An innovator’s advice for healthcare entrepreneurs

Chris

Lyon is a serial entrepreneur, inventor, speaker and mentor within digital health. He invented the world's first FDA-cleared, risk sensor pulse oximetry monitor. He has seven US patents, 40 Worldwide patents, was CEO and founder of a highly successful med-tech and digital health company, Oxitone medical, one of the healthcare transformers with StartUp Health and now advises founders, startups and established companies. Today, we're going to talk about the past, present and future of medical devices, advice for digital health entrepreneurs. And not only around business but around how to think about business. Leon, welcome to the pod. We got to know each other over the summer when we were on a learning mission on our side. For chronic disease management and medical devices and wearables. Lucky for us, you responded to random LinkedIn reach out for us to be able to learn more, and you dropped so many insights in our conversation that we knew we had to have you on the pod right away. So thank you for coming. Maybe Leon, if you could briefly tell us about oxitone and anything else you're currently working on?

Leon

First of all, I'm really really glad to, to be here and to talk to you guys. Thank you, Chris, for invitation to participate in your amazing, amazing podcast. It looks like it is a second time I'm here, right? We did it before once.

Chris

Yeah Yeah. Not in the podcast format, but definitely in the interview format.

Leon

Yeah, I remember I remember it was an extremely nice experience. So about myself. I have I'm living in Israel today. And I did my Ph.D. in physics, in quantum optics, quantum electronics, quantum mechanics, quantum computing, in Weizmann Institute of Science, and then I did my PhD in laser cooling. And then I decided to join startups in Israel like engineer. So I was working in many startups, I helped to develop. And it happened that most of my job was dedicated for development of medical devices and digital health. So this way, I was introduced into the medical device industry, that really was amazing. And I found a lot of opportunities there. A lot of things we have to do, because this industry was here in transition mode. From very also, it's interesting because together, it survived very old approach. You still have very old devices, you know, famous. At the same time, people started to use a totally new device, and there is a huge vision for the future. So in 2010, I decided to launch my own company after I got a lot of experience in this area. And it was based on my invention of the workflows that get clear with pulse oximetry monitor, it became possible was world’s first after seven years after invention, but I started to develop unique device, all people wear visible heart rate monitor for wellness, and I was dedicated to develop something that is beyond just heart rate. It's a pulse oximetry, and to give people capabilities to have the very comfortable measurements without any fingertip probe that is really bulky, disturbing and most important, we have to do it on a medical-grade level. That's very difficult. That's first time in our world, it happened. And I invented a totally new technology. It's not totally new based on the old approach, but new placement, new configuration, new measurements, it means we try to use all the ball on the wrist like very unique place where you can measure in a high accuracy level patient vital signs much better accuracy than any other place and cure including fingertip. And you can compare accuracy with forehead for example. So the main issue that bone enables to clean and to guide the signal, optical signal in the way that we have very good signal and steel. This technology opens huge probability capabilities with respect to a relative to conventional technology that wellness devices are using. And by the way, today only three medical devices received FDA for pulse oximetry. And it looks like today oxitone is only wrist worn device on the market that you can buy and use.

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Chris

Right,Yeah, that makes sense. And what I would love to do Leon is ask one question about your oxitone journey. Because then I do want to ask about your advice for entrepreneurs to starting their own journeys. But we've talked a lot about oxitone in context of different questions. But I'm just curious about the different stages of oxitone from your point of view,  the challenges you faced,any moments where you doubted yourself, or any moments where you knew that this was going to work? What was that journey like for you to get to that successful point?

Leon

Thank you for using oxitone in context, because this is what, it was my first company like enterpreneur. And all my experience I won through my adventure there in oxitone. So for 12 years, I was working like CEO and founder like CEO, oxitone. And from their idea from nothing from zero. We came to commercialization, full commercialization worldwide. And recently, I moved to position executive chairman. So yeah, I had a lot of experience. And we raised $12 million through my tenure like CEO. And currently, we're raising the new round of investment. And I have to tell that anytime, anytime, we struggling with many things, what we have to do, I didn't know some tricks, and I would say methods how to overcome it, which I teach today to young entrepreneurs. So I had to learn from my mistakes. And again, I did a lot of mistakes during my time there. And what I have to say that what's important is people, the most important, most important than technology, more important than technology, anything else people. And if you don't know how to hire people, I have, developed well, my specific question for these people,  that if all these people were interested in could be the huge theme of the next podcast questionnaire, you will be surprised how it looks like and it works. And, but people is everything, people and partners who are your partners and who are your managers. So this is what we have to learn before we start the company. And usually people ,young entrepreneur, they didn't pay attention on this style, they're busy. Usually, they are engineers they're busy about how to make the product. But who makes the product? People. And if you hire the wrong people, if you don't know, it's called whole brain leadership, whole brain thinking, if you don't know that people's archetype surrounds you, you cannot manage these people, you cannot translate between them. And you lose and you die like a competent.

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Chris

Right? And is there any best practice archetype to look for as an entrepreneur? Or is it more like a meeting of the archetypes between the right fit of let's say, the ceo founder, and then the right core team of arch types? Or is it, Is it company specific? Or is there a certain thing that you think people should be looking for?

Leon

It's not company-specific, it depends on whom we're looking for and which position? Okay, you can look for people for position, strategic position, for example, right strategy, it could be vice president of sales ,Vice President of Marketing Chief, Chief Executive Officer of your company, as well, strategic position, and you have to look for the people, something beyond the requirements that you put in this position. So people not, people should fit position, positions should fit these people. Understand, yeah, this is strategic level. If you're talking about operational level, it some middle manager, director or director or Something like, this exactly should be sitting position, and experience and per person archetype. And all modalities should coincide. So should the exact ticking, fitting. And if you're looking for somebody who, who sell coffee and starbuck, what you should think about, you don't think about experience, you don't think about proficiency, you have to think about empathy, and all this stuff around behavior. So different requirements and people itself. That is very interesting theory, again, called whole brain thinking, that gives you understanding of four archetypes of people and their modalities, modalities, that means behavior, behavior processes, so it's analyzer will analyze its strategic strategies, its network care or organizers, and usually, they have very much developed in one of these four quadrants. And very small develop in another like for example, if your visioners, you deliver vision to real engineer doesn't understand you, even more, he will correct you and He will fight you, because you want a number this is what happens when entrepreneurs they come to VC to analyst and say I have the vision, I build this ,I build them 10 years we will be built on this. And analysts from Vichy says, Okay, give me the numbers. No, why numbers I understand I feel it. No, give me the numbers. So this is what happens and I teach young ,not teach, I never teach , I am a mentor and mentor, coach and coach little bit entrepreneurs not only young, I have some people in the growth stage, company in the growth stage, they sell on millions dollars, they want to  make three times bigger the sales figure, and they came to me and asked how do I do this? Why do they stop? Why did I get to saturation? And I give him first of all, we have to think about his personality. So I assessed his personality, what stopped him. So this is how to start understanding the company from the management personality. So we discover, we formulate the problem, we discover of the problem. And then usually, usually this is a real problem, problem in personality of manager. Why company cannot grow? Or going to die. And if you solve this personality problem, other problems like product market, everything else will go automatically. You have to apply some skills and apply some techniques to solve this problem in all areas of, but what I ask people I ask, first of all, after I checked personality, in many dimensions, again, multi dimensional approach and understand to whom quadrant this guy is connected, I understand how to talk to him to his level in order to get through his unconscious brain and come to his conscience brain, otherwise, he doesn't have the trust and he doesn't allow me to get into his conscience, I have to build trust, I have to develop oxytocin in his brain and have methodics for these in order to penetrate into his brain create trust in this case, he started to think in the right direction.

And so I have to start to walk, to talk. If this guy, organizer, drill engineer, I have to talk in numbers, you understand numbers. If this guy is networker, I have to talk from empathy and people point of view. If this guy is strategist, entrepreneur, inventor, I have to talk about vision. And so so I asked, What Where are you going to be in five years, so let's build backward, backward planning. And usually 99% of people cannot do it. It's veryl difficult to understand to see yourself in five years. So I asked, okay, you're going to build your home? What are you doing, you're going to design and architecture, and you build the home with all suppliers in the beginning, you have everything ready. And just then you start to build having backwards, this step by step. Same here exactly the same, you have to see yourself in five years, you have to define your criterias, your KPIs, what people should be around you, how much money, how much sales everything. And this is something from exoterics, I will say so this is not from our material world, because I was learning quantum mechanics. And I understood that everything is exists , already exist, already, everything exists. You just have to choose and take. And if you know how to select how to choose and take it, you will succeed. No, when you come to the taxi, you say, take me to this street, you say exactly where you're going to be, and you will be there. So this is exactly what how I walk and what I'm writing the book about, about this approach in my experience. But it really works because you fix the future today. And if you fix the future today, you'll know exactly where to go. And then you come back so your future as well 100% of what you're doing, then you come back to 70%, then back to 50%. And all the time you put exactly in your Excel everything, what you want to have around it, suppliers, sales people, how to manage people, how to hire people, who you need to hire, and this way back to the today. and then back again to the future. And all the time you should back, go back and forth until you have the clear understanding what to do. So even if , if people came to the coma, and then the year they awake, they know exactly the next step.

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Chris

Right. And yeah, so for I was actually one of those founders or entrepreneurs who stepped into every Pitfall, I thought that I was smart and had a brilliant team, give us a market and we'll, we'll figure out the product and work backwards from there. So instead of analyzing a painful enough problem and talking to people enough until I had a solution, I've rejected advice many times and I've failed and luckily had just enough runway and grant money to be frank to actually take that advice when it was very clearly not working, alone, pivot and then make something successful. And so I guess it allowed me or as they say, when a student is ready, a teacher arrives, to be humbled, so I would listen to something, not just hear what people were saying. And I think it's interesting that in the book that you're working on, you're talking about trying to resonate and really get into, or the differentiation between the conscious and the subconscious. And one of my questions coming in here was, how can you get people like me to listen without being humbled? And I think I've heard one part of that response for you, which is speaking their language, right? So speak in terms of vision, speak in terms of customer speak, in terms of how they naturally think, maybe that's one. And I'm wondering, yeah, what more? I don't know what more techniques you use, or what more observations you have, about the entrepreneurs that you mentor, In that regard.

Leon

I can tell you that about 90% of people I'm working with they reject in the beginning, in the beginning, they reject any help, they think they understand everything, then I give them some questions and they understand that no, they don't know everything. But let's see how our brain works. So it's like, like a cup? Yeah, It's different yeah. Like a cup you see. So see, if simplify, I'm not very good artist. So it's divided on three, three areas. Here is your conscience, very small area and why you use your conscious? Your ideas do not come from your conscious, it comes from our conscious,  conscious just you use it to take attention to pay attention on something important. And then you leave to decide to your unconscious, so many decision well 100% of decision you are doing from your unconscious and 100 wrong decision you're doing from your conscious. Interesting, right? Sounds like unusual, and here you have very interesting place something between conscious and unconscious. This is what talk to conscious. You don't have any access to unconscious, this place talks to  unconscious, you cannot get access there. You don't know what happens. And if you don't know what happens, you have a huge anxiety. That's why you have emotions. And emotions are growing if you don't know what happens, because it cannot access to these unconscious. It's like black box for everybody who can get there who ask you questions. So if I come from the, from the side, I come from here, I asked your questions. And your these plays, decide we'll take you to the conscious or take you to unconscious. It's like, like lion that keep your conscious, keep out of the noise and noise, It's your interpretation of noise. It could be very important advice but for your  unconscious. Unconscious  interpret these like noise, you don't want to do it. It's very important to learn how to identify on this level, all these things through some emotions as people start to learn from identifying these emotions. So if you come to mentor like me, I started to ask meaningful questions that take me here and here as well. And led me to get into all levels of your brain, identify what happens, build the trust. You let me in and you understand about yourself amazing things and people some people don't like it because they're afraid. They're afraid to understand themselves. People By the way, do not afraid to die. They're afraid to understand  themselves after they die. So most of the things most of the time people understand afraid to understand themselves. And this is what because they all have bias. And this is what mentor is doing all mental health penetrate into your brain and train your brain for success.

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Chris

Yeah, and I think that's really a unique approach Leon in a way of looking at it. And one observation that we've had working with many entrepreneurs on the spectrum of first time to serial entrepreneur is that, in general, the serial entrepreneurs have failed before. And they understand that that is a real possibility. And they so and they remember the pain of that failure. And so they seek to figure out where they're failing in any of their mental models, conscious or unconscious. You know, first and foremost, but then we speak with first time entrepreneurs, and they're afraid of failure, right? Because they built up this vision for themselves and their product that they're going to be right and that wrong. Failing is a failure mode instead of learning and improvement mode. So I'm curious when you're mentoring first time entrepreneurs versus seasoned entrepreneurs, if you find , if you've observed differences in how you'd like to speak with them.

Leon

Oh, definitely, definitely , seasoned entrepreneurs, they are looking for development on specific areas where they don't have enough experience. But again, some people became entrepreneurs, and didn't learn anything. So we can identify this immediately. In this case, I say, usually, let's go back to the first class of the school. So if identify that they didn't get through this identification, self identification, they still have anxiety, for the fear of uncertainty. And by the way, usually, everything what you afraid, happens, happen, everything what you afraid finally have everything what you don't like, finally happen. So one of the  thing I'm trying to remove from their brain ,fear, because if they have fear, it will happen. So yeah, so for well developed entrepreneurs, who are working in very specific areas where I can help them with my experience. So it's, it's not mentor mentee relationships. It's just overlapping your knowledge and discussion and understanding to gather so I learn a lot from these people, by myself as well. And it's totally opposite to young adults , entrepreneurs who do not trust, who like any young people very think they do, they know everything. And as we said, there is a big difference between know everything, and think they know something. So usually, if people tell me something, I ask them, ask yourself, How do I know? Or how does he knows who told you this? Ask yourself, get into this ,into this point, ask it from here, ask yourself, How do I know ask these parts of brain and you will recognize immediately that you don't know. So there is a difference between mental understanding of our world and mental learning and existential learning. And to get the existential level of what you know, you get there only through the experience, you cannot get it through learning ,that's why we have to make homework we have to go through experience. In this way. We create new neurons in our brain, neurons chains and we fix our knowledge on existential level after that. But before it has to learn on, on mental level, and mentee and culture help people to bring things they learn the mental level to existential level down, down through the slide.

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Chris

Right. And so in May, you began a new role as the official mentor for the Israel export Institute. What is your charter in that term, in terms of being an official mentor? Is it delving into the thinking and mental processes? Is it more of the industry expert advice and filling in gaps that they don't have? Or you tell me

Leon

Yes, its everything together. In the beginning, I make one hour, some, a one hour meeting to understand the people, to understand how they think not about company, not about product, about people themselves I am dealing with, we have to create trust. If there is no trust, they won't get it. So it will be some very superficial meeting and that's all. So we have to discover who they are ? Where they are? Why they are doing this and created this company. So we'll go through whole things. What absent in their life, what their personal, and people cannot answer, 99% of people cannot answer it. What's their personal mission? Why is the creator of this company at all? They say, Okay, I want to do exit I want to do money. Finally, you come to understanding you, that they did it, because they want to realize themselves, because they have problems to realize this themselves in different places or in family, or they want to prove something to somebody. Totally opposite to what they told by themselves, they started this company. And when they realize it, they first of all fell thrust is growing. And they became, how to say, the lighting, because they wow, I got it. I understand, this is why I'm doing this. So they got a lot of motivation to continue to do this. Oh, maybe to stop because they found that Okay, the reason wasn't so much what I'm going to do, maybe I closed it, but it didn't happen. Usually it motivates people. And people start to think how to move forward. And then we come to backward planning. And then we focus on things they cannot do. And sometimes even  doing some rebranding. One of the example, one physician, 75 years old, approached me and said, Help me to raise money. My first idea was to tell him no, thank you, because at 75 years old, no way you will raise money, no way. And but we started to talk, very interesting technology of this guy, huge experience, very interesting guy. And I told him, Look, you have to leverage your experience, everything what you did and succeeded in your life, because you had somewhere somehow leverage. You cannot succeed without leverage in any of what you're doing. And I told him, You will leverage not what you have to go and ask money by yourself. You have partners, younger partners, they can do this. But you lose your leverage. When by yourself you go and ask for money. People don't want to talk to you. You have to rebrand yourself, you have to become expert, and advisor for these young guys and send them to raise money and, and be in any meeting and walk and show your experience like you are great advisor who can tell this company to grow. He said, Wow, I didn't think about, and understand. So this is just one example. A lot of examples like this,  but usually all examples, just endpoint of all these examples is to rebrand. Personal rebranding and company rebranding, because if everything is okay, they don't come to me, they come to me. You happen,  something happens, but when I ask, How are you doing? The answer? I am o kay. So I ask why are you?

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Chris

Right? Yeah, that's funny. Yeah, I'm just remembering all these conversations from my founding days of default response from anybody. Building a startup in the Valley at the time was, we're killing it. We're killing it. But then you asked one question, and then everyone answers in. Okay, how we're not killing it. Yeah, and I think I think you've hit on something between mentorship and mentees is just building that trust and authenticity. I remember the feeling as an entrepreneur of wanting to write defend what we had done so far, even though some of the things were not defensible, in terms of the traction and actual adoption and hence, I wasn't open. And what we were describing sounded very much to me like therapy, almost of indoctrinating into the trust and really getting to know someone. So that way they're open to receiving anything that you would collaborate around versus being closed off and just checking the box through the hour long.

Leon

All right, and I can tell you, I didn't think at all, I can be some kind of psychologist, business psychology, I would say, because my place in four quadrants of whole brain thinking exactly in the place where Steve Jobs and other entrepreneurs, so somewhere between strategist and analyst, because I will physician,strategies, I don't like step by step to implement and I was quite cold in interconnections in, in networking, quite cold. I couldn't understand  people. And during my venture, during my entrepreneurial life, I came to understanding that I have to learn it. Otherwise, I cannot make a deal. If I don't understand people, I cannot make a deal. So I start to learn negotiations, while negotiations to different approaches. And I started to learn psychology, philosophy. And finally, I extended my brain. So the network networking, that is culture influence relationships, communication, in the way, and I checked myself exactly same level, like analyze, and strategy. But still, I don't like to go step by step and to be a drill engineer for these I hire people. And I'm not sure I will succeed there because it's boring. But all other quadrants today, today, I'm okay with this.

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Chris

Yeah, yeah, and I take you back to something that you mentioned about the different archetypes of people and in building a team and what you're looking for, for different pieces. And when you were describing that, it kind of reminded me of like, certain sporting events, or sorry, sports teams, and how different coaches have various philosophies of building a team, like some coaches, will, they have their system, and they only look for people that will exactly fit the system and their role. But generally, the best coaches are the ones that identify the truly great people that are going to be on their team. And they make that the system or or they make space for those people, like let's say at a strategic level, as you were talking about, and I think that's one of the more, gosh, fascinating forks in the road for different types of companies. Is the company as a whole fitting one person or a small group of people's mental model about what everyone should be doing and fitting together? Or is it growing in terms of really talented people and figuring out how to make them maximally productive together and do great things. I don't know if you have any more comments on that. But that's what I was thinking of, when you were talking through how to build teams and whether position should fit the role or the person should be a perfect fit for the position.

Leon

Yeah, and one of the main things what you have, when you build a team, you have to know how they grow, how they grow. It's very important because for example, you're looking sales manager. And you knew immediately, you recognize that this sales manager or your candidate was playing music, piano for seven years in the school, never played sport, a subject like this, I would never take such a guy on sales position because he cannot, he cannot push things for work.He is,  But it could be great analyst because he has some patience to play seven years music and musical school you know, so he's drill engineer, he is analyst, but he's not sales manager. So, this is very important or for example, people people were grow in,growth in family of lawyers, for example. and became a physicist. This is my case. And you see, this is a cat, you became a physicist. So it's my case. So what is it? It's rebellion. I wouldn't take on position doing something for myself, somebody like myself, because I'm rebelient, Yeah, I don't follow, I don't follow their rules. Because if my parents lawyers, I should be lawyer, because open, everything is open for me, it's how to call it. So there are still how to call it  correctly. So everything so I can do, I can have heritage. But I decided not to do it and get in totally new position because something I didn't like in their life. So you have to watch this, identify this through some questions? Who are the people because they can hide themselves? You know, and there are specific metallics in the market that you can identify these guys, and understand if they fit your position or not.

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Chris

Right. Yeah, and I think, yeah, something we've observed, and I think you're also touching around is using people for their strengths, not trying to necessarily work around all of their weaknesses and, and make them a fit. For example, for someone who's not natural as a sales manager, just don't make them a sales manager, right, and try to work on closing those gaps, but they may have these brilliant analytical qualities. And if you just purpose them for how they organically look at the world, then maybe it would be more successful.

Leon

Yeah, in this case, you have to identify his brain position, his modality, his history. And to know exactly whom you are looking for, this is the most important because it's very difficult to understand whom you are looking for because what you have, if you go to, to buy something, or to buy, if you go to, to look for people, you go to HR conference, you write something, something useful. Second you write something useful, and you cannot come  make the difference between different requirements. So you want a guy who has such experience, has indication, communication, network here, analyst all together. And everything is saying, how you can recognize whom you're looking for. So you start to receive a lot of noise, a lot of people who do not fit your position what you're looking for. And to me I didn't,I didn't need to search specific VC, CV , Specific CV in my life, which could a priori, identify exactly whom I am looking for, from a psychological point of view, psychology point of view, as a problem. So this is what I help people as well. So I give them some questionary, what to ask. And it changed their mind and change their development because they hire the right people to bring the company to success.

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Chris

Right. Can you talk a little bit about the book you're working on? Is it kind of the crystallization and synthesis of a lot of these teachings and practices and questions that maybe someone can ask themselves as they're reading through? Or what is the scope of the book that you're writing?

Leon

Okay, it's interesting because I am writing about future so the book starts from the future, from my morning in five years. Like it happens today, and people could not recognize in the beginning that this is the future. This is exactly totally virtual future that happens today. And then slowly I get back to today. So I, I answer the questions, why all the time I answer the question, why I came to this stage. So why I came to the stage, which are described in five years, in four years, in three years, you know, there are two direction, two vectors, one vector called Why, what happened before and why I came to this stage and what I have to do, and has to have in order to come to this stage, and another so, so what or so that? So what? So, if I'm in this stage, and when you come back then can, again for work, you have to answer these questions. So it should be consistent. When you go back from the future, you will answer question why. And when you go forward to the future, you have to answer the question, so what? And again,it should be consistent. And this is all book about this. So, like collection of this book consistency of these two questions. And we all the time, we jump from one question to another to explain people why it happens, what happens? And how to manage it, and how to control this in the beginning?

Chris

Right. Yeah, that's fascinating, Leon. And it's interesting, as we've been working with startups, I mean, what you're talking about as far as working backwards with entrepreneurs, and getting the insights into the steps that they have to take forward to arrive at that vision, if they have it. Five years from now, what we've also found useful, which you may well go into, is kind of the reverse question, but also working backwards. So the pre-mortem, right? So if in five years, the company has died and not been successful at all, what are the reasons that we would have died? Right? Why would we have failed, and in forcing people into that mindset of you may be able to fail, you may not know everything. And this is just a creative exercise for you to put down every reason you can think of that your vision is not going to work out. And then we've defined those pitfalls that we need to avoid or research upfront and prioritize. I'm wondering how much you think about that too, in your mentorship, which is not just what needs to go right to hit this vision. But then also, what can go wrong? To hit a person?

Leon

A very good question. I don't touch it. I don't want to talk about failure with my mentees at all. Because I thought not from point of teaching. I ask questions, then I conclude. And then I feedback, give feedback to them. So we don't think about what happened. But think about what will happen. And when I see that his mental position leads to possible failure. I asked questions that correction questions, correcting questions that corrects his position, and he understands himself that if you will bring him to the failure and understand himself how to correct. So I give him some tools to correct himself based on,on questions I ask.  I prefer not to talk about failures. Yeah, mistakes sometimes, sometimes. If I don't know, sometimes I fail to teach. It happens , its true, because sometimes people so much, I don't know, not follow, that sometimes. Yeah, and I consider this like my failure. And I'm not working with this guy anymore. Because he created my failures. It means he, he's not good for me. He's not positive for me. And I don't want to lose my ability to be positive and to teach. So I try to remove such toxic people from around.

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Chris

Okay, yeah, maybe we could use that for, I do have a last question for you, Leon which is right now a lot of people see healthcare in the US as in a failure mode, rife with misaligned incentives and highest spend for the lowest quality of care of pure countries. I'm wondering what is your take on that? And then what is in your crystal ball or your, or even a microcosm of medical devices? What is that positive looking step by step that will advance healthcare in the US.

Leon

Alright, so very difficult question because I think even famous campaigning leaders do not know this. They try, all people try, but what gives me some I don't know how to say give me some chance, I can give some chance to these, that it's open the market. And people try to, to find themselves in this market, they try to innovate. So it looks like it's a numbers game. At some point, it will be so many innovations, that it will just go through all their paved road, that is really was paved by wrong things may be good things over 100 years ago. But finally, that brought us to the to the wrong, wrong situation. And I think it's only about freedom of innovate, freedom of operation, little little bit controlled by the government to to watch like conscience, your conscience, and just pay attention to pay attention and guide the development, but to give their development of innovation, free development of innovation, and free market for these, and the best will win. And finally, will change the status quo, but it will be very difficult. And what they see it needs another generation to have it because when I walk with my physicians,  about 50-60, they are very, very much more difficult to move to something new, or they get to move, but because of different reasoning, money or something like this, and the new physicians, young physicians, if you just check telemedicine companies, you will see that in the board, you will find all professors, old physicians what they do in the board I dont know, just because of me. But who is working really in place? It's young physicians between 30-40 or till 50. Who gonna bring also have some side gig, but at the same time to grow like physicians in a new type of ,I even could say it civilization. Because it's really we come to new civilization, new health economics. And this is what happened, but it needs one, at least one generation of physicians to come to this place.

Chris

Yeah, gosh, that seems so far away. Compared to a lot of the challenges,

Leon

Unfortunately, yes . Well, I feel 10 or 20 years, when these all these big numbers will break down the old system.

Chris

Right, right. Yeah.

Leon

Yeah, but if you will have a single payer, like in other countries, it will take much more time because you don't have freedom of innovate in this case.

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Chris

Right. Right. Gosh, makes sense Leon. And I guess my last question is, do you have any advice that you haven't been able to give yet for entrepreneurs within digital health specifically, either failure modes to watch out for? Or what you wish you would have told yourself

Leon

Only a one on one, high mentors from the beginning. This is very important because in this case, you don't have to learn mistakes by yourself. You can learn mistakes from somebody who did it already, could teach you how to avoid it and find good mentor, not mentor, teacher, mentor. Trust, who you can trust who motivate you, motivational mentor, motivate you to think In the right way, and to do things in the right way. So find them. This is, this is I think this is most important thing that young entrepreneurs should do.

Chris

That makes sense. Yes. And I think, upon reflection that was one of my challenges is I had mentors who were telling me what to do, right? Not helping me improve my thought process to the point that I was thinking of what to do. And of course, me being bullheaded as a first time founder, thought that nobody's going to tell me what to do. I'm the one who invented this thing. It's the right thing. And this

Leon

This is what we're talking about, unconscious or existential thinking, and thinking by the cortex. So they teach you the thing by cortex, they lose. You, they ask you and really help you to think by yourself, it happens in unconscious level, in existential level.

Chris

Right,Well, thank you, Leon. I think that differentiation is fascinating, and in retrospect, accurate. I can't wait to read more of your thoughts as they're synthesized into the book. And I really appreciate your time on this podcast. You've been very generous for many conversations now. And appreciate your expertise guidance in yes asking the right questions.

Leon

Thank you very much, Chris. Thank you Bimal. I'm really happy to talk to you guys. I am with you.

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