An Interview With Fotis Georgiadis
There is no right or wrong answer. I feel like it’s important to have someone you can bounce ideas off of. Whether a business partner, family member, or a friend.
As a part of our series called “Making Something From Nothing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Basma Hameed.
Basma Hameed is a prominent female person of color, immigrant (Iraq and Canada), and entrepreneur who has established two successful international businesses in the beauty sector. She positions her businesses to be inclusive and equitable to the core with a focus on accessibility inclusion. Basma immigrated to Canada in the 90s with her family to avoid war and is now based in Los Angeles, California, USA. She founded ‘The Basma Hameed Clinic’, the longest-running clinic of its kind in Toronto, Canada, and Beverly Hills, USA. In the past two decades, Basma built an elite team of professionals that are recognized for their ground-breaking work. The success of thousands of procedures performed on clients from all around the world has consistently garnered the attention of the media, business world, the medical community, along with members of Royal Families, Business Moguls, Hollywood A-listers, and large social media Influencers. The Basma Hameed Clinic has been prominently featured on news outlets and television shows such as The Doctors, CNN, CBC, The Huffington Post, TedTalk, Vogue, and more. In 2021, Basma launched BASMA Beauty, a color cosmetics company inspired by her own story and passion for makeup.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your “childhood backstory”?
I was two years old when I was involved in a kitchen accident that left me with 3rd-degree burns on almost half of my face. This traumatic experience forced me to miss school and social interactions due to extensive reconstructive surgeries. I was told that the scars from my accident would not go away and that I have to live with the discoloration. This forced me to learn at an early age to find self-acceptance, but not stop being solution-oriented. At 17 years old, I embarked on a bold vision to improve discoloration in scar tissue, a treatment now widely known internationally as scar camouflage.
I continually think of products and services I can provide to improve our lives. This year, I launched BASMA Beauty which is a color cosmetic brand inspired by real skin. I am very excited to share it with the world as I have been developing the formula for my first product for four years.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? My favorite life lesson quote “Knowing who you are”
Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life? Once I figured out who I am and what my purpose was I had a clear vision of exactly what I wanted to achieve for myself. I knew my purpose early on that I’m here to help and inspire through my story and professional work.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much? I listen to podcasts such as How I Built This, I’m intrigued by hearing people’s stories and how they started their businesses or how they come up with ideas.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. There is no shortage of good ideas out there. Many people have good ideas all the time. But people seem to struggle in taking a good idea and translating it into an actual business. Can you share a few ideas from your experience about how to overcome this challenge?
Do not overthink it or try to make your idea perfect from the jump. You are going to learn so much during the process and be able to make adjustments and improvements along the way.
Often when people think of a new idea, they dismiss it saying someone else must have thought of it before. How would you recommend that someone go about researching whether or not their idea has already been created?
To me, if you dismiss the idea quickly then you are not really passionate about it. Find something that truly inspires you or brings you some sort of excitement. If it does exist then find a way to make yours much better.
For the benefit of our readers, can you outline the steps one has to go through, from when they think of the idea, until it finally lands in a customer’s hands? In particular, we’d love to hear about how to file a patent, how to source a good manufacturer, and how to find a retailer to distribute it.
Once you register your company and file a patent application. You have to make a list of manufacturers and set up meetings with each one of them. Check their experience and capability. Discuss cost and payment options. With retailers or distributors, you have to ask what their model is.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me When I First Started Leading My Company” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
1- Hire the right team
2-Marketing
3-Importance of VC and Investors
4-Taking care of your health
5- Time management
Let’s imagine that a reader reading this interview has an idea for a product that they would like to invent. What are the first few steps that you would recommend that they take?
Study the market, the demand, and the shift for the next 10 years.
There are many invention development consultants. Would you recommend that a person with a new idea hire such a consultant, or should they try to strike out on their own?
There is no right or wrong answer. I feel like it’s important to have someone you can bounce ideas off of. Whether a business partner, family member, or a friend.
What are your thoughts about bootstrapping vs looking for venture capital? What is the best way to decide if you should do either one?
I have bootstrapped both of my businesses. I think it depends on your business plan, with a VC things will definitely go much faster.
Ok. We are nearly done. Here are our final questions. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
To me success is how many lives you have touched, I am blessed to be able to tell my story to inspire others to not give up.
You are an inspiration to a great many people. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Self-love and acceptance would be a great movement.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US, with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I have many but we can start with @oprah 🙂
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Making Something From Nothing: Basma Hameed On How To Go From Idea To Launch was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
