Why One Sales Rep Cannot Cover the Hospital Buyer

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0:00 By using AI, the ability to remove some of the unknown and actually reduce medical errors. The ability to build confidence, the ability to train and equip people to do their best jobs and in the end reduce medical errors and I think that's really where the future of AI can have a tremendous impact that everybody's going to see and feel and benefit from. In today's world, to be able to digitize that, to be able to put it on a platform that enables customers to complete jobs, get things done when they want to, how they want. Now they have the ability go in digitally and actually take that training. They could do it the day before the procedure, an hour before the procedure. They could be certified for that and actually get CEU accreditation.

But all of that now is being done online. But the benefits are multi-faceted. Hey there, I'm Terry Coutsolioutsos, founder of RevRx AI. We remove friction and architect revenue for medtech and consumer health practices. Welcome Zero Friction Podcast. This is Terry Coutsolioutsos and once again, I have an exciting guest with me today. Someone that I've had a relationship with for the better part of 30 years. This name is Brian Wagner, he is the founder and CEO of Health Insights Consulting Group. But he's had a great career that spanned over medical devices, medtech, imaging.

He's worked for some of the largest companies in this space. And so with that, I'm going to hand the reins over to you Brian, just to give you a little opportunity give you give us some personal background on your experience in the medtech space and then we'll kind of talk about both of our journeys and where we see, you know, health medtech and what growing opportunities we see in front of us in the future. Thank you Terry and thank you for the opportunity to share some of my real world experience and the ability to pay it back. Hopefully the conversation will be enlightening and insightful for many that do listen. As you mentioned, I've been in health care for the better part of 30 years. I started out as the founding division of Boston Scientific before it was Boston Scientific. So, I started out calling on interventional radiologists, cardiologists, vascular surgeons. So, really learning the business from the ground up. I've been blessed to work for some phenomenal companies over the span

Of my career. I've actually founded companies from scratch where we made medical solutions that focused on electronic medication administration records. I've literally set up venture funds to acquire and tuck in a certain startup organizations for various companies I've worked for. I've been blessed to be a C-level executive for companies such as Philips Imaging as their chief marketing officer, chief digital and marketing operations officer for GE Healthcare. I led worldwide strategic brand management and digital marketing for Becton Dickinson. All of those being global across all regions, all businesses, really establishing best practices, tools, processes, understanding which technology we need in order to really drive lead generation, revenue generation in this new era. As you mentioned most recently though, I've had my consulting firm, believe it or not, it's knocking on 10 years. And really my mantra is to help small companies grow to become big and take everything I've learned in my background and help apply that for their needs. I actually sit on a variety of

3:20 Different boards with the intention of helping them to go from small to to rather large. And so, I look forward to today's conversation. Hopefully there'll be some pearls of wisdom in there for everybody to learn from and I'm happy to do, you know, pay it forward and give back. That's great, Brian, and I'm sure, you know, our conversation today will definitely generate some interesting topics and where I'd like to start is you know, both you and I have seen the evolution of medtech and healthtech sales and and marketing sort of evolve over 30 years. You know, we've had the internet, we've had digitalization, we had COVID impact us, and now we're on the thrust of another big transformational wave of AI. So, why don't we just talk a little bit about like how it used to be and what worked then? And then maybe where the gaps are today and where we both can kind of use our experiences in marketing and sales to sort of maybe pinpoint in the future what success might look.

No, I welcome that conversation. I think there is tremendous amount of learning and just so the audience knows, we're really focused on healthcare, right? Acute care, sales reps calling on them, selling medical devices, uh permanent implants. As advanced and highly technical as the products and services that we provide are, we still are kind of operating as if we were 20 years ago. We've got that model. In the olden days, you mentioned how was it done? It was really done through your uh sales rep and your clinical specialist. They were considered the rainmakers. That was the model. So, let's go out and let's hire them at scale. Let's pay them anywhere from 150 to 200,000, full all in. Let's give them a quota of 2 million so they certainly pay for themselves and then some. So, the model was always, "Hey, just hire more of these sales reps or clinical specialists cuz they pay for themselves." And they're they're the ones that are going out and creating the

Need, right? They're the ones that are creating the revenue because of their connections with the customers and really understanding what their pain points are and what our product, services, and solutions can do to address those pain points. And as great as that was, it was almost for a different era. And in today's era, now you can't even gain access to an acute care center, fancy word for hospital. You know, you've got to go through this formalized process, some call it RepTrax, a vendor that offers, you know, the screening. You know, do you have your immunizations? Have you taken all your training? Et cetera. And it's really a barrier to entry. Whereas in the olden days, you just showed up with a box of donuts and you walked into radiology and you sat it down, you know, in their meeting room, and radiologists would come and go, and technologists, and nurses, and you would just have conversations, and you know, you'd leave with a purchase order, like right then and there. Like, oh, I want 20 stents,

6:00 And I want 50 balloons, and you know, various things. But that doesn't happen anymore. Now, it's contracts, and you know, procurement, and gatekeepers, and even the power of the doctors in the olden day, where they could actually say, "Hey, I need this and this." Nobody questioned them. Whereas in today's world, no, no, no. I'm sorry. We've got a VAC committee, the value analysis committee. So, you're going to have to come in and not only convince the champion, potentially, hopefully, the the interventional radiologist, let's say, but you've got to convince procurement. You've got to convince the CFO. You've got to convince operations.

You've got to convince the chief information officer. You've got to convince all those entities, and they all have different pain points. They have all different gaps in their customer buyers' journey. And the old way of doing that isn't scalable. A single sales rep can't go into an acute care center and literally call on all those individual constituencies, and be able to address their unmet needs. It would take far too long. So, in this new era, the ability to meet the customer where they are, when they are, the ability to take what used to be done in an analog world, face-to-face, not that that goes away completely, but let's do 70% of that heavy lifting up front. And let's take it to the digital world, and let's enable customers to complete jobs, get things done when they want and how they want. And by doing that, improving their productivity, also improving the productivity of the sales rep, the clinical specialist, operations behind the scenes for the manufacturer, and

Everybody gets something better in the deal, and advances that buyers' deciding journey and pain points more quickly, more efficiently, more effectively. And rather than talk theoretically, you know, I I like to always go down and say tactically and operationally. You know, what are the unmet clinical challenges, unmet customer needs that are meaningful, that are impactful? Because we could go in and and and try and sell everything to everybody. And very unsuccessful because it's overwhelming and it's too much. And so in the past, one of the things I've focused on is simplicity. That can really be a game-changer. So let's take the topic of education, right? A sales rep goes in, let's say they've already made the sale now. So now we need to instruct the the doctor, the technologist, the nurse on how do I deploy that angioplasty balloon or that coronary stent? How do I actually complete a procedure? It could be a transhepatic portal shunt, it could be hemodialysis access management.

8:31 Whatever that is, but how do I train those folks? In the olden days, either the rep did it or a clinical specialist would come in. They'd gather the people around, they'd do an in-service, and within 2 weeks much of that knowledge had dissipated for a variety of reasons. Well, I hadn't done that procedure in 2 weeks, so I kind of forgot a lot from what I was told. Or well, I've I've quit and I've gone to some other institution, so the knowledge that we bestowed there is lost. In today's world, to be able to digitize that, to be able to put it on a platform that enables customers to complete jobs, get things done when they want and how they want, now they have the ability to go in digitally and actually take that training. They could do it the day before the procedure, an hour before the procedure. They could be certified for that and actually get CEU accreditation. But all of that now is

Being done online. But the benefits are multifaceted. The ability to increase the confidence of those that are providing the care, the reduction of medical errors because their confidence goes up because they retain more of the information specific to how that device should be deployed. All of that enhances productivity, it reduces the cost to serve, but it's very, very pointed and specific in terms of a pain point for customers as well as for the manufacturer in the old way of doing things. So, that's just one small example of where digital transformation can truly create a very impactful, very profitable impact on both sides of the equation, but do it in a way that is sustainable, that's scalable, that's meaningful. And I would beg to offer that those that are doing it, cuz not all are, but those that are doing it can actually sell an inferior product to those that aren't. Why? Because it's easier to conduct business, it's easier to get things done. So, I'm going to choose to engage with the manufacturer

Or the customer that's doing it this way versus the other because it's just too painful to do it that way, even though their product may be superior. So, that should cause pause because those that think product, feature, benefit, hey, look at the clinical journal, RN number, RP number is much better than the competition, therefore, you got to use us. Those days are no longer enough. Right. Well, and it's, you know, I think you bring up a great point just around customer experience, around there's value beyond just the widget itself, right? But it's the how do you implement the widget, how do you reinforce the widget, how do you make sure that not only are our customers having a good experience, but it parlays into patients having a better experience as well. So, it's all down the line. And so, you know, those are the things that I actually, I totally agree with you on is that some some companies do it better than others, right? And this is where people are

11:21 Missing, like they think their widget is the only thing that matters. And it's now a a different world where everybody has a different perspective, especially when you brought up the fact that there's a VAC committee, right? So, the position might have a vote base value offering of the product, but then you're going to have a CFO that's going to have a way in. You're going to have procurement that's going to weigh in. If it's with the software platform, then you're going to have IT and IT security weigh in. And so, they all have what we call friction points or inertia. And so, you know, the name of the podcast is Zero Friction. We're really talking about what can companies do to remove friction from their customer so that that buying experience or even that retention experience, it's not just even the purchasing experience. Because that's just when the work begins, frankly. You know, when you get the contract signed is now now all the work

Really begins. So, now you've got the customer. How do you keep the customer happy and how do you keep them running along the line? So, especially if you're in a an implant world where it really is a razor blade business and you're just as good as the last razor blade that you sold, right? And so, you know, how do you continue to kick that retention on over time? Well, I think the biggest thing that sometimes people forget is always think customer first, right? And then think, what is the customer's buyers journey, you know? And it's not a a linear straight line. It's very circuitous, right? And it's no longer just one customer. I'm going in, I'm talking to in this case an interventional radiologist. So, I need to convince them to use my angioplasty balloon or my drug-eluting stent or you know, my guide wire, whatever that might be. It's influencing and convincing them, but all the other actors that play a part in that. And therefore, understanding what

Is the pain points along that customer buyers journey. And what have we done to target and to segment them? What are we developing that is more personalized content marketing that's always on. So, the other thing I would say in in terms of your original question, old versus new. In the old world, it was always push sales, push marketing. You know, you'd show up. we'd have a launch of a new coronary stent or a new balloon or or a new something. And so, we were out there pushing as opposed to really taking a step back and and probing and understanding. And so, what are the unmet clinical challenges? What are the unmet customer needs? By the way, a customer need is different than a clinical challenge. So, in the olden days, we also used to always sell on data. Like, "Oh, here's the New England Journal of Medicine and here's the clinical trial and look at my numbers." And that's critically important. But, we're now in a world where a lot of times it's it's clinically acceptable,

13:59 Right? All the differences are fractional, right? Yeah. And so, it's the unmet customer need. What are those customer needs? Well, the customer needs are differ for the head of information technology, the head of finance, the head of procurement, the doctor themselves, etc. So, being able to truly understand those pain points on that buyer's journey, developing content that is truly targeted and personalized to what their unmet needs are, and being able to deliver answers, and actually doing it long before you hit the back of the knee. It's like, the last thing you want to do is get into a vac meeting and a few questions come from left field and everybody's caught off guard and it's hummina hummina hummina. You want this to be a meeting that's really a rubber stamp. That's not what occurs today, but that's truly what you should desire. And the way to get there is to develop the always-on content marketing omni-channel campaigns that's pulling these customers in. Some that you know, some that you

Don't know. And being able to equip your sales organization to do better targeting, right? Better segmenting, such that before they walk into that acute care center, we're going to load them up and we're going to let them know that the head of procurement spent 12 minutes on our website and they spent 6 minutes reading X, Y, and Z. This is what's important to them. This is what the CFO did. This is what the CIO did. This what the head of nursing did. And oh, by the way, the doctor, all he cared about was X. Imagine being able to equip your sales organization with that information without even setting foot in the hospital. Very powerful. And it aids and assists them in improving their productivity, but it really directs them when they go in to create the need, you're starting in a position of strength because you better understand what those pain points potentially are.

You still want to probe, you don't want to assume or take anything for granted, but you're not starting at ground zero. And therein lies a tremendous benefit that the sales reps are saying, "Oh my god, I had no idea that this administrator played such a significant influence. And had I not been provided this information, I wouldn't have figured that out until it was too late potentially." So, that's what's changing in today's dynamic. The ability to equip and enable your sales force, your clinical specialist, your service reps to have vast more information going in, to be able to really focus where they want to take the conversation and to what end. But again, always think customer first. It's not about us. It's not about selling that, you know, balloon or stent or whatever.

It's about addressing their unmet needs. And if we think about that, and we come to them in a more partnership mindset, and we really are creating probing questions that uncover the real underlying problems, a lot of times it's not the widget. It's not the product. It's the service. It's the overriding solution. It's the way to get faster ROI or increased revenues or increased throughput. All of which is going to drive to the bottom line. And that's what's new in today's world versus the old way. Yeah. And you know, I just was listening and kind of replaying in my mind what you just said was you know, you kept talking about customer journey versus I remember the days when we talked about the seller's journey, right? And so, you know, it's all about us. It's all about us and what we do. And but, you know, that customer journey is so important. Then you brought up uh one of the things that I actually see quite a

17:20 Bit with my clients is that, you know, that whole discovery process. You brought up the word gap. So, where are you Where is your baseline today, and what is the What is the ideal, you know, situation in the future? And there's that gap. And so, to me, using discovery to identify the gap, to identify the needs, to again, once again, connect the value proposition to that need. And what's even made it even more challenging in healthcare than other business segments when you're selling is that the hospital has created this complexity with new technology and new offerings that, you know, no longer allow you to work in parallel with procurement, finance, and legal. They They They make you stack those responsibilities. They put you in a room where I think the average that committee has eight different stakeholders in it.

So, you could have physicians, you have department heads, you have finance, procurement. You might have you know, security or IT. You might have a chief nursing officer. And all of a sudden, they're all coming at you. They all have a different with them what's in it for them, you know, component. Like, what do they want to get out of this new offering? So, the complexity and the challenge of today's medtech med device company and and meeting those challenges is 20-fold of what you and I used to deal with with walking in with a a box of donuts under our arm, right? And, you know, and the Dunkin coffee. I mean, I remember those days really well. And today, you know, they make you go through RepTrax, and they make you feel like you're crossing the border. They They put They put a red bouffant on your head. So, they They label you in the hospital as a medical device professional, and not, you know, one of them.

Do not approach. Right. Yeah. And so, you know, it's really interesting how like the challenges of our of our industry that we've both grown up in has changed so much. And as we move forward, I mean, we have a new opportunity though, right? In today's age. So, you and I both have lived through the internet, we've lived through digitalization, we've lived through the COVID environment where health care was very much a human-to-human contact sport, right? Where the doors were shut and the yellow tape was surrounding the doors and nobody could get in. And you and I both were working for big companies at that point in time and we were creating that transformation around now what do we do?

Now we're faced with, you know, it's a new transformation, it's kind of scary with AI. I mean, some of us are scared, some of us are embracing it, but like I'd like to hit it to today's marketplace and talk about like where we've come and where we're going with AI. I'm going to set up a couple baselines and get a reaction from you. Is that health care in these hospital environments, health care systems, I believe are adopting AI the third fastest market segment in the country behind fintech and insurance. So, the customers that we're calling on every day are trying to find ways to adopt AI in every corner of the hospital. And some are successful and some are not as successful. Some are using it operationally, some are using it clinically, some are using it for patient experiences, but they're using it. And so, how does today's manufacturing supplier of medtech, med device adopt when they're walking into an environment that is using AI everywhere?

20:41 Yeah. Well, I think it's an excellent insight and a great question. I think one should not be resistant to it. If anything, one should embrace it and use it to your advantage because your competitors either don't understand it, haven't embraced it, don't have the end-to-end technology stack to enable it. A lot of challenges organizationally, we're not structured in order to execute that way, we're structured to execute the old way. These are a lot of the hurdles, but those that overcome those hurdles are the ones that are going to thrive and succeed. You know, there's a stat out there, 70% of all customers, before they pick up the phone, actually know more about you and your product, service, or solution and that of your competitors than you do. And the reason is AI and a whole bunch of other things they've been able to do to go on and address all of their questions across that vast continuum, right? Cuz it's it's different for procurement than it is for the doctor than it is for the

Head of IT. But they all have their objections and their challenges that they're seeking to fill and understand. And the ability for those that embrace it to put that out there and do it in a very differentiated way, a highly innovative way, are those that are going to thrive and succeed. And by the way, they're going to reduce the path of resistance. So, people are going to be more prone to pick up the phone and work with you if they feel as though it's the path of least resistance. That they're getting transparency, honest feedback. They're able to go on and do things that normally it was the sales rep, it was the service rep, it was the clinical specialist. They were, quote-unquote, the hub of the wheel and everything had to transpire through them. To be able to break that paradigm and to say that's no longer the case.

We're going to empower our customers and enable them to complete jobs when they want, how they want, and get the preponderance of the information they need before making a decision and before picking up that phone. Cuz a lot of times the phone doesn't ring. And it's not because you had an inferior, quote-unquote, product, it's because you didn't truly address their underlying clinical challenge, customer need, pain points in their buyer's journey. You made it too complicated and too hard. But this other company, man, I was able to go online and complete jobs, get things done. I can see after I buy the product, this is how I can schedule in-services, this is how I can do my installs. This is how I'm going to constantly keep current. That's all going to be value added. And we're answering those questions both asked and unasked in a different place. So that's it by the time we have that engagement, it's much more specific, much more meaningful, but we're going to get the phone call, right? And at least have a

23:21 Shot on goal cuz there's a lot of times a phone doesn't even ring. It's like, you know, I didn't even consider you. I would have in the past. You have a great brand, but that brand is withered because you're not current. And so this small company, this startup company, or this company that was truly focused on my unmet clinical and customer needs, I'm going to want to work with them. And that is where things have really changed. And as much as we'd like to say healthcare, it's it's very innovative.

It's very technologically advanced. That may be true in a lot of clinical ways, but in terms of go to market, we're still operating as if it was 10, 15, 20 years ago. And therein lies our problem and friction, if you will, for the customer. So that's what we've got to identify and remove that friction because if it's easier to do business with us, even though we may not have a superior product, we're going to get the call where others may not. Yeah, just, you know, when you think about like I'll I'll give a specific example of like how this might shape out in a real life situation where you're looking at a cardiac device or an implant or an orthopedic implant and there's five vendors throughout an entire system and they have an initiative to consolidate to two vendors or 2.5 vendors, right? And you look at that VAC committee and you're going to have the clinical aspect in the implant or it's going to have a very sort of,

You know, perspective on what they want out of the implant clinically, right? You're going to have that stakeholder. Then you're going to have a department head that's going to be like, okay, so I want to line up with my doctors on the clinical efficacy of the product, but I also have to think I have a the to deal with and what's going to be easiest for my staff to sort of, you know, is it do they do they need to learn new technology? Do they need to learn new processes? You know, if this this new vendor going to sort of disrupt the way things are today? And then you have over here on the procurement side, they're looking at how much market share do all these guys have today and how can I save as much money with the least amount of effort possible, which, you know, like might mean just beating down the big vendor, right? You know, to a point, but so they have a different perspective.

And then you might have the finance guy that says, "Oh, this company is going to help us develop a new therapy offering." And then so everybody has a different sort of outcome that they're looking for. And that's where I'm kind of talking about like having the complexity of dealing with all of that today, knowing that you have AI that can help. One thing that AI does very, very well, it takes multiple complexity things together. And it can actually break them down in very simple things for these complex situations. So that, you know, you you as a a manufacturer or seller of a technology can actually map out what needs to be done for each stakeholder.

26:03 What is the great blend? You know, what is the right balance between all these different things? And AI allows you to do that really, really effectively. And so that's where I see things going in terms of, you know, using AI enterprise solutions, using AI intelligence. It makes you faster, it makes you smarter, it makes you more consistent in your approach. It's really interesting how AI can sort of help that complex dynamic that you just described. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I always think in terms think customer first, which I mentioned earlier, but also having a plan, working a plan. So think of what I call the ideal sales call. You have that customer need, clinical challenge. What's our best answer? It might not be ideal, but what's our best answer versus those we compete against. Therefore, what is our value proposition? It's got to be overarching value prop, and then what are our proof points? And that ideal sales call is different when you're talking with the clinician person versus the administrator versus procurement versus IT. But to be able to understand

That customer buyers journey for each of them and their pain points, and to develop ongoing content marketing that enables them to complete jobs, capture information when they need it, how they need it, reducing friction is going to increase the likelihood that they're going to choose you not only before but after. Because think about this, there's another statistic that says once the sale is done, people run off. They're onto the next kill. And it makes it harder in 8 years or 2 months, depending upon what type of product service or solution you're selling, once it needs to be reordered. If it's been a horrible experience, the likelihood of exiting out is much higher versus if we just delight the customer ongoing, the likelihood they're not going to pick up the phone and call a competitor because it ain't broke.

It's working. And so a lot of times that's forgotten, too. So it's as important as you mentioned earlier to take care of the customer after the sale as it is leading up to create the sale. And I think more often than not, that is forgotten. Cuz the sale looks at it and says, "No, I've got to hit quota. I've got to hit my bonus. I just need to sell X number of widgets. And if I've done that, I'm onto the next one." As opposed to really understanding that if I continue to delight the customer, they're going to constantly come back and buy more and more.

And create that create that sticky factor, too, which is really a rock retention. And then the other thing is is I think the stat is to regain a lost customer, it takes four times the investment of time and money to go then to keep an existing customer. So it's really kind of a, you know, an interesting It's counterintuitive, but people manage to their incentives. And the reason they're off to the next thing is based upon how their incentive program is, and that's a whole different topic possibly.

28:51 Yeah, yeah, exactly. People manage to their incentives. So, you got to make sure that the incentives are aligned in order to get the desired outcome that you seek and desire. Well, where do you think things are going? Like, when you see AI today, who do you think has the biggest opportunity to benefit from AI in the MedTech space? Like, in Well, this is it big in the the mainstays of the kingdom, or is it the small and medium-sized companies? Where where do you really see AI, you know, creating a lot of impact in in the space?

I think it's going to benefit both large, medium, and small. So, let's talk specific example. The smaller firms, where all I have is a widget, and I'm trying to get to market, and I got to go through a clinical trial, and then I got to get FDA approval, and then I got to in theory commercialize, and I don't know what I don't know, and there's legal and regulatory and clinical challenges. I've never stood up a sales rep. All of that is complex to many founders, inventors. Well, with AI, they can go in and basically get a road map as to what to do and how to do it.

Whereas historically, they never could have done that. So, that's one way to help some of the smaller players that can't afford to go hire the right consultants, or to go hire the staff that has the, you know, innate knowledge. It could be as simple as designing the protocol for the clinical study, not just to get approval, but what marketing claim am I going to get out of that? Because that's critically important. Just to have, quote unquote, approval. Basically, that means you're do no harm, but you may not be any better than the competition. So, being able to design protocols, that's one small example for small companies. Then you look at some of the larger companies. They've got so much information, so much data, but it's all siloed, right? The right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing, they can't converge it, therefore they can't enhance productivity, reduce cost to serve. AI now can take all that complexity and boil it down and really give them a road map and a pathway

Towards how they can operationalize much more effectively, efficiently, in a much more productive way. So, one big example would be to say, "How do we take AI? How do we put it into an algorithm such that when a radiologist goes to look at a film, that film isn't just that radiologist's knowledge through med school, residency, fellowship, and 10 years of practice. It's like "No, no, no. We've taken this X-ray on a million patients and we're telling you to look here and we think it could be one of three things, right?" Now, it's still up to that clinician to make the final call, but imagine where you're building confidence and they're able to look at that and then they can determine. Well, again, it's based upon all the data that these big firms already have, but none of it is coming together when it's needed, how it's needed, where AI can enable that. So, those are only two small examples, but they're big of what they can do to really address unmet

31:44 Customer needs, right? That's really going to drive differentiation, enhance productivity, improve the customer experience, whether it be for the the the company itself or the actual patient. So, that's where I think AI has tremendous opportunity. Now, does it get it wrong? Sure. But, that's where you need human intervention. Is there bias? Sure. Is there a lack of 100% trust? Yeah, but it's constantly learning and provided that you're providing the right inputs, it's eventually going to get there a lot sooner than most people think and you want to be on the positive side of that versus the negative.

Yeah, it's really interesting where, you know, you talk about the the customer value proposition with AI and you brought up a couple really good examples, especially with imaging where you know, there are a lot of people that have stated that, you know, it's potentially that a digital read of a an X-ray is probably better than the human eye, right? And in a lot of situations where you think about our health care system today where, you know, where you fall like I feel like economically it's just it's a broken system. Like when you look at like how we all pay for our health care today, whether we have high deductible programs and platforms or low deductible, you know, it costs us a lot of money to to take care of ourselves and go to the doctor. It would be great if AI could find a way where we could become more efficient economically with the care that we deliver and still deliver a high level of care as well,

Right? And that's where my hope with AI goes beyond like into the health care side and what we're offering our customers and what AI is going to offer health care systems, health care providers, and then in turn, you know, we'll get great health care, but, you know, the cost reduction can come back to us where, once again, I think health care can become more realistically economically viable for everybody, not just insurance companies, not just health care system, not just doctors, but the people that actually pay for the health care into the system as individual people, right? And so, like we're all part of that whole ecosystem, and I'd love to see a day when that all everybody feels like there's a little better balance, and, you know, that the reward system in the health care system because I think, for the most part, the patients going into the health care system feel like there's not enough balance going, you know, coming to them when they look at those bills that we And one thing I'd add is, you know,

Health care is much art as it is science. And by using AI, the ability to remove some of the unknown and actually reduce medical errors. So, it's one thing to say affordability, and, you know, everybody's paying or paying way too much, and what are we getting for what we're paying? When they get it right, it's priceless, right? When they get it wrong, it's disastrous. And a lot of times we're getting it wrong because we're overwhelmed, we're overworked, we're overstressed, we're all these things. Whereas with AI, the ability to build confidence, the ability to, you you know, train and equip people to do their best jobs, and in the end reduce medical errors. That's the most important thing. And I think that's where the the real potential of AI is.

34:46 Yes, it's about cost reduction and, you know, productivity enhancements and all that, but it really boils down to reducing medical errors and getting it right the first time. And I think that's really where the future of AI can have a tremendous impact that everybody's going to see and feel and benefit from from the payer to the provider to the patient. Well, I think that's a great place to kind of, you know, end this conversation. I've really enjoyed it. It's been great. I have one more question for you, though.

It'll be a little bit of a knuckleball, but it's it's a question I like to ask all my my guests. And so, today's Brian goes back to 22-year-old Brian, right? What would be the one piece of advice he would give Brian at 22 years of age? And it can be in any category, whether it's personal or business or whatever it might be, but like, you know, what would you go back and offer yourself as a 22-year-old today as one piece of advice? Yeah. Well, that's a long time ago, and I would say the world has completely changed. And as a 22-year-old, I thought, "Hey, I'm going to work for one company my entire life, maybe two." Right.

And I was going to learn everything I needed while at that company. The reality of the situation is the world's changed. I think there's a stat out there that says now you're going to work for 12 different companies in your lifetime, not counting all your positions, but actual companies, right? That's on average. So, I would always say to that 22-year-old, "Have a growth mindset. Constantly be investing in yourself. Treat yourself as a bank. Invest in yourself cuz nobody can ever take that away from you. And regardless of what the future holds for you, you're going to be able to draw on that investment and really be prepared for anything and everything that you know could happen or would happen or don't know. And there's a lot that's going on that nobody ever could have predicted. You know, the COVID situation be a prime example. I'd argue that anybody when I was 22 predict AI? No, right? There wasn't even the internet boom and revolution back then.

So, again, constantly uh have a growth mindset, invest in yourself, and always be be learning. Well, that's great words of wisdom for such a successful, you know, MedTech executive, founder, and CEO. And And Brian, it's been a great conversation today. I'm so thankful to have you here and uh I can't wait to get this out and maybe have a second conversation as well. Hey, it was my pleasure and I hope that our brief conversation together does help aid and assist and benefit others in in the way of paying it back and paying it forward. Thank you, Brian.

37:21 You bet. All the best. So, let's connect. Let's find where your revenue is getting stuck, book a call at RevRx AI, and build your revenue engine.