Episode 15: Dr. Ronak Mehta, Nerdbugs

Doing it All: Dr. Ronak Mehta Discusses Mixing Entrepreneurship and a Medical Career

 

Dr. Ronak Mehta found life as a practicing family physician and a clinical assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin both rewarding and challenging. Then a few years ago, she decided to pursue another longtime goal: founding a toy company to help educate and inspire people to learn more about their health. The physician and CEO sits down with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein to discuss how she launched her company, navigating work-life balance, and what she sees in her future

 

Creating a toy company from scratch

Nerdbugs is a line of plush toys in the shape of human organs, which are intended to inform and educate children in science and healthy lifestyles. Ronak founded the company in 2018—but the idea had been germinating in her for about 10 years by then. She was in medical school when the concept first came to her. “One of the things that I noticed was how neat would it be if we had these plush toys that could not only be used to educate people about ‘Hey, you have asthma, this is what your lungs actually look like, and this is how asthma works,’” she says. “And the second thing was, it would be a really neat get well gift for someone that was hospitalized post-surgery or was undergoing dialysis or chemotherapy or something like that.”

Early in her medical career, Ronak also published a children’s book about health. While the book didn’t take off, it provided the inspiration for her idea about plush toys. It still took nearly 10 years to get up the nerve to actually pursue launching the toy company. Part of the reason for her resistance, she says, was self-doubt. “I sort of told myself, I have this formal career in health sciences and in medicine and I have no formal education in business, and I have no idea where to start and who am I to try to figure this out?” she says.

 

Adopting a “Why Not” Mentality

Once she finally took the first step of interviewing toy manufacturers to make prototypes of her design, Ronak says, she didn’t look back. When she first launched Nerdbugs, she was doing nearly everything herself. But once she realized the inefficiency in that model, she began hiring freelancers to cover areas like web development, social media, customer service, and photography. And she learned that taking the time to select the right partners as freelancers, and to nurture and support them, helped the company grow. “I wanted to help build these relationships within Nerdbugs, where it wasn't just a short-term person that I was looking for, but someone that really believed in the mission and wanted to grow as we grew,” she says.

Along the way, Ronak recalls, she adopted a “Why not?” mentality around Nerdbugs and taking chances on business contests. As she explains: “So I would apply for these things that I felt like maybe I'm not qualified for, but why not me? Why wouldn't they pick me?”

 

Work-life balance and what’s next

As she’s successfully juggled her medical career with her business venture, Ronak says she’s continuing to refine her work-life balance. “When I first started, you know, you have this fire inside you where you're like, okay, I'm just going to make it happen,” she says. “So you wake up at ungodly hours, go to work, come home and work.” Now, she says, she’s setting more boundaries, like not working after 6 p.m., or taking the whole weekend off.

As far as the future, Ronak has big plans. She’s in the process of revising her children’s book that originally inspired Nerdbugs. She wants to include more Nerdbugs as characters in the book. And she’s exploring video and creating animated shorts based on the characters.