunday; I switch off and spend quality time with my family."
Her husband Andrew, a marine engineer for Svitzer in the Port of Newcastle, is amazed "daily" at his wife's persistence.
"She only sees possibilities, and nothing is ever unachievable," he says, adding with a laugh, "I would have given up 100 times."
He says his wife's drive and energy goes some way to explain how she steers the family "90 per cent of the time" while often working strange hours.
"She'll have meetings through the night with different countries and will get up at 3am, put on make-up and do her hair and put a shirt on and have a video conference, then get up again for the kids," he says. "She hasn't stepped back from being a mother."
For her part, Holland is keen to be known as a trailblazer rather than a "mumpreneur".
"I'm trying to move away from the working mother title and moving more towards female entrepreneur/CEO of a medical diagnostic company (medical professional feel)," she says.
No matter, she is the first to say being a mother has honed her negotiation skills.
"I think that if you can juggle work-life balance being a mum then you are a step ahead of the other entrepreneurs who haven't been down that path yet," she says.
"If you have a bad day you look to them and they put a smile on my face. I can't imagine doing it without them."
In fact, Holland will soon jet to the US on business and take her clan with her.
"I try to involve them because I want them to learn it's good to be creative and see the process. They might go down that path - my youngest son has ideas all the time," she says.
To date, Holland Healthcare [hollandhealthcareinc.com] has distributed two million products across eight countries via 30 medical distribution partners and its founder hopes to double that number in 2020.
Holland says her vision for Holland Healthcare is only just coming to light with the new product range but you get a sense she's light years ahead in her thinking.
"I can see the end result and nothing will stop me until I get there. I can't put it any other way," she says.