When Work is Purpose-Driven: Basem Goueli
It was a weeknight.
I now know Basem Goueli MD/PhD/MBA had already been working countless hours by the time I hesitantly reached out on LinkedIn.
“How much do you know about Hemochromatosis?" I messaged, referring to a genetic blood disorder that I’ve been managing for more than a decade.
“How can I help?” came the hematologist/oncologist’s immediate response.
Over the next few days I sent him charts of lab results and levels, as he requested.
While I did not walk away with a new diagnosis, I did walk away with more knowledge about my condition than I'd ever had.
Some might call Goueli's willingness to help so many a “lack of boundaries.”
Some might say he is unable to leave work at work -- a problem with which many doctors are afflicted.
And he might agree.
But I, like countless others, was a recent beneficiary of Goueli’s tendency to say Yes to anything that in alignment with his mission:
To help as many people as possible in a short period of time.
I was one of the lucky recipients of the wide net of service that Goueli casts.
Knowledge was the gift.
Not a cure, nor a way to get out of my dreaded phlebotomies.
But understanding my condition is empowering in and of itself.
It is this empowerment that is at core of Goueli’s patient education center on YouTube, “If You Were my Family Member.”
“If you educate patients,” he says, “it optimizes their chances at living as long as they can.”
I learned later that, in addition to helping random people like me and his cancer patient education series, Goueli also works the equivalent of at least three full-time jobs:
Full-time oncologist doing telemedicine for a rural Minnesota hospital,
CEO and founder for three start-ups, projected to launch next year — CancerLight LLC, Cancer Clarity LLC and Revolution Cancer Institute
Medical director for two XBiotech trials.
Just writing that makes me want to lie down and take a nap.
But Goueli, works until he sleeps.
He admits that he is exhausted at times — he is human, after all — but not burned out.
What’s the difference?
Purpose. Mission. Goueli is obsessed with doing good.
“Almost none of it feels like work right now…I have a very purpose driven life right now,” he says. “I feel like I’m controlling my destiny. I’m trying to do something transformative for people.”
Goueli clearly values hard work, too, never resting on what he calls the false belief that doctors are somehow smarter than others.
“I’ve worked unbelievably hard,” he says. “But I think that 90 percent of the people in the world could become doctors. It doesn’t take special intellect. I know that might piss people off. It requires diligence and opportunity.”
Goueli took that opportunity from the time he was a kid dissecting mice in his father’s lab.
And he’s been running with it ever since.
He is driven to pay it forward, especially to those with less opportunity. “I don’t care what you do. If you’re the best at what you do, I want to know you. I want to learn from you. There are amazing people in everything. They don’t get recognized every day. They may not have fame fortune, but I assure you, they’re brilliant.”
While he is driven by curiosity and humility, and a sense of duty about giving back, he is also dogged by the nightmare that any patient would suffer from his failure to work as hard as he can.
“I don’t ever want a patient’s care to suffer because they got me as a doctor,” he says. “That’s my biggest fear. So I work as hard as I can. I read everything I can. I’m constantly over-compensating for that.”
Dogged or driven, the connection to it all is Heart. That is the through line through all of Goueli’s passions, and why work does not feel like work.
“I’m very much someone who leads with their heart. I don’t care if it’s a problem. I don’t know how else to live,” says Goueli.
The Way, for Goueli, is love. He calls it Quintessential Love.
This Love is the energy that keeps him ticking through his days until he finally sleeps.
This love is present in his hardest moments as a cancer doctor: telling patients and their families that they are going to die or pronouncing patients dead.
While these heart-breaking moments never get easier, they are also the times when quintessential love is most present, he says.
“There is something stunning and beautiful and gorgeous in those moment,” says Goueli, who also writes poetry. “Just to see the resolve and the strength in the patients and their caregivers. There’s tremendous honor in it.”
While we talk, I hear a child’s voice in his room. He brings a beautiful boy to the camera, but the child refuses to look my way.
“He is a twin. They are both autistic,” Goueli tells me. “They struggle in ways very few can possibly comprehend. In their everyday existence, I am constantly reminded of what truly matters in life.”
Even at home, Goueli’s purpose lives large.
He doesn’t know how to be any other way.