Applying a Consumer Market Mindset to Medical Device
Scott Nelson is Co-Founder and CEO of FastWave Medical. He is also the host of the Medsider Podcast, as well as the Founding Partner and Managing Director of Big Sky Biomedical, a leading medtech accelerator. Scott is a medical device veteran, and has held leadership roles at Medtronic, Covidien, Boston Scientific, C.R. Bard and ConMed. He also co-founded Joovv, a popular health and wellness brand. His unique background moving from traditional medical device to the consumer market and back again, opened his eyes to challenge some of his old mindsets. In this episode he shares what he learned at big companies, the differences in working in start-ups and how he applied his big-company experience, speed of iteration in the consumer space, the key drivers in evaluating early product ideas, and the importance of curiosity and developing your own learning plan.
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Episode Transcript
This transcript was generated using an automated transcription service and is minimally edited. Please forgive the mistakes contained within it.
Patrick Kothe 00:31
Welcome! Our mindset is often formed by the continual reinforcement of ideas. For example, every time I get together with a certain group of friends, I have a great time. So when the next invite comes, I look forward to it because I expect another great time. My mindset is trained by these positive reinforcements. We do the same thing in business. Many of us have been in medical device for a long time, and we've come to expect certain things because of continual reinforcement of ideas. FDA clearance takes a certain amount of time. A successful product launch requires a certain set of materials. Some people are always going to complain about documentation. And product development always follows the same script and timeframe. But what happens when we leave our medical device bubble and challenge some of these ideas. Our guest today is Scott Nelson, co founder and CEO of FastWave Medical. You may also recognize Scott as the host of the Medsider podcast as well as a founding partner and Managing Director of Big Sky Biomedical, which is a leading med tech accelerator. Scott's a medical device veteran and has held leadership roles at Medtronic, Covidien, Boston Scientific, CR Bard and Conmed. He also co founded Joovv, a popular health and wellness brand. His unique background moving from traditional and large multinational medical device companies to the consumer market, and then back again, opened his eyes to challenge some of his old mindsets. In our conversation, we discuss what he learned at big companies, the differences and working in startups, and how we applied his big company experience, speed of iteration in the consumer space, the key drivers in evaluating early product ideas and the importance of curiosity and developing your own learning plan. Here's our conversation. Scott, the early part of your career was spent with large medical device companies, then it appears you got the entrepreneurial bug and that bit you. What happened?
Scott Nelson 03:06
I would say I probably already had that bug for quite some time, right? And it sort of became a bigger a bigger part of my career a stronger reality, right, as I spent more and more time inside large companies. But But yeah, no, you're right, Pat, I've spent the majority of my professional career in medtech, the cardiovascular space, more specifically. And I would say, you know, the front half of that maybe even two thirds of that was was inside large corporations. And then you know, the latter, maybe third to half, as has been with early stage companies, and certainly prefer early stage companies. There's no doubt about that. But also don't regret my experiences, you know, in large corporations. And I think for anyone, anyone listening to this, this interview, if you haven't spent time in a big corporate environment, I think your career will only accelerate if you do spend a little bit of time there. So definitely, I imagine we'll probably get into that in more detail.
Patrick Kothe 03:55
Well, let's let's get into that right now. So in those in those big companies, what did you learn? I mean, did you learn you know, the basic things you take me from the, you know, the first major medical device company that you came into? What was happening with you at that time? Did it resonate with you? Is it something that was completely foreign to you? What was it walking in door the first day?
Scott Nelson 04:17
Yeah, well, so there's a specific story, right, that I remember. And this is maybe not on day one, but it was very early when I went in house. And so just to kind of set the stage, the first part of my medtech career was largely spent in commercialization roles. And really, I'm kind of a commercial guy at heart, but largely in sales and sales management, field based sales and sales management. So when I had the opportunity to go in house at Covidien through kind of a unique program, that was sort of a key inflection point in my in my career is taking advantage of that, that opportunity, despite sort of the the big step back in terms of income, that the experiences were, you know, were replaceable. And so, I do remember though, probably within the first month or so of me going in house, be Part of a phase review for an r&d program, and I was like, what is the phase review? I have no idea what this is. And why are you asking me all of these tactical questions? I'm like, I'm the marketing guy, right? Like I don't Why are you asking me about to prepare a deck for, you know, a phase A phase four review of of a PDP it's like, I know, you're talking to the wrong guy.
Patrick Kothe 05:20
I've been marketing I make the pretty brochures.
Scott Nelson 05:22
That's right. That's right. Yeah, yeah, give me some copy to work on or let me do it, let me go to a photo shoot or something like that. But But joking aside, I mean, I wouldn't maybe wasn't as naive as the picture I'm painting. But it was a very, very new process for me. And so I think, but I think that speaks to the experiences that that you tend to get involved with, in a large corporation, especially if you're in a division or department, that's relatively lean, I would say if you if you don't have a lot of people around you, that's not necessarily a bad thing, right, because you'll get that much more exposure to all types of different activities, initiatives, programs, etc. And I would say if you're in that point, if you're at that point in your career, lean into lean into that, right, get get exposed, take some swings, even if they feel really uncomfortable, because that certainly felt uncomfortable for me, you know, to have all of these people with like, that, obviously, were very intelligent, very sharp, and spent probably most of their careers inside big companies, this is this was a very routine thing for them. You know, and for you know, I'm the I'm the new guy, that's, that looks like a definitely a fish out of water. kind of uncomfortable, right? Ego check for sure. But you know, phenomenal experience, you know, it'd be kind of thrown thrown right in and so you know, that that's one of those, those experiences in a large corporation that you you might not find yourself and other you know, a smaller to midsize companies. And so that's definitely a pro right to being inside a large corporation, you just get exposed to a lot of different a lot of different things, if you lean into it, right? If you actually take full advantage of those have those experiences, of course, there's a lot of downsides that we're all familiar with. The pace, yeah, the pace at which decisions are made the number of people that have to be involved, if you're sort of a decision machine by heart and like to make quick, decisive decisions, you know, you're going to be up against a lot of friction, and probably a lot of frustration inside a large, a large corporation. But again, if you if you go into it eyes wide open and just know, that's, that's sort of like that's how the game is played inside a large, large corporation, it doesn't have to be as bad, right. But if you constantly fight fight it, you know, it's just going to lead to a lot of a lot of friction. And, and again, a lot of a lot of frustration. So there's, there's a balance, of course, right. And for me, personally, I wouldn't ever replace those experiences inside, inside, you know, big, big strategics. But if I had to, if I had to sort of rewind the clock and tell myself something, it would be exactly that, like, Scott, everything's not gonna be smooth, there's gonna be a lot of people involved in these decisions, they're things are going to feel really, really slow. But that's just sort of the deal, right? Do your best right to to try to, you know, remove some of that friction, do your best to try to accelerate some of those decisions. But at the end of the day, that's just it's that's the nature of a large
Patrick Kothe 07:54
corporation. Like you, I started off in sales, and start off carrying a bag and sales manager and then moved, moved into the office and kind of had similar experience. And that things do take long, and I was frustrated initially by that. But the more time that you spend inside the corporation, you find out that's necessary, it is necessary to have a cautious approach and to take things methodically through, because if you're, if you're making knee jerk decisions, you're going to be making another one next week. Yeah. Because there's always something else that you haven't thought through, that you needed to contemplate before you made that made that ultimate call. So it is frustrating. But the more I, the more time I spent inside, the more I recognize that some of that was was good. And that deliberation was good. Some of it was too much. But some of it was actually necessary.
Scott Nelson 08:48
Right? Right. And just just understand by being exposed to that not only the different functions right inside of a larger organization, but also how decisions are made. Right, and, and knowing sort of how the sausage, the sausage is created, so to speak. And so having eyes eyes on that, you know, now, you know, having spent the last seven or eight years now and with early stage companies, you know, you just you just have a completely renewed sense for how things work inside a large corporation, right. So if I'm pitching kind of my the story of what we're trying to build at this at the startup, I understand how it's going to be viewed, I understand what, how I need to craft sort of that narrative to make it compelling or to have it read, you know, that that message resonate to, you know, to people that are operating inside a large a large corporation and it just reminds me of, I'm paraphrasing a little bit but I remember reading an article from a guy named Neil Patel, who's well known in the in the digital marketing circles, and now runs a huge digital marketing agency, but um, I remember him kind of he wrote this piece around like, you know, startup careers versus, you know, careers inside large organizations like which is better, how do you navigate it, etc. The point he was trying to make is like, it's going to look different, right, depending on where you're at. I mean, you could, like me, you could spend maybe the first half of your career in large organizations and then kind of gravitated towards startups, or vice versa, you're an early employee at a startup and you get acquired by large strategic, and then you spend some time, internally. So it's going to look a little bit different. But I think that the kind of the moral of the story is, both experiences are very valuable, right? If you have sort of a long term perspective on your career, but the most important part is like kind of leaning, like I said earlier, leaning into those experiences. And yes, there's gonna be frustrations in either path, right? I mean, there's plenty of frustrations as you and I know, in the startup world, for sure. But just leaning into those experiences, and trying to learn as much as possible, and being curious about a lot of different things, I think will yield a lot, you know, for your, your career down the road. So kind of whatever, whatever sort of path or journey you're on right now.
Patrick Kothe 10:42
So as you're saying that I was kind of thinking about how many times I've been asked, don't give me the detail, just give me the summary. So all I wants a summary, don't bother with the detail. And you can't provide a summary unless you go through the detail. And to me, that's a little bit of the, you know, the large company experience, you've got such granularity, so much detail there, you can sum it up into into those main parts, but you've learned everything from you know, from the bottom up. And then as you go into a startup, you can use some of those shortcuts, you can take, you know, take a little bit of that and build that summary, without having to go through every every other step that's necessary in that big company.
Scott Nelson 11:27
Yeah, no doubt about it. You know, another thing and as I'm hearing you kind of describe, describe that, which I totally agree with. Another thing that really stands out, you know, thinking about my experiences inside a large organization is just how much and again, I'm a commercial guy by nature. So this, this tended to be this tended to come a little bit easier for me, but just understanding the importance of of selling others on your ideas, or what you want to push forward, you know, and I like to use the exact analogy that even if you're not, if you if you don't consider yourself a salesperson, right? If you're in a role managing people and managing a team, managing a project, etc, that's always going to require a little bit of salesmanship, right, you're gonna have to convince others that your path or your idea, your concept, or whatever you're trying to drive forward is the better path. And that requires some convincing that requires some salesmanship. And so just kind of embracing that, you know, and I think, you know, again, that doesn't, you can be head of r&d, you know, and you're maybe an engineer by nature, but just understanding that, you know, you look, you need to you need to be able to convince others, you need to be able to sell others on a certain idea, a certain concept, I think that that really stands out to me as well. You know, that's sort of how things you know, how things are done internally, inside a large organization and kind of leaning into that, and embracing that. And I think is important for, for kind of anyone that's listening to the discussion.
Patrick Kothe 12:40
Such a great point, because whether we've got sales in our title or not, we're all salespeople, whether you're, whether you're a process engineer, or a clinical person, or regulatory, you're selling ideas, and you have to be able to take those ideas and bring other people along, in order to get something accomplished. Right. So we're all all in the sales game.
Scott Nelson 13:05
Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt about it. Some people kind of like, you know, they get squeamish or uncomfortable, when they're, they're gonna, when they would consider themselves like trying to sell something, it's like, well, I mean, if you if you paint it, if you have this, you know, vision of, of a used car sales guy, or gal, you know, pushing some, you know, some car on you, and in a parking lot at the dealership, that's not what we're talking about here. You know, we're talking about winning people over, you know, crafting, you know, positioning your story and what what, you know, your idea for how things should be positioning it in a way that makes sense. And that resonates with with others, right. And so, you know, some may, some people may call that you know, something else, but at the end of the day, it is it is selling you kind of selling what you think is best Right? to someone else, and trying to trying to convince him to jump on, jump on the train. And so, again, for anyone listening, that's early in your in your, in your career, maybe not early in your career, maybe your mid career and kind of trying to think about what's what's next, you know, just embracing that in the organization you're at is I think is important.
Patrick Kothe 14:01
So, at some point in time, you started to think about, geez, I want to do something else, or I don't want to do something that I'm that I'm currently doing. So you started to believe, reach out a little bit, to learn a little bit. Is that something and we're gonna talk about med cider and your podcasts in a minute, but it seems to me that at that point in your career, you were searching for something else. Tell me about what happened at that point in time what you were thinking why you were out there trying to gain some knowledge.
Scott Nelson 14:36
Yeah, that's it's a really good way to kind of frame frame up sort of like where I was at in my career. And I mentioned this earlier, the opportunity to kind of go in house and learn probably speaks to some of the natural curiosity that I that I had in general, right. I'm curious about a lot of things. You mentioned med side or one of the reasons I started that was was simply because nothing like it existed, right? And I was I was curious how these devices Write that I see being used in cath labs or o Rs, or in hospitals or whatever. Like how they came to be, I was really curious about that. And so I think, you know, if you're, if you've sort of have that natural curiosity, you know, like me, or maybe have that entrepreneurial sort of sort of spirit, you probably know, in your heart that, you know, maybe staying inside a large corporate organization is probably not going to be like the long term play for you. But at the same time, I think balancing that against not not rushing into something either, right, it's kind of a careful balance. But for me, specifically, I continue to continue to kind of lean into that natural curiosity throughout throughout my career, even when I went in house, I tried to, I really tried to establish relationships with a lot of different cross functional folks, right people from Clinical Affairs, to scientific communications, to r&d to people in BD, etc, use it as opportunity to try to learn as much as as much as possible, not knowing necessarily where it was gonna lead me, right, I didn't, I didn't have like, sort of the picture wasn't totally clear at the time. But in retrospect, you know, kind of paraphrasing, you know, Steve Jobs quote is like, you know, connecting, connecting the dots retrospectively are always it's always easier, right in for me personally, in my career, being able to tap it in the net, that natural curiosity, continue to just like meet people and be curious about what they're doing, how they go about their their work, etc. has allowed me to foster a lot of a lot of interesting relationships. I've certainly leveraged that, especially, you know, and in my kind of early experience with early stage companies over the past seven or eight years,
Patrick Kothe 16:29
the concept of curiosity is so important. And it's one of the things that I value it within myself what I value within other people that are around me, are they naturally naturally curious? Are they pontificating? And, and nobody wants to be around a pontificate er.
Scott Nelson 16:47
Right. Yeah, totally. Yeah. 100%. And I think I think on that note, I mean, and maybe maybe this is my Midwestern roots, or I don't have like a fancy pedigree, but like, I'm, I tend to be okay, which is maybe asking questions, you know, that maybe otherwise, you have people that otherwise would have said, Why are you asking that type of question, or, you know, but I found myself, it can feel a little bit uncomfortable, you know, especially if you're asking questions in front of a larger group, but just being okay, with like, asking, asking what appear to be kind of simple questions, probably a decent chance that other people are thinking the exact same thing as you, right? Like, why are we doing this way? Or like, Have you thought about X, Y, or Z? You know, just being being honest with yourself to try to get to a certain answer and being okay, with with asking, you know, simple, relatively simple, simple questions, I think, speak, you know, speaks volumes is and is really only only beneficial, you know, in most in most scenarios,
Patrick Kothe 17:41
as I've gotten older, the word humble, keeps, keeps coming, coming at me, and continuing to stay humble. And part of being humble is, you know, I don't know everything I want to I want to learn things. But coupled with humble is confidence, being confident in yourself, that when you ask those questions, you're confident in it, you're confident that you're coming from a good place, and you're trying to learn. So I think that those two words to me are always connected. And it allows you to gain more knowledge. Yeah, that's
Scott Nelson 18:14
a really, that's a really great point, because I think they are sort of interrelated. If you're humble enough to be able to, you know, ask a relatively simple question typically means you have enough confidence to say, you know, hey, even if it's kind of a stupid question, you're okay with that, right? I mean, it's fine. You know, other people in the room have asked stupid questions as well, you know, so being being okay with that. It reminds me of a story from Seth Godin, you know, Seth Godin. Have you ever read any of his books? Yeah, one of my favorite, probably marketers of all time, and I can't I don't recall where I read this, but he was like, you know, if you're, if you're, if you're in an experience, where you start to kind of get the sweats a little bit, you starting to feel anxious, a little bit? Or maybe I shouldn't do that. Typically, you probably should, you know, it's usually a good kind of a good thing, when it's you kind of uncomfortable and, you know, kind of step stepping into that usually means you're doing something right, or you're pushing something forward, you know, what I mean? And I think that resonates with me, throughout my career, you know, what I mean? It's kind of being uncomfortable with, with being uncomfortable. You know, and, and just, you know, pushing forward and moving moving forward. Regardless,
Patrick Kothe 19:19
I've found myself here, you're on the mic, and you're talking to somebody and ask a question, it doesn't go exactly the way or you don't look as intelligent as you you would like to be at all time. I leave it in. I mean, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense to pull it out because other people are going to be thinking the same thoughts. Totally.
Scott Nelson 19:36
Yeah, yeah. 100% I totally agree with you. And if you're stuck on um, I wish I didn't ask that question. Or I wish I didn't say that. It's like, well, maybe you have a little bit higher view of what people think you know, because most most, just forget about it. You know, it's like, they don't remember it, you know, days from now or a week from now. You know what I mean? So, being okay with, with asking that question or bringing up a certain point And regardless of what other others may think, I think is a valuable skill set, regardless of where you're at.
Patrick Kothe 20:05
Yeah, for your listeners who have not listened to med cider at this point, I would strongly encourage you to, I've listened to every single one of them since since it's been out when I went through the back catalogue when I discovered your three or four years ago, and listen to every single one, just some fantastic interviews. And Scott, you do such a good job of pulling out some great insights from some great guests. And what I really enjoy about your podcast is you ask all types of questions. And they'd be the questions that I'd want to ask if I was sitting there talking to those people, too. So really, really, say thanks for for the time that you dedicated to helping with all of our education. Yeah, no, I
Scott Nelson 20:50
mean, I appreciate the words the kind of words Pattabhi, especially coming from you, you're a great podcaster yourself. And, you know, you know how difficult it can and can't be. And believe me, I've bombed a lot of a lot of interviews. But I think the most important thing is you got to keep going, you know, it sounds sounds cliche, but you know, you keep going and refining your craft. And, you know, at the end of the day, it's been, it's been, you know, when I look back at why I started med cider, and kind of where it's at today, it's a, it's been an interesting journey, you know, it's definitely been a great way to meet a lot of people that I've never, that I would have never have met otherwise. But also, again, tapping into that curiosity and just being able to, like, accelerate my own personal learning, you know, and I think if you're not, if you're not kind of always moving that forward, right, kind of always learning, you and I are familiar with kind of the the phrase always be selling, right. But if you're not always learning, I think you're moving back in your career, you know what I mean? And so, so I think it's provided an opportunity for me to just learn from a lot of really cool people that have lent lent their their advice and their wisdom, you know, to me and others, others that have listened to the podcast over the years,
Patrick Kothe 21:54
as I look back at kind of my journey, and the different people that I've talked to, the biggest thing that I've taken from being involved in podcast is refining my knowledge. I'm always even though I, like you came up on the commercial side and run sales organizations and run marketing organizations, I think I know it pretty well. But I don't know it perfectly. And I know that there's things that I continue to learn on. So even I even though I've got deep domain expertise that way, and I've got deep domain expertise and startup companies, as a CEO, I don't have everyone's experience. And and what I've learned is that I can continue to learn and continue to have these relationships with with different people. And like you that being a lifelong learner, something's really important. Yeah,
Scott Nelson 22:41
yeah. And I'm not sure if you feel the same way. But what I've noticed too, is I'll go through weeks, you know, or several interviews, and it's just kind of like, ah, you know, nothing had really popped, right, nothing. Nothing seemed overly insightful, but then I'll run into an experience or a challenge, maybe a week from now or a month from now. And it's like, oh, yeah, I remember, you know, whatever. Someone said, Oh, this is interesting, right, this is how they approach that, you know, and so it's, you know, the feedback loop isn't always like, immediate, you know, what I mean, there can be, there can be a little bit of a time period that goes by where it's like, things don't don't overly resonate immediately. But you know, you remember, you know, certain insights, or certain lessons learned, you know, months, you know, weeks or months down the road, in thinking about one of those things that really stands out over 10 plus years, I've been interviewing, you know, people like yourself, right, that are running, you know, early stage companies. You know, we talked a little bit about big corporations, you know, versus startups, and, you know, where do you go in your career, etc. And one of the things that that seems to routinely come up on a consistent basis all the time, is, you know, from again, these are people that are, you know, founders or running early stage companies is they wish they would have started in the startup game sooner, you know, looking back, they, they were just too, too afraid, too nervous, too anxious, really, to kind of kind of take that leap right from going, you know, going from a reasonably safe environment, or job or role in a large corporation to just sort of the risks, inherent risks that comes with with a startup or an early stage company. And I think that's also important for people to kind of understand that, that that leap, right, from going from large organization to start, it's never gonna be perfect. It's always going to be risky, there's never going to be a perfect time. If it's a reasonable opportunity. You know, I always encourage people to do it, you know, and that was certainly was the case for me. You know, going from Medtronic, I left Medtronic and 2015 to jump to a digital health startup that was based in London. I was in a pretty safe role, you know, what I mean, and gotten to know a lot of people inside Covidien and the Tronic. But it seemed like a halfway decent opportunity to kind of finally make that leap, you know, personally, and the business model wasn't totally clear at the time, you know, it's pretty early stage company, but I got to work with some really cool people. You know, I mean, like doctors, John Ma, who actually set up a spat with Omar Ishfaq. Recently, for the former CEO of Medtronic, Dr. Andre Chow can Parkins like just being able to kind of work alongside like really cool interests. Do people is enough itself, even if my tenure wasn't wasn't overly long, you know, at that particular company, but you know, I just had a conversation recently with with John who I mentioned, and just having that connection is is, you know, can be invaluable. You never know when you're going to be able to circle back around and work with some of those people again. And so it just speaks to the idea of, yeah, that leak wasn't perfect, and there was some risk there, right. But if it's, if it's reasonable, if it's decent, it gives you an opportunity to kind of work with some, some people that, that are doing interesting things, you know, I always encourage people to kind of move forward, you know, lean into that, that that state of discomfort, you know, because typically, though there'll be some some good fruit that's that's yielded along the way? Well, let's
Patrick Kothe 25:40
talk about that discomfort a little bit, because we talked about your, you know, your initial time in the office, at the big company, what was your initial time at the office at the small company?
Scott Nelson 25:50
Yeah, and I think that probably segues into starting June as well, which we'll probably get to, but, you know, at a small company, you just, you have to wear so many different hats, there's usually never a day that goes by where there's not a fire to put out some sort of challenge that, that you have to overcome, etc. So I think that was a big change, right? It's just you have to go, you have to be able to go really, really broad, right, but also be have to go deep in some, you know, really deep in some scenarios to and just kind of being able to flex those different muscles is pretty, pretty crucial insight to a young growing company, and then also, just flexibility in and of itself, you know, I mean, there's going to be constant pivots and iterations, typically, in an early stage company, and being okay with that, if the plan that you built and that you sold people on changes in a month or two, that's sort of just how startups work. It's not perfect, and it's not typically a straight line. You know, there's going to be you know, ups and ups and downs, bumps and bruises, and just being okay with that, and being able to flex accordingly. We'll save you save you a lot of stress along the way, you know, so definitely different pros and cons. But if you if you like, you know, quick decision making, and if you're sort of a builder at heart, right, I think you're going to naturally gravitate towards earlier stage companies.
Patrick Kothe 27:04
Were you prepared to move into a startup environment?
Scott Nelson 27:07
No, no, I mean, in retrospect, no, I thought maybe I was, you know, at the time. But you know, looking back, it's a great question. I mean, look, looking back. Now, there's so much more that I've learned over the past seven or eight years, just taking swings, taking swings at the plate. And I think that's another really important lesson that I've learned too, is, you know, when you think about, and I hate to always use like sports analogies, because that can be overly cliche, but I think it resonates for probably a lot of people that are listening is when you when you think about any basketball player, right? LeBron, Kobe, Michael Jordan, etc, when you look at their stat sheet, you rarely see them going five of eight from the field or five have to, it's all they always took a lot of shots, right. And so you have to be able to take a lot of shots or take a lot of swings, in order to gain that, you know, the experience, you know, there's only so much you can learn from reading Harvard Business Review, you know, I mean, you're just this actually, it's very limited, what you actually what you're actually learning kind of on the sidelines, so sort of getting in the game, taking a lot of shots, taking a lot of swings, you know, just accelerates the learning. So the next time around, you either know, the decision to be made, or like what decisions are going to agree on a lead up to that pivotal, you know, thing that you're trying to accomplish, and taking a lot of shots, yields yields a lot of a lot of good experiences.
Patrick Kothe 28:21
What I think is interesting is that your big company experience, in my experience, and all kind of asked you to yours, and my experience at the big companies, the career development, things that you talked about at your annual performance reviews, were around, okay, we need to get you from sales rep to regional sales manager, and then we need to move you from regional sales manager, possibly to a product manager role or something else. And it's all designed to keep you within the company and keep you within a predetermined track. But what it didn't do is it didn't say, are you developing the skills that would be needed at a startup company? Are you developing an overall view of a company? Do you know what regulatory does? Do you know what quality does? Do you know? Because those are the skills if you move out into a into a startup or you move out into another role within your company? Those are things that that are non traditional, not things that you that you really know. So was it was your experience similar to that? Or was your experience different? Yeah, no
Scott Nelson 29:35
doubt. I mean, there's like if you're going to experience any type of success in a startup, in my opinion, those those lessons that you're going to learn are not going to be they're not gonna be learned inside of a large corporation. And I don't say that meaning that there's not valid, really valid great experiences that you can pick up on inside a larger organization. Those are very valid, but they're not typically the types of things that you're that are going to be overly valuable insight, Insight at earliest. Stage, you know, startup startup company, for sure. And I, I guess my when I think about, you know, that questioning kind of the way, the way you framed it, I guess my best advice is, you know, if you're in a corporation, and you're expecting to learn those type of skill sets, right, that would be valuable inside a startup, probably have the wrong expectations, you know, you're just not, you're not typically going to learn those types of things, unless you actually spend time in a startup in an early stage company, and, you know, where you're sort of at, you know, at the, you know, in the captain's chair, you know, feeling the waves, you know, bounce bounce off your, you know, off your face and tasting the salts, you know, in the water, I mean, you're just not, you're not going to learn that stuff, typically inside inside a large corporation. And so I think, and I don't want to under appreciate the lessons that I've learned, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have traded my experiences inside, inside, you know, some some large strategics. But they're not the type of experiences that that occur, or that, that yield a lot of value inside of an early stage company.
Patrick Kothe 30:56
Yeah, within that large company, I don't think they're going to teach you that. But you can learn it, if you go looking for yes, if you go and say that, this is what I want to do, and get off of the big company track and say, I want to be prepared in the future. So you're not you may not be able to be immersed in it, where you're working side by side with the regulatory person every day. But you can certainly learn a little bit more than if you don't go and seek it yourself.
Scott Nelson 31:28
Yeah, no doubt, that's probably actually the better way to describe it is that was what you just did there. It's like, it's not that you can't learn those experiences. When you're at a big company, it's just you're probably going to have to learn them somewhere else, right? And it's sort of the onus is on you to go to go look, look for that, right, go go meet people, go go network, go connect, go seek for it yourself. And those those experiences are the those learnings are there for the hat for the having again, you kind of have to take it upon yourself to go to go to make those efforts.
Patrick Kothe 31:55
It's kind of like being in a big company and starting a podcast called Med cider.
Scott Nelson 32:00
That's right. That's right. Yeah, there's no, it's funny. I mean, I know we'll probably transition here. But, you know, when I when I think about even even just podcasting in general, right, or just just the the idea of like, how do I, what questions do I want to ask, based on this person's experience to craft a story that maybe is going to resonate with the audience? Or how, what what text app do I need to create, right, where, you know, to make it the best learning experience, like there's all these like intangible adjacent things that you just learn, again, by doing right by kind of getting your feet wet, just kind of moving forward and doing it? You know, it forces you to like, learn all this stuff, right? Well, I mean, we're recording this on on squad cast, right? I guarantee that you asked, you know, 100 people inside a large corporation, what's the best podcasting staff that you're gonna have no idea. It's just one example. Right? But it's, but it's one of many that kind of demonstrates this idea of like, you just get to take a shot, you know, and just kind of get your feet wet and kind of dive in. And there's gonna be a ton of things that you learn along the way that may not be overly beneficial upfront. But in retrospect, as you connect the dots, you're like, oh, yeah, that was that was valuable, right. I learned a ton through that process.
Patrick Kothe 33:02
So let's jump into something that was completely new learning for you. And that was Juve. Tell the audience a little bit about what the idea was behind Juve. And why it was significantly different than your past experience,
Scott Nelson 33:16
just taking even a step back to kind of the origin stories of June and July. For those that aren't familiar, je OVV. It's, it's a light therapy company that that I started back in 2015. And light therapy, you may have seen it online now. It's technically referred to as photobiomodulation. So you're modulating the activity inside of a cell with wavelengths of light to do certain certain effects. But back in 2015, we were in Minneapolis V. This is during the dearth of winter, and my wife purchased a quote unquote red light therapy package from a local spa in Minneapolis, kind of like a bit of a tanning salon, but just you know, it's a different therapy, but you have to you have to go to this commercial place on a consistent basis and not overly budget friendly. Definitely not convenient. And so she was looking for something to use at home. She's always been a little bit more open minded to natural kind of holistic, holistic health technology. And I was like, what this is crazy, you shine red lights on your body and there's supposedly all these benefits. I was like this is this is I was totally skeptical. But sure enough, I started doing some research primarily on PubMed, and it was blown away I was really blown away two things. One is the sheer amount of published data with respect to photobiomodulation. And then the other kind of big surprise was like there was no one making it easy for someone to understand how this actually works and what are the benefits right you had to kind of parse together different things on on PubMed to really get to an idea of like, how does what's the mechanism of action here? Long story short, I was like that seems that seems like kind of a an there's could be something here right? The science is pretty legit. Yet there aren't any brands that are making sense of it all right, for the for the consumer and certainly not manufacturing a product that is easy to use at home. And so that's sort of what what started us down down this path and it was a total sci fi classic side. So it was like, Well, you know, maybe seems like it could work. But let's like start to prove some some prototypes, see where this potentially could go. And so I threw up a simple Shopify website, this would be for Shopify was really, really popular back in early 2016. Now having no idea where this was gonna go, and slowly over the course of that first year, we did you know, about over 100, grand and top line revenue. I was like, oh, you know, there's a little bit of traction here. And, you know, we don't we're totally doing this on the on the side in our free time. But it seems like
Patrick Kothe 35:28
there's where you, were you manufacturing the device, were you reselling What were you doing?
Scott Nelson 35:32
Yeah, primarily in a in a resellers sort of capacity. So we identified him as a manufacturer made some modifications to an off the shelf device, try to keep our current sort of capital expenditures low, because you can go wild with the burn front without without knowing at all, what kind of traction you'll get from a commercialization standpoint. So, you know, kind of in the spirit of an MVP, right, minimum viable product, we try to get something off the ground with with relatively minimal, minimal capital exposure. And so, you know, over that first year, you know, it kind of worked, you know, and it was like, oh, yeah, there's a little there's, there's something here, you know, and we weren't throwing a lot of a lot of money at paid search or paid social, just trying to try to figure out what what are the sticky sort of traction channels here, you know, from from a commercial or marketing perspective. And I was starting to get to know a lot of influencers in the kind of the biohacking longevity come natural health space. And sure enough, a couple of them started to talk about, you know, red light therapy in this kind of, like, interesting sort of modality appears to be a lot of science, but no one's talking about it. And boom, like, once, once just a couple of those, those large influencers, started, started mentioning Juve. And the product, it just like, there was a clear inflection point, in terms of the the success of the company. And so in my head at the time, again, this was kind of late 2016, early 2017, I thought, you know, if this company hits the old magic number of 83.3k a month, right, that means a million dollar business as like I'm, I'm stepping away from my full time gig, you know, this is kind of one of those one of those opportunities where you got enough traction, you got to take take the leap. And sure enough, we hit that that number way faster than I expected. It was in early, early 2017. So I, I put in my old resignation at a at a pretty, pretty good gig that I had that paid fairly well, you know, to kind of focus on on to full time, and it was a really, really incredible ride, you know, we went from zero to about 22 million in top line revenue over the course of three years, profitable growth, which is really unique for a hardware, you know, physical product business to be profitable. And, you know, do the old double, or I'm sorry, triple, triple double, double, meaning you triple your growth two years in a row and and double it two years in a row, and yet still be profitable, pretty, pretty unique ride and definitely learned a ton along the way, you know. So yeah, really, really good experiences come a fun, a fun ride, you know, leading up to kind of mid early, early to mid 2020.
Patrick Kothe 37:54
And what happened in 2020? Why,
Scott Nelson 37:56
you know, I actually decided to step away from that company, largely because I wanted to work on something that had a little bit more of a clear path to, to a liquidity event. And so I teamed up with a group of engineers that I got to know, or I've known for quite some time, and formed up a it's kind of a hybrid between an accelerator and incubator called Big Sky biomedical. This was kind of mid 2020, to just work on, you know, start to dabble in, in some very early stage kind of ideas, projects that we that we thought, you know, could have legs. And one of those was, was was fast wave was the company wasn't named at the time, of course.
Patrick Kothe 38:35
But ultimately, let's pause for a second and go back to June. Yes, there's some stuff I want to mine in June before we go forward. Yeah. So that's a consumer play. That is not a medical device play. What was the big difference that you saw in the consumer market? As opposed to aside from FDA and regulatory? What was the big difference?
Scott Nelson 39:02
Yeah, I mean, there's, there's probably a couple things that that really come to mind. But, um, it and again, I guess, I want to preface this with the device that we commercialize it was class two device, you know, so there are, you know, regulatory considerations and quotable quality considerations as well. So, but I mean, if I had to kind of, you know, some of that experience it was like, I probably do it in a couple of ways. One of one is that there is a massive burgeoning consumer demand right for products that you can use at home that actually yield you know, health benefits I know there's there's some people that look at kind of the the digital health slash health technology space and think it's a bunch of woowoo science and you know, consumers are not willing to pay for this stuff. It's like I couldn't from my experience that couldn't be farther from the truth our ASP our average order value I mean, we did we went from zero to like 22 million in top line revenue entirely in one channel right as ecommerce alone if that was the singular channel, and our ARV was average order value was like 12 1300 bucks. You know, that's that's expensive, you know, but yet we saw incredible, incredible ride. So I would say, one Don't ignore that consumer demand. And you may not, you know, you may not be working on a on a product that is necessarily kind of relates to like a direct to consumer play, I would say don't forget about that, right, because at the end of the day, it's consumers that are like, maybe not buying your technology directly, that maybe that comes through in a little bit of a different way. So just don't don't ignore sort of the consumer aspect of whatever, whatever you're working on. So I would say that and then, to this day, it still amazes me how fast you can move and iterate going direct to consumer, the speed that you need to move that in order to experience that type of success. It just it like breaks your frame a little bit, right, and being able to kind of see how fast you really can move, and then parlaying that into a traditional like medical device company, you can just set new new hurdles, right and set different expectations, because you've seen it, you've experienced it right in a different in a different sort of way, you're not gonna be able to pull everything over, right, it's not one to one, that's the best way to describe it probably from my experiences, it kind of breaks your frame on how fast and how lean actually you can really be yet still accomplish, you know, similar similar types of goals.
Patrick Kothe 41:13
It's funny, I've had investors on my board that didn't come from an FDA background. And they came from a more consumer background, and I was constantly, you know, doctor, no, you got to push it, I'm sorry, you can't do that regulatory, you got to do that. And you can't tell you, we're gonna go to FDA, and we're going to tell them, you know, what, no, can't do that. We're gonna get our our senators to go and go and stand on it. No, can't do. So, so I was, you know, kind of educating them, you had you had to be educated, coming into the consumer space. What was that like, in your own mind to get out of the FDA, and the traditional medical device space and get in and leave some things behind to allow you to be successful in the consumer space?
Scott Nelson 42:02
Yeah. And I think there was definitely a lot of a lot of things that I pulled in right to that consumer, you know, that direct to consumer company, right, because someone that didn't have sort of some medical device chops wouldn't have understood maybe how to potentially work with FDA, or hey, the copy that you're using to message or position a product, you need to kind of craft that in a way where it's not going to get you in trouble, you know, so definitely a lot of things that I pulled in. But also, you know, there's sort of a renewed sense of freedom to try an experiment, right, that you don't see in a traditional medical device company. And it really, it really does open your eyes and a lot of in a lot of different ways. I don't know how things could be done or should be done. I think that was probably one of the big differences, right? Moving from, you know, traditional medical device to more direct to consumer health technologies that you just love, there's a lot more freedom. And I think, obviously, some of that speaks to just the nature of what you're building, right, and maybe being a little bit less less regulated. But at the same time having the freedom to experiment, right? I think not only was was a lot of fun, but also, you know, it just gives you that much more opportunities to learn what not only what works, but also what you can, what you can pull over back into the into a medical device venture again.
Patrick Kothe 43:14
So let's talk about that. So you started started saying you've, you've got a combo incubator accelerator. Explain that a little bit about what what you guys are doing and the types of companies that are coming in?
Scott Nelson 43:28
Yeah, and just just to kind of close the loop on on my last thought before we before we talk a little bit about about Big Sky, you can do a lot and work and have a lot of success partnering with health influencers, right? These aren't, these are typically people not with MDS right behind their names. Maybe they have graduate degrees behind the names, but they, their audience consists more of consumers that have a natural interest in learning more about their health, or, you know, they're more practical about their health. Some would say, well, that's not really applicable to the device industry, right? We don't have health influencers? And I would say, maybe not directly, but your physicians are influencers? Are you really, truly leveraging the influence that they have? Right. And so what I mean by that is, you could take a physician, a Kol, right, that maybe does a lot of podium presentations, right and offline, and I'll fly conferences, but maybe you need to think a little bit differently about how you can repurpose the same content or work a little bit differently with that, that physician to bring him or her online. Right? And how do you actually amplify that partnership online? If they're not already, you know, so that's just an example of being able to see kind of what what's happening and maybe direct to consumer health and like, being able to kind of pull over you know, some some of that, and, you know, modify it, tweak it and use it to your best advantage and in a different in a different sort of space, right, which is medical, medical devices. And so that's just one example that kind of help help people understand where I'm going with that that thought process. But the the accelerator Yes. The question about an accelerator. Yeah, it's big. It's big sky. It's probably more of an accelerator than an incubator because we're not necessarily funding or directly, you know, infusing seed stage type of capital into these projects. Our effort is more on getting lift thought, right? So getting getting some of these ideas or these concepts out of the starting blocks. And that's probably one of the biggest challenges that we see consistently from physicians or engineers that bring an idea right across are kind of across the table is, their full time gig is being a physician, their full time gig is an engineer or somewhere else or whatever, they just don't have the time, or maybe the expertise to know, how do you actually get liftoff with this thing, right? This this, this idea, or this concept could could really have legs, but they have no idea how to how to actually get it out of the starting blocks. And so I think that's where that's where we're primarily focused. And again, it's pretty pretty niche down into the into the interventional vascular space, you know, just because that's our wheelhouse, but that's kind of where we're focused on is on evaluating, if an idea has legs, and then basically how to how to get lift off with with something to get it get out of the starting blocks.
Patrick Kothe 45:48
And my experience with physicians, what's the first thing that you mentioned is probably the most important thing? Yeah, I've got this great idea for something that says that's a micro market. And they have no idea how much it's gonna cost to develop it. And at the tail end of this thing, it's a million dollar market. Okay. So just helping them to scope the market, and to see if there's truly an opportunity worthy of spending any time on Write to me, that's, that's the number one thing that I deal with, with physician ideas. Same with you.
Scott Nelson 46:22
Yeah. 100%. Yeah, and just just be helping them be able to, you know, answer some of the more, you know, straightforward questions like, what is the real regulatory pathway for this device? Right? Does it mean, does it mean, you're gonna have to run a, you know, 100 patient trial, regardless of whether it's a class two or class three device? Even if it's a 510 K device? Does it mean? Is it gonna come with any human clinical data requirements? Or is there a kind of a lower lower barrier to entry? Right? What is the maybe arguably more important? What does? What does the reimbursement look like? How is someone actually going to pay for this thing? You know, and then to your point, Pat, you know, thinking about helping them think through, you know, what is the real market size, because almost every single device project is going to require a fair amount of capital. And people that are investing in your project want, they need to see your return, they just want to return they need to see a return on that capital. And so is the market big enough to support you know, you know, at least a couple rounds of financing. So again, kind of helping helping people think through that. And I remember something that Renee Ryan, who's the CEO of telehealth, mentioned to me in an interview a couple years ago, she'd be like, she goes, I think I asked her a similar question is like, what do you what's your, what's your recommendation to a lot of people a lot of ideas that you see come across your, your desk, and she was like, you know, the biggest thing and I try to encourage early stage founders, whether it's a physician and engineer, whoever, right is don't get caught up on on dilution, there's gonna be multiple stakeholders. Yeah, nothing. Exactly, exactly. Yep. And so, and I think that's always probably resonated with me is that, you know, if you're, if you're stuck on dilution, and valuation out of the gate, high likelihood that the thing is just never gonna see the light of day, you know, and obviously, you know, you can't give up your entire company, right, it's got to be somewhat, it's gonna be somewhat subtle, you got to be somewhat thoughtful about that. But you know, not letting that be this significant hurdle to cross early on, I think, is paramount for any kind of any entrepreneurial person that's listening to this, you know, and has idea that you think has legs, you know, don't, don't get stuck on on on dilution evaluation too early,
Patrick Kothe 48:15
kind of go back to the business model to it's not only you know, the size of the market, but what exactly is your product, this is another thing that I encounter quite a bit, is I've got this great idea, but it involves making somebody else's product better. So now, it's not a new product, it's a licensing opportunity. And in order for them to license this, you need to have proof of concept, which is going to take you X amount of dollars to get there. And then at the tail end of that it's a 2% 5% licensing opportunity. And your cut of that if you're a university guy is half of that. So what exactly is the is the market opportunity for this and thinking through not only is it a standalone product, is it a standalone company? And what's it going to take you to get there? Or do or is it is strictly a licensing thing. Let's say it's something that has to go on a stent, well, if it's gonna go on a stent, there's only a few players that makes sense. Or you're gonna be making your own stent. So your customers are down to four or five, six players, as opposed to you know, 1000s of of customers out there in the, you know, the IDN or the hospital marketplace. Yep,
Scott Nelson 49:28
yep. And that, what you just how you did kind of just painted that picture that reminds me of some advice that Duke Rolene gave me a while ago and Duke for those that aren't familiar he he was early with Fox hollow, which showed the EB three started CV ingenuity has done a bunch of startups as but I would kind of kindly refer to as a bit of a Midas Touch, you know, with medtech and now is, you know, his fund is Ajax, and then he's the Chairman of corte. So they took Cordis, which is well known cardiovascular brand. Prior they took it private after acquiring it for from Cargill, so tons of tons of great experience. I remember something that that, that he mentioned, cash. This has been a long time ago, but it's always resonated is that if you're working in an idea early on, don't get stuck on it. But you need to know who are your natural acquirers? Right? Almost every single startup that success is typically talking, right? It's not I mean, there's, it's very rare that there's going to be some novel breakthrough thing. I mean, that's typically a 10 to 15 year project, at the very least, but most successful device startups are going to be going to be you know, acquired and tucked into an existing portfolio. So if you don't have a good sense on Who are your natural acquirers? And how are they How could they, you know, potentially tuck this in, you need to be thinking about that, like early on, right? Because that's, you know, that's the most plausible, you know, path to, to an exit is through an MA a tuck in sort of m&a event. And, you know, it's things like that, that, you know, you know, kind of kind of key key lessons that seem interesting, you know, when you first hear about him, and then you know, five years down the road, you're like, oh, yeah, that's, that's really smart. You know, that's, that's really, that's really, you know, sage advice. So,
Patrick Kothe 51:03
so, so we started talking about incubators and accelerators. And there's been a proliferation of incubators and accelerators, any large city you go in, there may be dozens, I think we're in Austin, we're up to like 50 or 60 of them. It's just it could be it's not all medical devices, you know, there are a lot, a lot of different verticals that they're supporting. But there seems to be quite a few of them out there. And some of them will take equity, and some of them will, won't and the others different models to do that. For your group. What's the ideal type of customer that's coming in? Is it physicians, you said that it's cardiovascular and in nature, that's kind of kind of your specialty? So So at what stage? What What's the founding team look like? Do they have money? What's the sweet spot?
Scott Nelson 51:57
Yeah, that's a that's a really good question. I would say, we're not I wouldn't, I wouldn't put what we're doing up against a traditional kind of accelerator incubator, the the guys that I'm working with, we're all doing a lot of different things. So like, as an example, I spent 90 plus percent of my professional time on fast way, which was a spin out of our accelerator. But to answer your question, to kind of come full circle on your question, we approach things a little bit a little bit differently. So we're all pretty, pretty hands on, when a project comes kind of comes across the desk, it's usually coming from a physician or engineer, those are kind of two, the two likely sources doesn't always have to be the case. But that's, that's usually kind of where the deal flow exists, we'll evaluate it against kind of, you know, some some traditional boxes that we want to be checked all the time, right, what's the regulatory pathway, it's gonna have a relatively low clinical burden doesn't have to be a non clinical, you know, 510 K. But you know, relatively low clinical, clinical requirements. And then two, and I mentioned this earlier, is what's the reimbursement pathway look like, because that's going to be probably your biggest lift, there's not an existing CPT code. If it doesn't fall under a DRG. The burden that is on you right to pave, that path of that reimbursement path is just enormous. And it requires an extensive amount of capital. And so if there's not a clear reimbursement direction, or path, we typically won't take it on. But if all of those kinds of boxes are checked, right, and again, this is this is assuming it falls within kind of the vascular interventional space, just because that's where we have the most domain expertise will be really hands on early on, right? You don't necessarily have to have a prototype, most of the time, you don't. But some semblance of thought kind of walking through those sets of those, those basic kind of hurdles that need to be cross from rags to reimbursement to clinical, etc, we usually are pretty hands on or very early, right, and not only kind of establishing the small team, but also pitching it to, to various potential investors as well. And so our ideal scenario is that person with the idea, you know, keeps a compelling enough, I guess, percentage of of the company in terms of equity, but they're kind of hands off, right, they get to kind of be an outside adviser or consultant. And we'll we'll build out the small team to kind of push it push the project forward. So that's sort of an ideal, kind of an ideal structure from our perspective. And our two first first companies Crossfire and fast wave look pretty, pretty similar, right to what I just described.
Patrick Kothe 54:20
So is it safe to say that you're providing fractional services fractional CFO, fractional CEO, fractional CTO fractional Ra? Q? A fractional early marketing?
Scott Nelson 54:31
Yep. Yeah, there's usually a kind of a core team that we try to establish right? With this entity that's, that's spun out. Right. So the entity is a standalone, typically a standalone Delaware C Corp. And usually it's it's there's a couple core people right that are working on it full time, right? Is is the CEO, CFO, etc. And then yeah, for all of those various cross functional roles that need to be established and worked on, it's usually in a fractional nature, right, so Reg, reimbursement usually is relatively light early on. As you can expect, but reg quality, etc. And then we are heavily reliant upon development development partners. But I would say our first two companies kind of kind of speak to what what we're trying to try to do with, with with the Big Sky accelerator and crossfire we raised a, a seed round about a year ago, a little bit over a year ago. And that team has made incredible progress, you know, in a relatively short amount of time. So the ability to spin up an engineering team and move through a PDP and just a rapid pace, that's what we're trying to optimize for, you know, and the same thing kind of speaks to fast wave, which is where I spend most of my time, the speed at which we're moving with pretty pretty complex, you know, systems against you, we're trying to establish kind of a new a new bar, right on how early stage medical device companies can really can really operate, you know, in the sense that we're doing things in a pretty lean fashion, but yet moving that much faster. You know, and I think that that can be done and, and from our perspective probably should be done, you know, with most with most early stage medical device companies.
Patrick Kothe 56:02
Well, Scott, I've thoroughly enjoyed the conversation, we went over a lot, a lot of ground, and going from the big company to the consumer space back out into, you know, hardcore medical space, you've had a pretty unique career path. And I'd like to ask if there's somebody that's coming into the medical device space, what kind of advice would you give them in terms of their pathway to success,
Scott Nelson 56:31
whether you're at an early stage kind of startup company now, or whether you're inside a large a large company, always be curious, right? Always, always be learning. And consider, you know, where you're at currently, as a really unique opportunity to learn a lot, you know, and really lean into those experiences, they're not wasted. If you do, actually, if you are actually proactive, and are actively trying to try to learn and so so I would say, Just be mindful of that, right. That's, that doesn't have to be wasted time, you know, lean into those experiences, learn a lot. And then if you kind of have that entrepreneurial, you know, bug, and you kind of lean more towards, you know, smaller, leaner type type of companies, when the opportunity presents itself, don't, don't be afraid of making that leap. It's never going to be smooth, and it's never going to be perfect, it just won't. If it's if it's a compelling opportunity, take the risk, take the advice of so many, so many others, right that have said they wish they would have, they would have jumped into the into the world of startups sooner.
Patrick Kothe 57:31
challenging our own assumptions is important. Experience is valuable. But the ability to step back and examine if we're closing our eyes to a better way of doing things is also important, and will help us to stay on top. A few of my takeaways. First, we discuss tapping into your own natural curiosity. Be comfortable asking questions, even even the simple ones. Being comfortable being uncomfortable is a skill set. So be honest with yourself and ask those those simple questions. It'll accelerate your own personal learning. Second, Scott discuss learnings from the consumer space. And this was particularly interesting because it went both ways. He imported some of his medical device knowledge when he talked about, you know, understanding claims, and what was copy that was going going into into promotion, and why it's important to be on top of those claims from a regulatory standpoint. But on the other side, he talked about a lot more freedom to experiment on the consumer space, and being able to move quickly in iterations as well as messaging because that's what the consumer space allows you to do. So that that speed of innovation is something that he's going to take back into the medical device space. Finally, I found a really interesting discussion on using health influencers and it was certainly important to him on the consumer space. But what he said is, it's not just for as for consumers, clinicians are much more active on social media at this point, and they are the influencers of our products. So getting involved with them and helping them to amplify their voice will be important. Thank you for listening. Make sure you get episodes downloaded to your device automatically by liking or subscribing to the mastering medical device podcast wherever you get your podcasts. Also, please spread the word and tell a friend or two to listen to the mastering medical device podcast as interviews like today's can help you become a more effective medical device leader. Work hard. Be kind
