Surgery Center Growth Beyond Paid Search

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0:00 In MedTech, the difference between a good quarter and a great one isn't always the product. It's the friction standing in the way. Broken sales cycles, misaligned teams, deals that stall at the finish line. Every leader feels it, and the best ones know how to remove it. Welcome to Zero Friction, the podcast where we go inside the minds of MedTech's top commercial leaders to uncover the real barriers they face, the decisions they make, and the systems they build to keep the revenue moving. I'm your host, Terry Coutsolioutsos. Let's remove some friction. Welcome to Zero Friction podcast. Terry Coutsolioutsos here, and I have another great day wrestling another super episode with Dave Lindsay. He is the VP of growth for Clearpoint Surgery Center. It is a privately owned, corporately owned surgical center company up in Canada.

And so, Dave and I are going to have a couple different interesting angles on our healthcare discussion regarding commercial penetration, commercial go-to-market, and what it's like dealing with aggregated buyers, and what that does to the buying complexity in today's environment. So, Dave, welcome to the show. I appreciate it. Why don't you give us a little background on yourself cuz it's quite extensive, and then we'll kind of go into what you do today. Thanks, Terry. Happy to be here and have a discussion today. I've had a long career in med device, over 20 years.

Started as a sales rep working in the OR with Olympus Canada, and then varying leadership roles within Integra Canada, and then most recently before my current role, I was with Baxter Canada. I ran the commercial operations for advanced surgery in Canada. Um about 8 months ago, kind of took a bit of a turn. In Canada, as you know, it's a a public healthcare system, but there is, through need and and choice, a two-tiered type system opening up. Patients, again, are getting a lot more options and looking to private healthcare. So, I joined a company called Clearpoint, and and they uh 11 different ambulatory surgical centers across Canada, do a ton of public work with the public system, but at the same time have a private component working with insurers as well as individual patients in Canada. So, I I'm running as the VP of growth the the the private side of the business in Canada. With it comes a number of different challenges unique that I've I've I've come across

In the in the last 8 months. It's a bit different than medical device sales. So, really excited to have a conversation with you today, Terry. Well, good. So, let's get a little background on um the surgery center business and and how you know, you were just kind of leaning into that a second ago. So, tell me a little bit about Clearpoint, what they do, like who their ideal customers are, and you know, what you're doing to sort of remove friction from providing health care to the Canadian marketplace.

2:47 It's a It's a It's a great question. Clearpoint Surgical, again, does about 70% of what they do is publicly tendered work with the Canadian hospitals across Canada cuz Canada is a system that's delivered provincially. With that, again, it's public tender in association and partnership with hospitals. So, we're a very, very large partner with the public system to the tune of about 50,000 uh surgical cases per year. Yeah, it's it's a big number and we're doing some amazing work. As the need is growing though, as I talked about, there is a is is definitely a want for private surgery in Canada. Most recently, Alberta has passed a bill around this where you now have a choice as a patient to either get private surgery or stay in the the the public system, as well as Quebec. So, it's definitely opening up and as a Canadian, you can get private surgery as long as you just flip provinces, Terry. That is in compliance with the Health Canada Act. So, what we found is 105,000 Canadians, this was a Fraser

Institute report uh that was released in March of this year. Fraser Institute's a a Canadian research organization. 105,000 Canadians left Canada, Terry, in 2025 for for surgery. We want to capture that market, and a lot of that is just educating Canadians that they don't have to go to the US or Panama or Germany to get private surgery. They can stay in Canada. There are choices by just flipping provinces. Wow. To do so. Yeah, it's a big number. So, they they lose what was it 200,000 a year for for some sort of hospital or 105,000 a year? 105,000. And if you work out the math on that, Terry, and look at that that's everywhere from an ophthalmology to a orthopedic surgery to general uh could be cosmetic. But, if we take the average cost of surgery with the Canadian dollar at 20,000, that's $2.1 billion.

Wow. Of Canadian money that's leaving Canada. So, we provide an option at Clearpoint having that that network of facilities for Canadians. That's amazing. So, you know, you're you're sort of providing other options other than health care tourism options. Actually, health care tourism within your within your country, right? This got to go from one province to the other, right? Absolutely. And that's exactly it. And and and a lot of Canadians feel more comfortable staying in Canada because should something go wrong, the system can catch them. You know, it's a Canadian surgeon. We have some of the world's best surgeons. A lot of them are US-trained. Sure. So, so it really is safer for Canadians to make that choice to stay in Canada rather than going abroad. There's there's some there's some real unfortunate stories of of Canadians even going to Europe for surgery, and if there's a complication or if there's a post-operative complication when they come back home, they don't have the same options. So, a lot of our job is just to educate Canadians on on what they what

5:44 What are the options they have available to them. And being close to home is, I'm sure, a lot better for recovery, as well. 100%. Especially when you could drive across a provincial border for surgery, not even have to fly. Right, and your family's close by, and all those things. So, so that's awesome, and we'll we'll kick back on that. Well, I think you and I earlier had some earlier dialogue, just kind of talking shop around how the how selling med tech into the environment today has also changed quite a bit, right? The buyer complexity, you know, Canada's always been a real challenge for any US-based companies just trying to, you know, different rules, different regulations, but it's also it's the different tender system, too. It's a different set of economics around how systems are acquiring, and now we have these large aggregators, where they're they're building procurement channels based upon aggregated models, which, you know, are designed to create complexity and drive the prices down. And we all know that

That can be a real challenge on the business side, especially in Canada, where, you know, the rep scarcity is even more so than the US, where you don't If you look at dollars per representative or technical representative, it's typically, you know, fractional of what is compared to in the US. And so, we talked a little bit about the ability to support the business, the ability to penetrate the business. So, tell us a little bit about your experience there. Yeah, it it's it it's it's hard in Canada, because we have a a system that's a little bit different than the US, where we have very, very powerful group purchasing organizations in Canada, and their mandate is to find savings for the hospital membership. And there's really just two across Canada.

So, at times, it's really felt like a race to the bottom. What has happened, and and Terry, I'm going to I'm going to quote uh Brent Adamson. Brent Adamson is one of the founders of the Challenger, which is a great sales method. And and Brent Adamson had identified a very, very key point of of information. There was a study done. They interviewed 3,000 business business key stakeholders across the US. So the these would be economic buyers across and what they found through this survey is the decision and this was post-2008 after the financial crisis.

Right. That economic buyer no longer exists, Terry. What what they found through the research is that it takes up to 5.4 individuals now to make a decision, a buying decision with the company. To to your point, it's a larger aggregate of very differentiating stakeholders. So could be someone from legal, could be someone from the clinical side, it could be someone from facilities now. It's not one economic buyer. I do feel that through the GPO in the Canadian healthcare system, this process has been greatly accelerated. It's funny because Brent Adamson also identified in 2016 as to a follow-up to that original 2008 study is it's it's now up to 6.8 individuals that it takes to make a decision. So what's happened is is deals have become very, very complicated and very, very structured. In a way, Terry, this is one thing that we talked about.

9:04 It's not even that they're happening at the same time. It's almost like you have to go from the legal gate first and then into the clinical gate and then into maybe a a logistics gate. Like it's it's it's become very, very complicated. So we found that that our sales reps and our sales teams in Canada just really have to be educated on contract compliance and success is determined not about who you know sometimes at the clinical level anymore. It's identifying those key stakeholders. And And literally, Terry, the difference between success and failure in a lot of cases.

You know, and it's really interesting then dealing and working and I've run corporate accounts teams and enterprise accounts teams in the US for large large medtech companies and you know, I know the Challenger series has 6.8. There are sometimes it feels like it's 10 to 15 when you're in a hospital system depending on the platform that you're selling. Especially if you're then you get into software and then you get into IT and you get into IT security and you get into sort of all sorts of different you know, clinical stakeholders, department stakeholders, financial, legal, risk, all these things start adding up, right? And everybody wants sort of a piece of the game or the ball that you're playing with in terms of what value it brings them.

Mhm. So, and this is where AI is changing the world and the landscape. This is going to be a great discussion. I'm going to throw something out here that is really interesting that I've been discovering is that hospital systems are actually creating complexity on purpose for for new technology processes. Whether it's software, whether it's you know, products being used in their system, they they are there's a complex system that you can no longer take parallel pathways. They stack legal, financial, department, procurement along the way. So, you can't take parallel path for processing. The other interesting thing is AI is probably the healthcare sector is the third fastest adopting sector of AI in the at least in the US. I can't speak for the other markets. Can't imagine Canada being much different, but the healthcare system is throwing AI just about at everything. And you know, I think medtech is sort of lagging behind and when we talk about deal complexity, we talk about stakeholder mapping with

You know, buyer groups. AI there are tools in AI today that allow us to do it faster, more intelligently and more consistently than ever. And I I just see a lot of companies struggling to bring that to fruition. You know, you have AI packages that will actually framework an entire healthcare system, leaders, who they are, what's important to them. It allows you to take whatever framework you're using from a sales methodology perspective, whether it's, you know, challenger, whether it's gap, whether it's medic, whether it's spin selling, you know, you can program your AI tools to actually follow the methodology, do the stakeholder mapping, make sure that the stakeholder value and the pain points are being addressed stakeholder by stakeholder. And now your sales professionals can actually have an organized methodology of mapping that whole deal structure.

12:09 Mhm. And so, you know, it's time to start fighting, you know, guns with guns. And if, you know, I promise you when you walk into a procurement in large healthcare aggregators, I promise you they've already done the analysis of on your product line versus all your competitors. I promise you they already understand what they're purchasing across the system and who has the highest market share and who has the lowest market share. I promise you that they've already done the surveys with the physicians on who likes what. And then you're walking in kind of just trying to guess your way through that.

Mhm. And we as sales professionals in the medical device space or medtech space have to come better prepared. And if if our, you know, before we were taking a knife to a gun fight. Now now we're taking a knife to an artillery battle. Absolutely. And you know, it's it's I just wrote an article on LinkedIn the other day just about this because, you know, we've been we were we've been hurting all all along with the complexity of the the buying cycle and then you throw on the fact that they're using AI and we're not. I mean, it's just it's a it is a recipe for punishment for sure.

Mhm. Mhm. Absolutely. It it it you raise a number of of amazing points there. I think the first one if if I could touch on, I just expand the conversation a little bit. that. Because it it touched a point a point around the timing of it. By the time the rep is involved with the sales organization is contacted, the deal structured. I couldn't agree more. We would always say with a rep or territory manager, if if if we are finding out about the request for proposal, the RFP, through the email system of announcement, it is not a very good close ratio from that point onward. You have to get involved to your point with the deal cuz the deal's the the RFP and structure of the deal and the contract has already been structured at that point. They've already identified all the key stakeholders. To your point, they've already identified all the different vendors that they're going to contact. The deal's been put in place.

You have no influence over said deal. So, it's about getting number one is getting involved early before the deal's rock so that you do have influence identifying those stakeholders who are going to shape the deal. You have influence in how the deal's structured so it's structured in a way that's fair, but but also one that that will not you never want to be favored, but it also won't disqualify your company at the same time. So, there's education that needs to happen early on. The second thing around AI is the tools now, I'll tell you what we used to do. This is before AI. And this is as as as close Terry is 2 years ago in MedTech is if there was a large GPO deal that was happening, we would have Excel dashboards and spreadsheets or we would use the even the blue sheet if you remember that. Yeah, blue sheets, gold sheets for sure.

14:50 Absolutely. Absolutely and blue sheets and gold sheets. the way. You know, there's nothing wrong with them. But AI now, to your point, the right tools to be developed can do all those things and then find the interconnections in there instead of looking at a blue sheet or gold sheet if we're just going to use that as example, looking at an Excel dashboard that's been put together manually by a team to understand a very very big and complex deal, AI tools to your point is going to provide those insights, align them, and even align the different buying motives and strategies around a sales methodology that the company's using as well, which I think is key for two reasons. One is that's the common language in the organization, whatever that sales methodology that they've subscribed to, whether it be spin or challenger. But number two, it's consistent in the messaging and the application so that you can take the best practices from one deal and apply the learnings to the next one. So it

Keeps things structured at the same time. So AI I think is definitely going to be able to fill this need. To your point, with AI we're no longer taking a knife to an artillery battle. We're we're one step ahead with drone warfare. Yeah, and but we've got to get there and and you know, what I'm finding is is at least in the US the adoption from for AI in the commercial workflow in our systems. I'm not saying that health tech and med tech companies aren't adopting AI, but it's typically in finance or it's typically in, you know, IT or data. They're not really enhancing or augmenting their sales and workflow processes with AI.

And that's where, you know, the value could really be driven with, you know, faster intelligence, more consistent approaches. Like you can actually build workflow models and have greater consistency. You can use AI for lead follow-up or proposal follow-ups and educating in a consistent manner where, you know, you're dependent upon your sales reps to remember to call somebody to follow up. Now there's all sorts of intuitive ways with AI to engage that process all inside your CRM system. And so I just think there's just a lot of interesting ways to to be more effective that we that we haven't seen yet. So that's a that's a great topic and, you know, you know, especially when we it kind of came through with the whole, you know, aggregated sales model and selling to aggregators is always hard. I mean, it's like, you know, it's a very tough battle when you got somebody that's that's has basically one mission in that whole process is to lower your price. And that's it, right?

17:25 Absolutely. It gets more and more complicated to do two things, to show value, to justify price, but also what your unique value proposition is for your company versus the market because no two companies are the same. Before we move on, I just wanted to touch, I think, Terry on that that last comment. MedTech has been slow to adapt. I think pharma is ahead. MedTech has been slow to adapt AI in commercial models for sure. I think the reluctance started, and I can only speak from my my past experience, but I think the reluctance was just based on the the hesitation with AI because again, with MedTech, we have a lot of proprietary information in our systems. And to open that up, it was a a reluctance because of security. Now, since AI's been shown again that it could work behind firewalls, you're not going to have company information leak out. And again, the proprietary information clinically in in in the spaces we work in, I think that's

Starting to change. And I'm seeing it, but but they are behind, and catch-up needs to happen to be able to stay ahead of the the aggregates and and these these large organizations. Cuz I I promise you, they're using everything. They're Of course they are. They're you know, it's it's a they're using data. They've been using data for years. And and now they have intelligence to go along with that data to to not only gather the data, but to actually make sense of lots of complex data. That's what AI does. It makes very complex things come out very simple. But that's good. Let's let's pivot a bit. I want to go back to I'm sorry to get us derailed a little bit, but I'm really interested in this whole aspect of, you know, over 100,000 patients leaving Canada to go to other countries for medical tourism. And what what are you doing to sort of capture that patient and that that What is your patient acquisition strategy? How are you doing it? How are you sort of, you

Know, not just informing the the Canadian community, but, you know, it's more than information. You actually have to inform and then actually connect and and acquire them. How do you do that? It's uh it's a number of different ways. So, when I joined, the primary driver of of I'm going to say leads, because these are inquiries that were coming in, was through organic uh internet search, AI optimization, search engine optimization, and paper click uh through Google. And and and I mean that that that that's worked for a while. It's it's a great system. But but there's two challenges with that. Number one is you're putting an awful lot of eggs in a basket with paper click ads and what have you and and one referral or lead source out of that. The second is you're you're now subject to macroeconomic trends. If there's a recession, if there's a war in Iran, any number of things, you're you're subject to that. Your your your leads conversion to surgical is going to

20:20 Ebb and flow much like other large purchases, like a car, a home, a sec- cottage or cabin, whatever it may be. So, we needed to diversify that because it was going to be There's too many pressures that were going to be able to to affect that. So, we looked at different referral channels, like where we we can acquire leads. So, we looked at a number of different ways. First of all, it's not looking at different platforms, like Meta, LinkedIn, and what have you. The second second way was going out to find partners that can provide leads and referrals through education. I got to tell you, a lot of Canadians don't know the options to them. We do not have the platform to be able to tell all Canadians and and educate them, but if we work with partners, meaning different people on the patient journey. So, follow me for a second here, Terry. If we're getting an internet lead, it might be my back hurts or I've been having a lot of pain. I'm

Undiagnosed at this point. So, that person is beginning the patient journey. Right. We want to find people that are at the point of the patient journey where they say, "I really need to have surgery. I don't necessarily want to wait 4 to 6 months. I want to know what other options are available. I'm looking at Mexico and the US is Canada also an option to stay in Canada." So, what we did is we went out to find partners farther along the journey. So, we went after rehab the high-end rehabilitation clinics that were doing injections, PRP.

We were looking at pain clinics that dealt specifically in spine. So, we were identifying other players that had patients that were farther along the journey that probably had imaging done. They have a diagnosis. They have a surgical need. Now, it's they're deciding how that surgery is going to be delivered. And this is the part where I believe that And we did this very very very manually and through a lot of hard work developing those channels with an agent force and and a number of different ways, but this is where I feel, Terry, AI can play a big role in helping identify those channels.

We also went after corporate health programs and concierge health care cuz we have a number of providers like Cleveland Clinic Canada operates in Canada as well. So, we we have a number of different companies like that that that operate in Canada offering executive health options for private health care. You know, it's amazing that you talk about the I love how you just even used the word patient journey cuz I think that's a really interesting aspect to even think about and where do you come into that journey? Where do you Where does your surgery center sort of come into play? You don't want to come in too early cuz they might forget about you. So, you have to come in at the right time, at the right place when they're actually going through that selection process, right? And so, picking those partners is probably a really very signaling element. Like you get signals along the way where it this is the time, this is the time, and now they're looking and you're finding,

23:12 Right? That's a really unique Kudos to you for, you know, using AI to go do this and trying to figure out how to to do that acquisition. And then the other part is is how do you use AI to make sure that once they decide of it's you, that it's been a really good experience after that, too, right? So the the other part is once they selected you and now how do you make sure that that experience is excellent because they go back and they tell their, you know, friends and they tell their family what a great experience I had happen this happened to me. So that's that's a pretty cool thing and that you found a way into the Canadian health care system. Otherwise, what what would be a typical wait for like, let's just say What's what's the highest volume procedure you do in your surgery centers? What's one of the highest ones that you do? We do a lot of orthopedics on the private. It varies from province to

Province. Terry, could be anywhere from the lowest is 10 weeks. That would be the Ontario. And this is all based on Fraser Institute research. But you could have as high as 30 to 40 weeks in some of the other provinces for this. So that that's an awful long time that a patient's waiting for surgery, you know, and and rehabilitation's going to take you so long. There's pain management, and it's a return to life is what people want. They want to return to golf. They want to play pickleball. They want to hike. They want to do all these things, and they don't necessarily want to wait.

The nice thing is is is when we do provide private surgery for someone, it opens up a space in the in the public health care to help those wait times at the same time. Right. So it's interesting. Makes total sense, by the way. So I I think that's you know, especially if you're in pain and you just can't move, right? Then you don't want to wait 30 or 40 weeks to get out of your wheelchair. And I'm sure that like spending 30 or 40 weeks in a wheelchair is not good for your overall health, either. No. No, the acuity the acuity of the patient when waiting for surgery will will increase to your point. They're not active, they're not moving around, there can be some atrophy. Again, I I'm by no means a healthcare practitioner or provider at all, but we have seen that the longer you wait, the higher that acuity increases. So, you want to get people into surgery. You want to get

Them back up on their feet as soon as possible. It's just it's it it's you the return to life is the most important thing for patients. Right. You know, and you we we talked earlier, too, just on how not just having surgeons like in in the US with the ambulatory and again, I think the one interesting thing on both markets is like healthcare is being delivered close closer to home more than ever, right? So, it's leaving the hospital and it's going into ambulatory surgery centers, it's going to urgent care centers, it's going into telemedicine. I mean, let's face it, people are, you know, the access to healthcare has changed totally differently in the last 20 or 30 years.

26:05 And so, in the US, you know, typically a surgeon will come to an ambulatory surgery center and they bring that referral pathway. Absolutely. Doesn't sound like that's how the model works in Canada. Like the doctor comes and, you know, is that is that the same situation where the referrals come with the doctor or the, you know, like, you know, build it and they will come and is that is that how it works or Yeah, I really wish that we could just have a a doctor come aboard bring their book of business with them and the surgeons, but that's not how it works because again, their book of business is in the in the public healthcare system. They they can opt in or out and in some provinces, they could do both. So, that that the surgeons that we work with are all part of our system. They have a book of business. They cannot self-refer. So, so we have to, Terry, find the patients.

And and then we have to do that. So, it's it's very different than the US system that way. So, that that's why, you know, using AI and finding these different lead channels has been so important because we unfortunately don't have that luxury in Canada. Well, you know, and that's I mean it impacts everything in the marketplace today, especially in the US. And that like they're doing more and more things in surgery centers today than I ever thought that they ever would. They're replacing joints, they're fixing hearts, they're they're actually doing ablations in ambulatory surgery centers now, which is neat.

Yeah. You know, like And in the US system, we're seeing that happen and we're watching very very closely. We do a lot of orthopedics right now, but we are looking to expand as the need because ambulatory surgical centers are just such a natural. And as the technology gets better and then it can be day surgery and there's not an overnight stay required, we're really seeing that shift internationally to private and ambulatory surgical centers. The US is really just leading the charge. I don't know what the last count was and how you measure it, but you measure it in thousands in the US in terms of how many ASCs, I think that you have.

Oh, it's they're everywhere. Like they they're booming and they're it's there are more and more procedures being done every day. Every major specialty, cardiovascular, orthopedics, you know, they've already been taking, you know, the GI work and the colonoscopies and all those types of things, but you know, basically what you get is you get a full-scale functional treatment like you would in the hospital, but you do it in a very light fashion that gives you a much better experience in leaving and going at home the same day.

Like, you know, just very very, you know, simple things. And you know, who wants to go to the hospital? I mean, seriously, I like nobody really wants to do that. That's not a great experience. But going to, you know, a surgery center and having a spa-like experience for your procedure and, you know, getting to drive home and go home that evening and be in your own home the next day and, you know, recovering faster and better with people surrounding you 24/7 that love you. Um, you know, what can't be better than that, you know?

29:00 Absolutely. And it oh and it keeps the hospitals, Terry, and the acute centers open for exactly that, acute cases. The big cardiac, the big spine, the big neuro, the big cancer cases. Like they they all need to be done at the teaching hospitals, the big acute centers. We we need to take these these smaller procedures. We need to push them to to ambulatory surgical centers and because technology's allowed for it now. It's it's it's everything's done laparoscopic. Another one in the US that we've been watching carefully is the endospine.

And and that movement, too. The endoscopic spinal procedures into the ambulatory surgical centers. And there's a lot of Canadians now, snowbirds, that are are in Florida. That's where they're getting endospine procedures done. You know, there there is and there's been a lot of that lately and you know, spine surgery's huge and pain surgery's huge and it's a big problem in in the US. But what else do you want to kind of finish up here with today like in terms of, you know, your personal perspective on the MedTech space? I love what you're doing, you know, from an ASC perspective and you really are groundbreaking, you know, in terms of how you're thinking about patient acquisition and, you know, people are fighting over those things every day, you know, Clearpoint is clearly trying to go figure out a new way to go galvanize that patient to figure out so they don't leave and go to Mexico or the US or any other healthcare destination that they're, you know, advertising today and and providing great care. I mean, that's that's the

Big point of it. I I think the in in closing, I think the one thing that's important with all this because, you know, in in your background very similar, you know, leading sales forces and and commercial operations and and commercial businesses across the US and your background. This is one thing that we had talked about earlier, Terry, was the understanding the patient acquisition cost is very, very important as well. Understanding the sales acquisition cost, whether you're a a medtech company that are are ident- like talking to surgeons and and having to go through processes of evaluations to bring on a surgeon and what that sales process looks like is also understanding what is the cost of acquisition of a customer? Whether it's a patient like in an ASC, Canadian ASC, or or a surgeon is understanding those costs. We did a big uh cost analysis of what it takes and this telephone to table, even though they're not coming from the telephone. This is what I called it. And what was the cost

Of that that that acquisition of the client through through the paper click, the uh the Google, uh whatever lead channel it came through, what what type of uh account managers needed, the the patient advisors. What is the time spent with that patient collecting the uh the different imaging, prep for surgery, all that. We needed to understand what those acquisition costs were because then, Terry, we could then look at different channels to look at. Okay? And then we could look at, well, how can we bring in AI to help fill some of these gaps and how do we find the right tools to speed up that acquisition and maybe help certain areas where we could find if efficiencies and speed up that telephone to table. So, I I think I think there's a lot of promise in in med device and in the medical industry as a whole, again, of taking these these these big ideas with AI that they are using currently in finance and logistics and inventory management or whatever it may be and

32:25 Really applying them to the the the commercial operations as well, sales and marketing. And I think there's a need and and I think I think there's a a lot of companies that that can really help uh bring AI solutions to big companies. It is. And you know, my experience with AI actually came, you know, from owning a small business, a roofing company actually, is where I developed my expertise on lead acquisition and lead conversion. I used to spend 40, 50,000 dollars a month for leads. Right. In a small company.

Right. And it's not just getting the leads, it's what you do with the leads once you get them. So, it's about, you know, you talked about getting into the the table, right? So, it's it's going through your multiple lead channels, whether it's meta or TikTok or Google Pay PPC or Google mapping or the new one's going to be it's going to be AEO, answer engine. Like it's going to be an AI-driven sort of, I have this going on with me today, where do I go have this procedure? And so, you're going to have these lead flows coming in multiple channels, seven, eight, nine channels, right? And then they come in and what do you do with them? And so, AI helps to qualify, to score, to triage, inform, entertain, build authority, you know, all those things in a very But what I'm not saying is you don't remove the human out of process. So, it's really how do you combine people with processes and existing, what I'm going to call platforms and automations

Because I don't really I don't put AI and automation in the same bucket. They're different. They're similar, but they're different. And so, then you bring AI in, which actually brings a little bit more of authenticity from a platform between a human and now you can have AI start to educate, answer, calendar. You can you know, from a patient intake perspective on an ambulatory surgery center where you could have a an an inbound or an outbound telephone AI assistant that would actually go through the entire, you know, patient journey of putting your information in and doing it consistently and accurately and it goes right into the system and nobody's writing anything down. There's just a lot of great ways where but the human still needs to be there. We all know that there's inertia with the acceptance of AI for whatever reason or another and people have their own sort of reasons for it. But when you combine AI with a human element, I mean, the power turns into extraordinary effectiveness.

And I think, you know, you're on the beginning of a what can be a really successful journey, you know, by combining all those things. So, you know, kudos to you and your innovation and in Clearpoint for for taking that. So, good stuff. Absolutely, Terry. Thank you very much for the time today and and again, the great conversations we've had. They've been they've been really, really good. You're doing amazing things using AI to enhance outcomes. So. Okay, well, one more question for you before you get on. I know that you're and then we'll close her up. But like So, what would current day Dave offer as advice to 22-year-old Dave?

35:25 What is the one piece of advice, personal or professional, that would you would give your 22-year-old self? Great question. I think I think it would be to to strategy before execution and to develop a framework and methodology and stick to that plan rather than rather than thinking that action and steps in a day can can determine outcomes. I I when I was 22, I measured my success in how many hours a day and how many surgeons I talked to or how many cases I attended in the OR or what what have you. And and I think as as I got older, I I realized a methodology and a structure with clear end goals and a and a dashboard was a better way of of doing that. So so I think 22-year-old Dave would probably do better with all these different tools like AI and what have you and CRM. But but I'm 50 years old.

So, Terry, those don't exist. So, there was some wheel spinning. I I I don't know if that answered your question, but I think that's from a a professional. You know, like I think it was awesome that, you know, we all we always equate ourselves on how many people we talk to every day. It was a sort of I remember filling out call sheets on a daily basis. And Right. you know, it was all about activity. And activity's important. There's no doubt about that, but I think what you just said is be strategic in that activity pays bigger dividends. And so, thank you for that. I appreciate it. Look forward to this discussion. And then, you know, Dave, you're you're great guest. I'd love to have you back again. And you've got lots of wisdom that I'm sure we can share to the audience as well.

Thank you, Terry. It was it was great to touch base and and have a great discussion today. Go US, by the way. That soccer win. Yeah, let's go. Right? Go North America. Go North America. How about that? Absolutely. That's a wrap on Zero Friction, the show built around one simple idea: remove the barriers and the revenue will follow. If today's conversation was valuable, please subscribe and share it with somebody who needs to hear it. That's how we will grow this community. I'm Terry Coutsolioutsos, revenue architect powered by AI. Come find me at my website, myrevRX.com. And let's talk about what friction is costing you and your organization. Until next time, keep removing the barriers and keep the revenue flowing.