Physiotherapist and commercial pilot Kennedy Lay has combined his two passions to create a business which takes allied health into the regions and has just made him a 40under40 award winner.
By Ara Jansen
What happens when you start your career and less than a handful of years in, feel burnt out and ready to try something else? It’s not easy to find something else you love just as much and are just as passionate about.
Kennedy Lay had a successful career as a physiotherapist, but like a lot of his colleagues, was burnt out and felt stagnant before he hit 30 and wondered what might come next.
“I was seeing about 60-70 patients a week,” says Kennedy, who found himself wanting to take a career sabbatical.
Born in Hong Kong, Kennedy moved to Melbourne when he was 13 and did his masters of physiotherapy at La Trobe University.
As he was feeling burnt out, generally just over it and wrestling with a lack of career progression, the 29-year-old started remembering a Hong Kong television series he loved as a teen called Triumph in the Skies screening in the early 2000s. It was a drama about the lives of pilots working for the fictional Solar Airways, which was based on Cathy Pacific Airways.
“One of the characters had a long distance romance with a girl in Rome,” he recalls. “That was a big deal in my head when I was young and I always wanted to be a pilot in some form or other.
“After four years of work as a physio I decided I wanted to pursue another pathway.”
He applied for flight school with Qantas in Queensland and after a series of tests, was accepted. It was a lot more work than he thought after his Triumph in the Skies romantic notions of flying collided with reality. While training to fly large commercial jets, Kennedy didn’t find a lot of magic in the way a commercial plane operated mostly on autopilot. But he still came away with a commercial pilots’ licence.
In a fortuitous conversation, one of Kennedy’s physio patients owned a sizable regional airline. When they were talking about what he might do next, the client suggested Kennedy combine his two loves – flying and physiotherapy. It planted a seed and Kennedy started looking around for a problem or a need he might be able to solve using flying and physio.
After lots of research and business planning, 15 months ago, Kennedy founded Fly2Health Group, which flies allied health practitioners into rural and remote towns in small planes. Those practitioners work in areas such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy and psychology. They specialise in on-the-ground assessment and therapy but also have telehealth services.
Part of the Fly2Health business model is that staff fly out of Perth in the morning and return in the evening, which helps with retention.
Kennedy started with one light plane and seeing patients as a physio one day a week, while continuing to work in a clinic. Now there’s 50 staff and five planes ferrying people around the state on regular rotation across about 23 stops that include Albany, Kalgoorlie, Wiluna, Tjuntjuntjara and Carnarvon. There are more than 150 people on the list waiting to be seen and the highest area of demand is working with children with developmental barriers such as autism, developmental delay or intellectual disability.
In September 2022, the Jandakot Airport-based business expanded into remote Queensland and the plan is to eventually start up hubs in other states as well.
As the business has grown so fast, its managing director doesn’t get to fly as often as he’d like, averaging about one flight every three weeks.
His staff are usually younger practitioners who are attracted to the adventure of flying across the state to work. But it remains a challenge to find people. From his experience, Kennedy knows that the life span in allied health is about five to seven years and money tops out at about $150,000.
A former ski instructor on three continents who tries to hit the slopes once a year, Kennedy chooses golf as his way to unwind in Perth. He also likes to climb and says his 2017 adventure up Mt Kilimanjaro was one of the hardest things he has ever done. Doing some serious climbing around Mt Everest is on his bucket list. He’s started training, but doing it is still “way in the future”.
Kennedy lives with partner Carina, a doctor at Royal Perth Hospital. They met in Queensland while he was doing his flight training and he followed her to Perth. They both lead busy lives but find time to drive south for getaways and wine, fly to Rottnest and always make time for date night once a week. He’s a reader of business books and she likes fiction.
“Empathy, good communication and caring about other people forms a great cornerstone for our relationship,” he says.
Having a business of some sort was always part of his life plan. An only child, Kennedy’s mother has a real estate business in Melbourne and his dad is a business broker.
He describes himself as a chronic achiever of things, rather than a high achiever and while he has big goals, doesn’t consider himself ambitious.
“I reckon business might run in my blood from my mum’s side. When I was 14, my dad left us, and mum and I were living in a friend’s spare room. She single-handedly made her own success. That was a really good example and lesson for me to create my own path.
“My mum is an amazing role model. She had nothing to lose so she created her own financial living.”
Having a higher purpose to his business also rings true. Kennedy says if you solve a problem or a need, the money will come. Indeed, Fly2Health has never taken external investment and cash flow has been positive from day one. The company’s goals include altruism and selflessness alongside having a positive culture and efficiency.
“Being able to make a difference in the lives and health of people is pretty special. Being able to help people who otherwise don’t have ready access to these services is also hugely satisfying.”
In early May, Kennedy was named a 40under40 award winner by Business News. Journalist and chief judge Mark Pownall said the 2023 winners shared some unique qualities, including coming from difficult childhoods and facing health challenges.
The judge told Business News the panel was looking for “the entrepreneurs, the people who were willing to take a risk rather than follow the safe path, those who stepped outside their
comfort zone”.
“Winning the 40under40 has made me reflect on how amazing the Fly2Health Group team has been to me,” says Kennedy. “I absolutely love what I do and thank my team for providing a platform for free conversation, trust and challenge.”
Now with more than 600 clients in WA and Queensland, Kennedy’s business is committed to rural and regional health and plans to continue to grow its services in WA, Queensland and South Australia.