Full Transcript Meet Dr. Sarah Matt 0:01 Welcome to the Startup [music] Physicians podcast, where we explore how 0:05 doctors lead healthcare innovation. Please like and follow our show to join 0:10 our community of physicians [music] contributing to meaningful change. 0:16 Hi everyone, welcome back to the Startup [music] Physicians podcast. This is your 0:20 host, Dr. Allison Kerfin, and I'm joined by a very special guest today, Dr. Sarah 0:26 Matt, who um I I was really excited to connect 0:30 with you, Sarah. I have actually been following a lot of your thought 0:33 leadership on LinkedIn for quite some time. So, first things first, if anyone 0:37 is on LinkedIn, go go follow Sarah Matt cuz she says some pretty incredible 0:42 stuff. But, Sarah has this incredible journey from being a practicing burn 0:47 physician all the way through multiple startups, a ton of different industry 0:51 experience, um and and just a lot of perspective on strategy. So, Sarah, 0:57 thank you so much for joining me today. Well, I'm excited to be able to give a 1:02 little bit back to the physician community cuz I know that my journey was 1:06 not particularly straight, and I think that people think it should be easy, but 1:10 maybe it's not, but totally worth it. Yes, it is totally worth it. Well, I'd
From burn surgery to business strategy 1:14 love if you could start by telling us a little bit about your serpentine journey 1:20 with maybe some little rabbit holes here and there, but um 1:23 what where did you start with your medical practice and what led you to 1:27 where you are today? Yeah, so I trained as a surgeon, my 1:30 fellowship's in burns, and during my burn fellowship, it was half clinical, 1:34 half research, and I was doing all this crazy stuff that never done before. 1:37 Asking for money for grants, I was doing all this complex experimentation, and 1:41 everyone around me just they complained, and I was like, "Hold on, but I'm 1:44 getting money. This is great." And I realized that this was business cases, 1:48 and this was operations and project management, and I was actually pretty 1:51 good at it. And at the same time, in trauma surgery as a burn surgeon, 1:57 it's a rough life and you can only take care of one person at a time, maybe 20, 2:02 40 in a day if you're lucky, and I felt kind of confined. So, I was thinking 2:06 about how I can make the most impact and I felt like I could do something bigger. 2:11 Wasn't quite sure what, but I thought I could do something bigger. And so, I 2:13 decided to take the jump. I went to go get my MBA at UT Austin and kind of made 2:18 the journey from there. Now, I'll tell you, through my whole career, I've 2:22 always had some kind of clinical practice. So, when I first started out, 2:26 I had a Medicare house call practice. A lot of social work, a lot of homebound 2:30 Medicare patients, which was, you know, tough, complex individuals. 2:34 I did urgent care, I've done charity care, and I still do charity internal 2:38 medicine here in Upstate New York. So, that's always been a piece of what I've 2:42 done and I actually think it's been a huge differentiator for me through 2:47 business startups, etc. So, 2:51 to ramble a little bit more, I ended up at NextGen, mid-tier. I was at little 2:55 places and startups. I had some really cool exits. I went to Oracle, built out 2:59 their cloud for healthcare and life sciences around the world. And then, I 3:02 got to help them acquire Cerner. So, I was just about the only doctor at Oracle 3:07 until we acquired 26,000 new best friends. So, pretty crazy, really 3:12 amazing scale, huge global impact. What does one do after that? Well, I 3:17 went back to startups. So, I was the chief strategy officer at Savvato, 3:20 focused on remote robotic surgery. And then, last year, I decided to go out and 3:24 do independent consultancy and fractional C-suite for my own 3:29 independent practice because I was launching my book, The Borderless 3:32 Healthcare Revolution, which was a national bestseller last year. Okay. 3:36 Wait, now you have to say it a little slower. What is your book called? Oh, 3:40 you even have a copy there. >> course I do. The Borderless Healthcare 3:43 Revolution. Tell me about it. Absolutely. So, it's all about 3:48 healthcare access, which is what I'm the most passionate about, and how 3:51 technology can decrease barriers to care. 3:54 So, it was really exciting to work with Wiley Publishing to bring it to the 3:58 world, and it's been interesting to kind of be able to speak to providers and 4:04 tech companies about how they can work together to make things better. 4:09 That's such an exciting journey, and I think in our kind of conversation right 4:13 before this, I think we both really conveyed how much we enjoy working with 4:18 product and and strategy in general, but >> Absolutely.
Why physicians belong in startup strategy 4:22 I think that physicians bring a really unique lens to product development. What 4:27 have you seen there? So, first, 4:31 doctors could run the world, absolutely. We are just kind of in our own way. So, 4:36 we have so much to give right now. So, whether you want to run a business or 4:40 not, your knowledge can be utilized in so many ways by tech companies in the 4:46 space. They always need KOLs, key opinion leaders, people on their 4:50 advisory board, folks to take a look and see what they're up to, because 4:55 most of the people building today have not practiced in hospitals or 4:59 offices. So, we know the problems, and when we see things, we can tell them 5:04 it's not the solution really easily. Yeah. And it's not even just the 5:08 problems. I've worked with a lot of development teams, and they say like, 5:11 "Well, we could code anything. Like, we could make anything, but we don't know 5:17 what all the edge cases are on on a scenario." I remember even when I was 5:22 working at my firm and some of the early like product 5:26 road mapping we were doing, a lot of what I was bringing to the table was 5:30 describing how patients moved through the system. So, like the core population 5:34 that we were targeting, like, who are they? What What 5:39 How do we define them? Where do we find them? Um and and how do they move 5:42 through the system? What makes them end up in the ER? What makes them end up in 5:45 the hospital? What are all these failure points along the way that we know this 5:51 like the back of our hand? We live it every day. We have 5:55 hundreds, if not thousands, of patient stories on our mind that is, you know, 6:01 defining our viewpoint on it and can really help with 6:06 designing the strategic solution. Agreed. And I think, you know, one of 6:11 the things that is most important is that 6:14 clinicians need to be at the table. So, I think it's important for us to be at 6:18 the table even at the earliest stages when you are designing something, when 6:22 you are ideating. And it doesn't mean you have to know much 6:25 about business or startups or tech because again, it's about giving your 6:30 actual opinion based on your expertise, which you have. And that's valuable. One 6:34 of the things I hear from doctors is, is there an opportunity for me in blank 6:40 field an opportunity? So, yes. Yes. It's The answer is yes. Yes. And I think that 6:46 we need to learn how to create our own opportunities. So, is there a job board 6:50 that you can go sign up on that says, I am looking for 6:54 I have a perfectly developed position for an infectious disease physician. I 6:59 mean, maybe there's there's Yeah, there's all 7:02 sorts of ways you can work at startups. But the real opportunities, I feel like, 7:07 come from developing your network in in the direction of of like the problems 7:13 you feel like are worth solving and getting to know the other people in 7:16 industry who are aiming to solve those problems, building those relationships. 7:20 And the answer is, yes, your concepts and your clinical expertise are 7:26 valuable. You have to have those relationships and 7:29 now those blossom into opportunities. That's true. So, I think it's
The nonlinear physician career path 7:33 interesting, you know, for me, I have never been a chief medical officer on 7:37 purpose. I actually don't do clinical first, business second. I've actually 7:42 transitioned into business first, clinician second. And so, for me, 7:48 some of those kind of I won't say job boards cuz that's not where I'm working 7:51 these days, but you know, ultimately I'm running product development groups or 7:55 strategy groups or things like that. Cuz I've taken a function of a tech company 7:59 and I actually run those, which is different than being a chief medical 8:03 officer where you're really focused on quality, risk, clinical efficacy. And 8:08 those are things that it's a really reasonable way for people who are 8:12 practicing full-time to come in in small ways or big ways to do it. So, I think 8:18 it depends. If you're looking for a total revamp and are looking to run a 8:22 function within a company or run your own company, that's one thing. If you 8:26 want to advise or work on the clinical aspects of it, absolutely. But you don't 8:32 have to do both, you can choose. And I think what's interesting is how a 8:36 lot of the doctors that I know that are like you who have evolved in their 8:39 career into so many different ventures, I guarantee you you're advising on 8:45 clinical things that are not burn surgery, right? 8:48 >> Absolutely. You are going You start with you you have a foundational clinical 8:53 identity that might be based on your residency and fellowship training, but 8:58 so much of that is translatable to other other areas. So, I'd love to hear a 9:02 little bit about like how you feel like you've brought your clinical mind into 9:06 this product work that you do and strategy work. 9:09 So, everyone's going to be a patient 9:12 sometime in their life. And so, if you have an engineering team left to their 9:16 own devices, they'll assume that their experience is the experience of 9:19 everyone. We know that's not true because we see 9:22 hundreds, thousands, etc. patients every year. 9:26 So, when someone asks us about a population, we actually have a very 9:30 different viewpoint. So, from a clinical perspective, first, 9:35 I can't stress this enough, I have practiced in some way my entire career, 9:40 and I really think that's important because I get new stories every day. I 9:45 go to the clinic, and I still put hands on patients. And when I do that today in 9:50 26, it's a lot different than in 2004. So, 9:55 I feel like it's kept me into what the experience is and how it's different. 10:01 But, what I say is that ultimately, the teams that are designing 10:06 these things, they're very smart, but they don't have our expertise. And so, 10:11 when we think about what it's actually like in a healthcare system, where the 10:16 posted notes are, where people are yelling down the hall, where a patient 10:20 is confused, it's hard to find places where that's written down, but we know 10:24 about it. Yeah, I I'll give an example. I remember 10:28 when I was working with the health economics team trying to map out like 10:30 the trajectories of different cohorts of patients, and we had a cohort of 10:35 transplant patients, and I had to tell them there was a very big difference 10:38 between cardiac transplant and corneal transplant. I was like, "Corneal 10:42 transplant, they're probably going to be fine like 10:45 by Friday, and cardiac transplant it's going to be like a lifelong 10:49 immunosuppressive, all these other things. So, those are going to have 10:52 different journeys." >> They are, absolutely. And most people 10:56 will be like, "Oh, isn't that obvious?" And it's like, "Not necessarily." 11:00 So, I'm actually working with a small surgical device company right now, and 11:04 they could be for anyone, right? And I think that's the trick is that they 11:07 could, but which surgeons would it benefit the most? Which procedures would 11:12 it benefit the most? And that expertise is stuff you need to talk to surgeons 11:18 about. And so, sometimes surgeons want to talk to surgeons. And I'll tell you 11:23 from a tech perspective as an MD, I can talk the talk with different 11:29 leaders in a different capacity than engineer number 27 because I have walked 11:35 the same walk as these individuals and so we can have a great discussion and I 11:39 can find some of those things out. I think a couple of the things you said
Doctors as connectors in healthcare innovation 11:43 are really core to my identity as well. I I too practice medicine. I feel like 11:49 as long as I'm going to be innovating in medicine, I need to be in it. I need to 11:52 be seeing patients. I need to be caring for families cuz you're right. It is 11:57 changing and we have to have our sensors out, you know, we have to know what's 12:02 happening in our fields. So I think that's really really lovely that you're 12:07 you're still practicing clinically and I think it is kind of a superpower, right? 12:10 It gives you this unbelievable perspective that you bring to your other 12:14 work. And then the point about doctors talking to doctors, I I've created um 12:21 a list of like archetypes of types of consulting you can do or advising you 12:26 can do and one of them is the connector because if you imagine like a tech 12:31 person reaching out to 24 surgeons' offices to be like, I have this idea. I 12:37 really want to talk to the surgeon about it. They would get probably zero 12:41 responses. >> Probably. You reaching out, even cold 12:45 outreach to a surgery office where it's like, "Hey, my name's Dr. Matt. I'm a 12:49 burn surgeon. I I you know, you give your background and you automatically 12:54 have credibility and say, 'I'd love to talk to Dr. So-and-so because I'm 12:57 looking at a new concept. Would he be interested in?'" And a huge majority of 13:02 those people will be like, "Oh, yeah. Oh, another doctor. Yeah, I I'll talk to 13:06 another doctor." Exactly. Startups 13:10 live or die on the feedback they get in the early stages. And sometimes they 13:15 can't even get to the right people. So I think there's such a role for doctors to 13:18 be those connectors. And I think we don't recognize how big 13:23 our networks are because I can literally reach out to anyone I've 13:28 worked with for the last several decades and they're like, "Oh, I remember 13:31 working with Sarah. Of course I'll take her call." You're like, "I went to 13:34 residency with you 20 years ago." >> Exactly. And they're like, "Oh my 13:36 goodness, yes." I actually have someone I have a call I think tomorrow with 13:40 someone I went to residency with because we're catching up. It's hilarious, but 13:45 it's that instant credibility. And again, you know, I have a lot of 13:48 work out there in social media and things like that from a communication 13:52 perspective. My brand has always been authentic and thought leadership and 13:56 credible. And I think that you're not going to see 14:00 me slipping on bananas in anything out there, but you're going to see things 14:04 that are credible. And I think that's important for physician leaders, 14:07 especially if they're going to be working these different areas. What is 14:10 your personal brand? Is it that credibility brand? In that case, you're 14:13 going to be able to go lots of different places. 14:16 I I think that those two words like probably cause people's stomachs to 14:21 clench like the first word and credible. What personal brand? 14:25 I don't want to do that. Like even I don't want to do that, but I realize 14:28 that my impact is greater if my message gets further. 14:31 Absolutely. And I think for me writing my first book last year with with Wiley, 14:37 as a non-fiction author, you're essentially launching yourself because 14:42 all the ideas in your book are from you. And so I really dug deep from a personal 14:47 brand perspective. And I think it's actually helped me a lot because it's 14:51 helped me recognize where I don't want to be and which places I can say no to 14:57 and feel good about because especially when there's so many different 15:00 opportunities, which ones are really going to be not just impactful, but 15:05 impactful and you're going to enjoy doing it and it's going to make you feel 15:07 great. Yeah, I mean, I think we are all driven
Impact, money, and sustainable business models 15:12 all the doctors I've worked with are more driven by like impact and meaning 15:18 than anything else. And if if anything, they're like a little squeamish about 15:21 the financial side. Um be squeamish. People got to eat. It's true. 15:26 Yeah, like like talking about money, talking about how to make a business 15:29 model make money. It's like ooh, I mean, I'm so used to just being the one like 15:32 treating the patient. And from my perspective, I built something that was 15:37 wonderful for patients and didn't make money. And in the model it was started 15:41 and and it got shut down and we took it away and it got taken away from kids 15:45 that needed it and >> Mhm. 15:48 And then when we had the opportunity to build this in a venture-backed capacity 15:52 and it was like if I can make this model that's serving all these kids 15:57 be profitable, be sustainable, be like so positive that it nobody can stop it, 16:04 right? Like it it will reach so many more kids if I'm not fighting tooth and 16:09 nail to justify our our team's budget on as a line item. 16:14 Well, I think that's interesting because when we consider healthcare today from a 16:18 system perspective, the CFO is very much involved in these decisions because the 16:23 margins in the healthcare delivery are so small. So, whether you're trying to 16:27 bring a new device into a healthcare system or a new way of, you know, risk, 16:31 etc., it has to make sense for a hospital to do it. Unfortunately, 16:36 charity is not necessarily consistent with the business of healthcare. And so, 16:43 impact can be very profitable. Impact can also not be profitable. It's a lot 16:48 easier to make great impact when you make it a win-win for patients and the 16:53 health systems that are going to be deploying it. 16:56 And we have to think about different ways to do things. I think that in 17:01 healthcare we are trained in a very linear path and 17:05 a very hierarchical path and sometimes a very bureaucratic way um and and we get 17:11 this mindset that like this is the way we do things because 17:14 it's the way we've always done things. I find that most people that I 17:19 work with who have kind of stepped into the startup space feel this unbelievable 17:23 like it's so refreshing, you know, it's just 17:26 so inspiring to spend time with founders who have optimistic ideas about how 17:32 things could be instead of just complaining about the status quo. 17:36 And I think that's part of the reason I've kept one foot in delivery myself, 17:42 but also not because if you're doing the daily grind and seeing patients every 17:46 single day, like I admit, I'm a terrible doctor 7 days a week. But when I can go 17:51 in and do a shift every week, I'm the best doctor in the world. I have great 17:55 ideas, we can innovate, we can be creative. But when I was slogging all 17:59 week long, I couldn't think past the sticky note that was on my desk. Like it 18:03 was just a lot. And you get kind of inundated with the problems, the 18:08 negativity, the pain and suffering that's occurring day-to-day because 18:13 there's plenty of things that aren't going great, but being able to kind of 18:16 lift out of that and take some time to really consider what we can do. I'm very 18:21 optimistic about healthcare. No matter what's going on right now, I think we 18:24 can make huge strides at small levels, at a hospital level, nationally, you 18:29 name it. But at the same time convincing people that there's reason 18:35 for hope and optimism can be tricky because they're working so hard. 18:40 It's true. Things used to get to me a lot more when I was full-time clinical 18:45 and now when I'm there a lot less, I mean, when things 18:49 go wrong in the system breaks and things are annoying, it's like I realize like 18:53 I'm I'm here to serve patients, I'm here to help these parents and you know, it's 18:58 going to be messy, but it doesn't get to me as much. Exactly. Exactly. 19:03 What advice would you have for doctors who are in a phase where
Advice for physicians with early ideas 19:08 you know, I think a lot of people listen to this and think I I always ask this to 19:11 doctors. I say, "What are the problems in health care that affect your 19:14 patients?" And they all can come up with something that's like a negative an idea 19:18 of like something that they wish was better, and they think they have an idea 19:22 of how it could be better. Um and a lot of them is it is still just a a small 19:28 thought in their mind. What would you say to doctors who are starting to get 19:32 maybe some internal momentum and maybe some internal personal beliefs that like 19:37 maybe I could make something maybe I could take a concept and I could make it 19:43 happen. What advice would you have for them? 19:45 So first, decide what you want to do with it. So if you're excited about 19:50 ideas, great. Join some advisory groups, etc. Share your ideas. If you think you 19:55 actually want to produce something or run a business, even if there's an 19:58 inkling, surround yourself with people who know what they're doing. So Allison, 20:02 I know you do work with incubators, early early, I do work with a little bit 20:07 more mature organizations, especially with commercialization go-to-market. 20:10 Surround yourself with people who understand you and people who are 20:13 willing to teach you and help connect you to the next level because you're not 20:19 going to be able to do it alone. I know we're the smartest people, but we're the 20:21 dumbest smart people you'll ever meet cuz we're doctors, right? So surround 20:25 yourself with people who are smarter than you in these aspects so that you 20:30 can decide if it's worthwhile or not to actually take that idea and go forward 20:33 with it. A lot of ideas don't actually take 20:36 capital investment to start developing. >> Exactly. Exactly. So you can I've been 20:42 known to use an 8 and 1/2 by 11 sheet of paper as my first step. Just a blank 20:47 sheet of paper, just map it out, throw it away afterwards if you want to. Like 20:51 there's there's just so little risk. And even as we've been opening applications 20:56 to our incubator program and I've started to have people starting to 21:00 apply, I've had people tell me they made more progress 21:03 in the past 2 weeks just knowing they were applying to something 21:07 >> Yep. and writing their ideas down and actually being asked to to thoughtfully 21:11 say like what who would be the buyer for this? What would be the the way you 21:16 would grow this? And they're like, I made more progress in the past 2 weeks 21:20 just by like writing it down than I have in the past year that it's been banging 21:25 around in the back of my head. >> So, if you've written a note in your 21:28 life, you know, if it's not in the note, it didn't happen. If you didn't write it 21:31 down, it didn't happen with a patient. Nothing is different for a business or a 21:36 product. You got to write it down, otherwise, it's not real. And 21:40 there's nothing you can put on that paper that's wrong. It's just an 21:43 assumption that can be changed or a decision that can be changed. I 21:46 literally had a discussion with a founder today. 21:49 And at the end I said, "Hey, you're so early in this. 21:53 Really consider what your core competencies are between you and your 21:55 team. Is this what you really want to work on 21:58 or are there other places you could make a bigger impact? 22:02 It's early. Now is a great time to think about it." And pivot. Exactly, cuz you
AI and the solo physician founder 22:07 can. Well, I think it's never been a better 22:10 time to be a founder. Um especially solo founders. Like I think um 22:16 I think about all the resources that I had around me when I built my first 22:21 startup and so many bodies, so many people, so many 22:25 Now, granted we had a guided process and that was great, but like I really needed 22:29 like a whole bunch of finance people to help build our model and we needed a 22:33 like a ton of developers to help build our 22:36 product. As there's more and more AI tools that 22:41 we can use in this initial stage to get what we call our minimum viable product. 22:45 Like especially like you said with the right guidance, with the right people 22:49 around you who can give you the roadmap and connect you with the right people to 22:53 to take the next step and to get those network connections. I think that you 22:58 can get really far by yourself. I I mean, it's just so amazing what tools 23:05 are available to us today that is just like so drastically different from when 23:08 I incubated Imagine in 2022. >> Absolutely. 23:11 Well, I think the other thing, too, is that we are, as docs, notoriously 23:15 curious, notoriously skeptical. And one of the things that we have now is 23:21 there's lots of new technologies and AI coming into our practices and seeing 23:24 patients. And of course, we are risk averse because it's our patients, right? 23:28 But in your personal life, in hey, should I make a business? Use every tool 23:32 you got. Try them all. Figure out what works for you because AI is not going to 23:38 replace doctors. It's going to replace doctors who don't use AI very well by 23:42 doctors that do. So, you got to dig in and figure it out for yourself. Use it 23:46 for simple things. Use it for working on competitive intelligence. Whatever it 23:50 is, dig in and think about what it can do for you today. 23:54 Yeah. And I think that um AI can optimize 24:00 overly burdened workflows, and you can create tools to do all sorts of things, 24:05 but that physicians are still uniquely qualified to do the thing. So, you might 24:10 say, here's this process that's totally a mess today. And And you could 24:16 create a tech-enabled care delivery model 24:19 that you could actually get off the ground pretty quickly. You could do an 24:24 initial pilot like tomorrow. >> Exactly. And it might be more manual and 24:28 more messy. I do say that like when we launched Imagine, I was on call 24/7 for 24:34 4 months because >> It was a minimal viable product. It 24:37 wasn't strong enough. I We didn't have all the pieces. We didn't have all the 24:40 people. People weren't trained. People weren't licensed. I was the only one 24:43 credentialed. It was just like okay, I guess I'm going to talk to any patient 24:47 that calls in for the next until we got to a point where it was like, okay, now 24:51 this is stable. This is safe. Everything works. All the T's are crossed. I's are 24:55 dotted. And it was a lot more manual and it's
Iteration, validation, and stakeholder feedback 24:58 not the plan for the long term but you can actually do a lot with just your 25:05 clinical talent and and then building tools around you and frankly you 25:09 shouldn't be automating anything that you haven't done manually a bunch of 25:12 times first. I think the other thing that you just 25:15 mentioned that's really important is that 25:17 sometimes in medicine we feel like perfection is necessary but when it 25:21 comes especially to tech enabled services anything we're going to build 25:25 as a startup iterative processes are the most important. You're going to do 25:30 something you're going to learn from it and you're going to change it. So 25:33 whatever you put out today is going to be 10 times better in a day a week a 25:36 month and so you got to put out the first thing though so that you can get 25:41 the feedback you need to make it better and better. 25:44 I've seen people build huge tech builds that like never ever 25:49 got released. >> Exactly. Exactly. 25:51 >> figures and it's like oh man you put a lot of bells and whistles on that and 25:55 you never validated it and you never got it out into the market like actually get 25:59 user feedback. Um so we don't want to end up there. 26:03 No and I think this is actually can go back to personal brand too. I remember 26:07 doing my first podcast and it was terrible. I remember putting 26:12 out my first newsletter was terrible but if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have 26:16 gotten feedback to say all right Sarah get this thing together this is 26:20 horrible. Instead I went with it and I iterated and things are much much better 26:25 now but you have to start and if that's I have an idea and now I'm going to 26:29 start talking to trusted people great but if you don't do that then you 26:34 haven't started you got to just start. Yeah. Part of what we are supporting in 26:39 our program is really defining the early messaging 26:42 because people are like I have this idea and it's like and then they spit out 26:44 this like super vague thing and it's like no one's going to be able to give 26:47 you feedback on that so let's get it really clear maybe it's get it in a one 26:50 pager or let's get it your earliest messaging and your earliest 26:54 stakeholders. And so, these are the lower stake people that is other 26:59 doctors, this is talking to patients. I did a ton of work talking to parents and 27:05 getting their feedback. And then as you're iterating your model, your 27:08 products, and your messaging, you're getting to something more and more 27:12 formed, and then you're going to actually try to 27:16 pre-sell what you're you're like actually going to the people that you 27:19 think are going to be willing buyers, and they're going to tell you all the 27:22 reasons why they won't buy what you have. Like all the reasons why nope, 27:26 that doesn't solve this problem, or this just adds work for me. And then every 27:30 single conversation you have is 27:33 like gold. It's information. It's all of what you need to find the right I agree. 27:39 So, next week I'm actually join a client at a big conference to gather product 27:43 design research information. And so, we're literally going to ask people at 27:47 the conference what they think of the product. Hey, is this feature important 27:51 to you? What use case are you most interested in? Or hey, are you actually 27:55 the buyer or someone else in your organization? And it seems so simple, 27:59 but when you get real information from real people, you can act on it. 28:04 Otherwise, you're making assumptions, which can be difficult and can be 28:07 expensive. Very expensive. Yes, so I I think that 28:11 your perspective and and your experience across so many different types of 28:16 companies and mergers and acquisitions and industry in general, and then you're 28:21 being so grounded in medicine, you're just such a great example for doctors, 28:25 and I I really want to thank you for your work and for for joining me today. 28:29 Of course. What's the best way for people to find 28:32 you? So, LinkedIn is my main platform. 28:35 Connect with me, send me a message. You can go to my website drsarahmatt.com. 28:39 And of course, check out the book. I think it's a good one, but I'd love your 28:43 feedback on it so I can do better. Yes, cuz I'm sure you'll write another 28:48 book. I am. I just signed a book deal last week for my second book. 28:52 >> Congratulations. Well, you're such an inspiration for other physicians. For 28:55 people listening, I want you to realize that there is not there's no difference 28:59 between me and Sarah and you. We're all doctors who went into this to take care 29:04 of patients. Some people listening have the same 29:07 >> school loans as you and we still did it. We did it. 29:10 >> Yes, I I think I did an episode recently on like what it takes to quit your job. 29:16 Cuz that's a scary thing. I get it. I get it. But I do think that you know, we 29:22 all went into this for the same reason. We all wanted to help patients and 29:25 there's types of people that look at the problems and complain about them and 29:29 there's people that look at the problems and think like what if that was 29:31 different. And so even if you don't have the pathway or the the network yet to 29:36 take that path, to explore something, acknowledge yourself as one of the ones 29:40 who says maybe I could make something. Maybe we 29:43 could do it different and not going along with the status quo. So for people 29:48 who are interested in exploring more about startups, um I I support a lot of 29:53 early stage founders. We have our incubator program and applications are 29:57 going to be open for a little while longer for doctors who are in that real 30:01 concept to launch phase. If you're a doctor who's already building something 30:05 and really could use some additional support with more of like your strategy 30:09 and go-to-market, maybe a little bit more developed So anything A and below 30:14 is really my sweet spot. Awesome. Well, Sarah will be a great resource for 30:19 anyone who is um really wanting to additional expertise and support. 30:24 Um we just want to encourage you. We want to inspire you. We want you to be 30:27 empowered to take these pathways of your own. 30:30 So thank you everyone for your time and for listening and we will see you next 30:33 time. Thanks for listening to the Startup 30:36 Physicians Podcast. [music] This community was built for doctors who 30:40 want to contribute to the future of healthcare. We offer support for 30:44 physicians [music] who are ready to make the next step towards building the 30:47 career they've dreamed of. Visit startupphysicians.com [music] 30:52 to learn more. And if this episode resonated with you, 30:55 share it with another [music] friend who needs to hear it. Let's change the 30:58 future of healthcare together.
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