you know, right on, right on, right on.
It goes good. It goes well with that, man.
Yeah, yes, absolutely. I'm new my Matthew McConaughey impersonations today.
Your show goes live with Matthew McConaughey.
We'll get some more clicks. Drive the Lincoln.
You know, keep it going. Okay, I shouldn't know that reference.
All right, Lance. So moving on a little bit.
All right. So 10 years in health tech.
You said med supplies. Give me that exact definition. What was it?
Med tech startups. Med tech startups. That's awesome.
That's a lot of time to be working with, I would say, you know, these entry level companies, right?
They get into it with a ton of passion. They got these super ambitions.
Most of these founders came from some form of background of either being like scarred for life by something
or they like, you know, they've seen, they've experienced industry change that's super needed.
And there you were in the heart of that. What was that like?
I mean, I love this field because it's people that are passionate.
And there's really nowhere else that I've seen this level of passion because you kind of you have to dedicate yourself.
It's not just another job. It's something that requires you bearing the load of starting a company,
which in of itself is challenging, but also creating a brand new solution.
Nobody likes change. Nobody wants to stray too far from status quo and injecting that solution into a very complex field
that is health care, which has in of itself a whole lot of problems with inefficiencies and other things.
So it's it's a challenge on top of a challenge. So I really enjoy those kind of complexities and what I do.
I love it. We're going to try to squeeze some of this tech talk for for those who specifically need your help in regards to, you know,
again, bridging that gap between the language of clinical engineering and brands.
And oh, my gosh, that's that's complicated enough and simple subjects,
let alone all the medical jargon that also and procedures that have to be accounted for PCI compliance, HIPAA compliance, OSHA.
There's a lot there. I know enough about those things to be super dangerous.
Before we do that, though, focusing more on your vision at large, what are your top three books, courses or movies, videos
related to a visionary who wants to advance? What would they be?
And so I'm I like sci fi movies and those are the ones that are very inspiring to me because I feel like it's a projection of the future.
And so top, top, make your ass though. What's that?
Top movies. No, no, that one and the resources.
Oh, resources. I'm big on video, though.
What's the movie, though? Oh, Terminator 2. Terminator 2.
Terminator 2. Got that one. I got to say The Matrix 2. I got to throw that one in there.
OK, just say Terminator 2. We're going to put those together. Terminator 2 and The Matrix.
Every doctor's favorite online resource up to date.
I can't live without that. So I live and breathe because it gives you it's like if it was printed out on paper.
Is that the name of it? Yeah, it's called Up to Date. Up to Date.com. Oh, Up to Date. OK. Up to Date.
All right. All the doctors already know this like Jackson, get out of his way. He knows what he's doing. OK. Up to Date.
What's the third? I'm a big Ayn Rand fan.
I don't know if you know her. Author of The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged and many other books around philosophy of objectivism.
That's my favorite. I've read most of her stuff. Somebody's got to translate that for me.
That was good. We will we will ask you to help us learn how to write that in Google so we can make sure to add that one to the show notes.
Awesome. Sounds good. OK. What about for the the normal human beings out there?
You know, those of us who have a little bit lower IQ, I'm in that bucket.
What is some what's a simpler resource for a visionary that like blew you away? It's like, man, everybody's got to read that.
Oh, zero to one by Peter Thiel. OK. Zero to one by Peter Thiel. One more.
All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Calame. I'm your show host. We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
Hey, what's up and welcome into another episode of Vision Pros Live. I'm your show host, Jackson Calame, founder and CEO of First Class Business. I'm super excited to have Lance Black joining me today, partly because of how complicated his subject is.
And I love to throw. Oh, you know that movie Big Daddy. I don't know if you've ever seen that, but he teaches a kid to throw sticks in front of skateboarders and they go flying like, I don't know. I found that really funny.
I like to do that with these complicated subjects and see how leaders react a little bit. I also love to see, you know, the ones who are able to take it and hack it. I don't try to hurt people, of course.
I mean, he did in that movie, but you get the concept. It's fun to dive deep and learn what people don't really talk about in these subjects. Lance is going to do that with me today.
I also love that he's got this edge of sarcasm behind him that he says he has, but I've never seen it revealed. He's like a super nice guy.
So we'll see if that comes out in the show. Before we bring him on stage, though, we're going to go into a little bit of these sponsors and opportunities to give back.
The first being Patrick Creighton's laid back languages. If you're in a position where you see the benefit of learning a foreign language and you want to do so fast, it is truly all about finding the right teacher or having the right methodologies of learning already mastered.
I was fortunate to learn Spanish in four and a half months fluently. I didn't know that until I was 18 months into living in New York.
Why? When I finally felt like, wow, I'm better than I thought. When did I get here? And again, it was at about that four and a half month point.
I met Patrick about three or four months ago, and I saw that his methodologies, the way he teaches, the way he nurtures people reminds me tremendously of my own learning path.
And as I've gotten to study with him and help him build out his program, I realized like, dang, this guy is a genius of helping people learn languages.
He can help people the same way, learn the same way that I was able to pick up the language as well.
So if you're in a position where you need that, you know somebody who is definitely referring to Patrick. He's a great guy, nice dude, and great at what he does.
Detail Publishing is well up here. Detail Publishing is run by Ashley Detail, and Ashley is probably the best research and development specialist that I've ever worked with from a content standpoint.
Whether it was working with the Nomad Capitalist or researching and writing her book Wallace the Westie for Children, she's got a super depth and ability to dive into all sorts of subjects.
She's got two main offers that she focuses on. One is called a manuscript review. If you're new to the book writing process, that's one of the most important steps to take.
Not just working with one person who tries to demand your attention, steal your thunder, and make you a best seller with only three reviews on Amazon.
I think that's embarrassing, by the way. I think most of your market finds that embarrassing. You want a proper launch.
And so manuscript review is part of that process to make sure that your book is ready to launch. And then she takes on very few clients that she helps with the actual entire process of creating, conceptualizing, strategizing the marketing for it, and getting your book launched.
And she does that for entrepreneurs, visionaries, people who have legacies they want to establish, and she does that very well.
I would not anticipate spending less than $15,000 on a proper book launch, by the way. If you are, you're probably going to cut a bunch of corners and end up with a book that maybe your mom's proud of, but I don't know if the market will be.
On the flip side over here, to give back even further, and to give back to the rest of the world, the water project, guys. This is huge for me. I'm a big fan of the water project and what they do, because there are millions of people on Earth who don't have access to their basic necessities.
I'm not talking about the internet. I'm not talking about the air conditioning. I'm talking about water itself. These kids or parents who have to work also have to go find a source of water, and sometimes they have to walk for miles in Africa.
I can't imagine it's very, very fun to walk three miles in Africa just to find a source you don't even know if it's safe for your family to drink or not.
And yet here this project has organized the ability to see which communities you're giving to, what the project is they're working on, and they give you picture posts about what they're doing in those areas to help these villages get access to water.
It is amazing to see those updates. So, it's a feel-good opportunity for you. More importantly, it is giving back to those in need.
If you know of another cause that you'd also love to see supported, just drop a comment and let us know about it, because it might be something that we put alongside the water project.
Maybe someday we decide, you know what, we've done what we need to for the water project. Let's move on to this project. You might be the person who inspires that.
You also have no idea if you share this opportunity, if you share that with people, even you don't have to share my episode. You can share the link to the water project directly to a friend or family.
You never know, they might give $10,000 to the project, and that would be you creating that catalyst.
So, please use your microphones, use your social media channels to do good. And without further ado, Lance Black, welcome to Vision Pros Live, man.
Thanks, Jackson. Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it.
Absolutely. So, as we get ready to dive into this topic, we're going to move out of, we'll come back to your topic of improving the health industry by translating tech languages between clinical engineering and brands, and we'll do that in English.
But first, as a visionary, we're going to dive into visionary topics. Who's going to benefit today from your vision, you know, the vision of what you're up to, your leadership experiences, best and worst, and the powerful lessons you're going to share?
I mean, I think those who have found themselves, I don't know, constrained by traditional career trajectories, and they're looking to break out and trying to understand how to do that. I think those people would be interested in hearing what I have to say because I've gone through that path, I've stumbled through it, sometimes blindly, other times with great mentors, and have a lot of, you know, battle scores to show for it.
I love it. Go ahead and expand on that. Give me, you're going to give me time and teach people in the audience. I'm taking time to write what he said for you guys in the comments, and my way of doing that is giving my guests the opportunity to expound further. That's why they do things like that on live TV. Go ahead, man. I'd love to hear it.
Sure, man. I've never been the kind of person to sort of, here's my 10 year plan. Like I never sat down and thought through what it is I want to do long term. I've always been an opportunistic and I found that not only to just be in line with my sort of personality, but also keeps things interesting. And so I remember in undergrad deciding almost last minute that I wanted to go to medical school. And then once I was in medical school, I'm like, well, this is interesting, but I think I might want to do something else. And so there was a lot of those things.
In my educational career and in my professional career, where I was making decisions that other people hadn't made and weren't sure how to counsel like, well, why aren't you going to this next level than this next level? Because that's what everybody else does. And so I found a lot of challenges along the way trying to create my own path. And part of that was just being willing to do that and not necessarily letting the naysayers guide me, but also finding people throughout my career who have done something similar.
Or have done something analogous that I can then say, you know, if you're able to do it, I can do it too. Yeah, I have a very supportive family, very supportive friends that have actually helped. I would say that's probably in of itself. The only reason I was allowed to do what I was able to do and get to a place where I'm super excited and happy and passionate about what I do day in and day out.
I love everything about that. And it just sounds like a whole lot of truth to me. That's the biggest thing. So I'll leave this endorsement up here for a little bit for those who want to tune in to see the video if you're listening, then you can check that out through the social media channels or by watching at this moment.
Anyway, let's move into some of these questions. But yeah, guys, just know too, everybody is listening and I don't want to go in for guys today, but all you leaders, women and men, it's not necessarily Bill Gates who needs to come on the show and share their visions.
Not that Lance and Bill aren't exactly on the same level in every aspect of life, right? But visionaries are often, you know, they're not just the integrators behind the vision.
They're the people who have found the opportunity to serve within the community. The Johnny Appleseed didn't have their own farm. He didn't have his own farm.
He planted seeds all throughout, you know, and found his way in and out of communities. And yet he became a living legend. Lance, I see you as that in many respects. So what's your vision for those that you serve?
You know, it's, I'm not someone who lives by a motto or a collection of a few words because I find myself constantly changing. So that in of itself is almost my vision is be willing to change and adapt to the situation so that you therefore can improve the place that you found yourself.
And it sounds sort of like happenstance, but I think it requires a lot of planning and a lot of thought when you are in that changing state, which I think is where people get very stressed and anxious and really don't perform.
And so thinking through how do I perform at my best when I'm in a stressful situation is part of where I focus a lot my effort and when I mentor folks, it's a lot of what I discuss is, you know, what brings you to this place where you can calmly assess the situation, find the solutions that are appropriate and move forward.
Well said. And let's go in deep about your vision. So where do you see yourself down the road? What is that? What does that destination look like?
Yeah, well, it comes back kind of to the vision that I share with my people that I mentor, which is to be willing to change and be adaptive. I think people sometimes say things like always want to learn and always want to be open minded.
I think that's part of it. Maybe that's similar or adjacent to what I'm suggesting. But I don't look at it as like I have a vision for my life. I look at it as I am, once again, opportunistic. I just want to experience life, I guess.
And I do that through my career, I do that with my family, I do that with my friends. But that requires an open mind. That requires a willingness to change. That requires a level of humility that I think is really hard to come by.
And I'm not saying I'm the most humble guy. But I'm...
We're giving you the award.
There it is. There it is. A trophy for humble.
Yeah, but I do think, you know, hey, I don't know everything and I'm willing to learn is a really good attitude. It gets you places that I think are interesting. And that's kind of what I'm about. So I would say that's my vision.
Absolutely. I've met a lot of people in my life that remind me of Richard Branson that are multi-billionaires, but not famous. And that's so cool to me. It's such an... And they might be multi-millionaires. I don't know.
But there's, again, it's that reality that we don't have to define the destination. We don't have to control it. Right? And so that's what I heard in your vision was rather than striving to control it, there's, like you said, that openness of I'm ready for new opportunities to present themselves.
I joke with my clients. It's becoming less of a joke now that I'm publishing it into the air. But, you know, I always tell my clients and they come on and they start to think through, like, oh, you know, like, what's going to happen as your brand grows?
You know, a lot of people want to put me in non-competes. And I'm like, heck no. You know, like, not a chance. Maybe in some markets. But I said, listen, if Mark Cuban comes along and he says, hey, Jackson, I want to pay you $10 million.
I'm going to pay you $10 million a month to help me run my companies because what you're doing is awesome. I'd take it. I'd be so happy and excited. I'd call all my clients right after.
I'd be like, okay, cool. I'm going with this. And there's a couple of opportunities there. One, I could now invest in every single one of my clients. Right? They don't need me.
They need the systems, the operations, the capital. They need to advance. That's not me that they need. Right? So that's, they're already going to be taken care of in that process.
Two, I can focus 100% on what Mark's up to. And now he's doing it because I love what he does. I'd love to be. Now he's a minority owner, but he's still there with the Dallas Mavericks. It's something that would be cool.
Even though I'm a Spurs fan, I'd still work with him. Right? And I'd find a way to love the Dallas Mavericks. Lucas, he's convincing my heart.
Anyway, sorry about the tangent, but going into that further, I know that as a relationship unfolded, I'd eventually have the opportunity to help him see the other visions that I have cooking too.
And he, as an opportunist, is also going to recognize, oh, whoa, Jackson's got an app that, like idea that would completely overhaul the music industry.
I know it's like that's super up his alley. I got to pay my dues, right? To those I work with, I've got to show up and serve them on their visions in order to gain that type of authority and respect with them.
100%. Yeah. But I'd shift in a heartbeat if the right opportunities come along, I'm ready to open my eyes to them while remaining completely focused on what I'm doing in the here and now. And that's what I heard you talking about.
Did I get that right? Yeah. Yeah. There's a couple of things I just want to kind of draw out of what you said. One is you got to pay your dues. So I'm definitely, I recognize that I'm speaking from a position of privilege in the sense that I've went to med school, I went to residency, I did the hard work to become a physician.
And although I'm not a practicing physician now, I can still wear that badge and be able to open doors that otherwise I wouldn't be able to open. So that gives me new opportunities that otherwise I wouldn't have. So I guess I have to recognize that. And that's why I've always been reluctant to slap a motto or a very specific set of ideals to what I do because it changes, right?
As soon as you get through that, then you're like, well, I've learned this, now I want to do something different. At least that's my mentality. So that's the one part that I took away. And what has sort of drawn me into the med tech startup scene is that those companies themselves sort of personify my own thoughts, which is like they're very opportunistic companies.
A lot of larger companies, and I don't want to say names, but ones that are very successful, are very cemented and rigid in their processes, because they have to be their manufacturers or distributors, right? They're trying to sell to millions of people, not one person. So they have a different mentality and philosophy. And I don't identify with that personally. So it's hard for me to sort of pigeonhole my way into that. So that's why I find startups so refreshing, because one day I'm talking about regulatory strategy, the next day I'm talking about a clinical trial.
And I wouldn't have that opportunity had it been for me going toward the traditional, let's say, career. So those are the two things that I really walked away from what you just said.
Huge, man. I worked at the UPS store for three days. And on my third day, I was 16 years old, on my third day, I asked the boss, what else do we do? He said, let's watch YouTube. And I was like, what else do I need to learn? He said, you've already learned it all. I was gone. I was done. And my best friend worked there for eight years. I was like, wow, how are we so different? But that usually works that way, yin and yang.
All right. So let's switch into a super dark subject. That was probably one of my worst leadership experiences. It goes a little deeper than that. But what has been your worst leadership experience ever?
There's a couple. I mean, if I'm collectively playing together as a the worst experiences, it's having to let someone go. And I've been in that position multiple times, unfortunately.
And the reason why it's such a horrible experience, because I feel like I've let that person down for them to be in a position to where now we have to let them go, to fire them, terminate them. It's, where did I go wrong? Where could I have mentored them? Where could I have helped them through whatever issues that they were facing? Whether it was just, you know, a level of competence that they could have been educated on or personality, whatever, like, why am I in this position? So I know that's not one particular experience.
But no, that's a big one. Game of Goosebumps, man, from a little bit of PTSD coming out of me right there. Go ahead. You can keep hitting it.
I don't lose sleep over much. I'm a good sleeper. But when it comes to having to let somebody go, that's the thing that keeps me awake. And it just bothered me for some time before and a while after, for sure.
I'll add to it. And from the other perspective of, you know, what can I have done on the front end to prevent this person from getting into this situation in the first place?
You know, I lost a dear friend that is very important to me, not from a death standpoint, but from a we're probably done for life standpoint because of what transpired. Had I been less hasty on the front end of the process and had I conditioned my HR director at the time to be more prepared to say no to me and to be willing to reveal the red flags that they saw,
we would have never brought them in to begin with. And, you know, he later revealed that and said, man, I knew it was your friend. And so I didn't bring this up.
And we had a sit down conversation about how I get it. It's the first time you've had this experience with me, but we cannot let this happen again.
Like you have to challenge me, even if that's my friend. There's no nepotism involved in how we do things. And I need I need to know that you trust me enough that you'll bring that to my attention in order for you to be the HR director.
And so we got to learn that lesson. But that even though what transpired afterwards was a person that would be easy to point the finger at and said, man, they really screwed this up for all of us.
They really came in with this toxicity that that crushed everybody's souls. We let I let that I let that happen. You know, and I've got a better process in place to learn from that as a leader.
So, yeah, I would agree. That's a heavy one.
We move into go ahead. You have another thought for you. I was just just thinking about like, some people, it's not necessarily that they're not capable and a different position.
It's just they're in the wrong place at the wrong time. Yeah. And it took me a while to learn that. Like, you're just not in the right position. You may have been for the past three years, but the past year, your performance has changed.
I can tell you attitude has changed. And now you are suited better for some other position. I don't know what that is, but it's not here. Right. And that that's kind of how I started to understand better where there's there is a thing called fit and doesn't necessarily mean somebody's wrong and somebody's right.
It's just the fits not there. And for startups in particular, I mean, we are constantly evolving and changing. And the most mature CEOs that I know, well, really quickly say, Look, I'm CEO now. It might not be that case next year. It's not to say that they're going to get fired.
Right. But they may have to step down or they may have to go into another position because they understand the needs of the company change.
I gotta get a bell real quick, guys. You keep going on that. I'm going to disappear for a second. But I want you to keep going on that thought of these CEOs having to change.
Yeah, absolutely. I think it really inspired me when I started talking to CEOs of startups that have been successful, especially around raising capital that are willing to step down when it comes time within the company for a specific change. For instance, they raise a different round or now they're selling and they don't have that experience.
So they're mature enough to say what's best for the company. It's not somebody who's inexperienced to try this out for the first time. It's for me to step down to a different position and allow somebody else who's been there done that before and learn from them.
That was actually pretty eye opening because in the health care community, it's a different perspective. It's not like surgeons will step down and say, you know, I've never done this before. Why don't you come in and do this for me? And then I'll do the next one. You do a lot of that in training, of course.
But once you're out in the open, it's you and you alone and you're doing it whether it's the first time or not. So that was a pretty jarring experience for me, but something that I highly respect now when I see individuals like that.
That's amazing. And it brings up a really important topic that I hope the world pays more attention to. And that's the argument of ethics and who's unethical and who's not. We're so quick to judgment.
We want to, we all as human beings want to think we have all of the necessary data and variables to make a judgment call. Right. And to make the right judgment call and say that it's right or wrong. You're leaving space for that.
With this individual, it was easy for me in the heat of the moment too, to again feel like, man, this person is practicing zero ethics. They're not ethical in this reality, but you're right. It also has a lot to do with fit.
And I had to think back on my, and so you got me thinking about my old career. And when I was at OnLocal, and I wrote an email so excited to work with the University of North Carolina. They're on my radar.
I love the Tar Heels, even though I'm also a Longhorn fan. And so, and we were working with publications and I wanted to work with their newspaper. So I'm cold calling them. I don't cold call people. I'm like super excited to call.
And they said, yes, they wanted me. So, man, I went to bat on this email. I was the young rookie salesperson. I put everything I could in this email to convince them.
The publisher, the publisher's husband wrote my company a scathing email, threatening lawsuit.
Threatening if they didn't fire me or let me go that they would do X, Y, and Z. I came into the work next day excited, happy, and thinking that maybe I'll get a sale today.
And I ended up getting put in a personal improvement plan situation where my boss had to monitor all my emails moving forward because of things that I said, not because I was trying to be unethical, because of how bad I wanted this account.
And I just did some dumb things. I misspelled Paul Bukite's name. He was one of our investors.
You know, I mentioned Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook and a direction they were going. To the best of my ability to help tie it together somehow, I misspelled Zuckerberg, you know, in the process.
And, you know, then this person interpreted all that as you're claiming to work directly with Mark Zuckerberg and all these big shots in order to, you know, unethically sell this product to us like it's the best thing since sliced bread.
And, you know, you're being aggressive. I was just a young dumb sales rep. You know, that was it. I just didn't know. And I'm glad I went through it because that email monitoring process turned my email capabilities into something rock star level.
And also before it was, it was horrible. But again, we always, you give me the opportunity to realize, dang, yeah, every, every situation when we usually think somebody is unethical.
I found myself to be wrong every single time when I've dove deeper into the experience.
That's good, man, that you can learn, grow and learn from that. That's awesome.
These are like therapy sessions for me. These shows, they're awesome. I get great mentorship.
You should be chilling on the couch.
I had my prayer bell go off. That was my gratitude prayer bell. So anybody who's ready to feel gratitude, go and take a little moment. But, all right. So what's your best leadership experience look like, Lance?
Yeah, so I've had the opportunity, the fortunate opportunity to mentor a lot of students coming off of undergrad in engineering that are interested in going to medical school.
That was kind of my path. Obviously, that's why people reach out to me. Okay, you're a biological engineer. You went to medical school. Tell me about that. I'm thinking about doing the same thing.
It's a little bit non-traditional. It's becoming more traditional. Actually, there's schools that do exactly engineering and medicine together. So I've had the opportunity to talk to a lot of individuals.
I became known as the guy who talks people out of going to medical school, which sounds really bad. But I'm pretty proud of it because it was an opportunity for me to just shine a light on.
Just because you're capable and you're competent enough to do this doesn't mean it's the right thing. And not to say that here are all the bad things about medicine you should consider. It wasn't that kind of conversation.
It was more about don't let somebody else define your path. Don't let traditional education define your path. Don't let traditional career paths define who you are.
Having that conversation for a lot of these students, I feel like it was the first time that they're sort of opening their eyes to that there's more to it than just what somebody else has already done.
That's probably what I'm most proud of or think is probably my strongest leadership or most positive leadership experience for sure.
That's cool. Just helping people become a little bit more aware of the perspectives and paradigm rather than just following blind faith.
Yeah, head down. I tell you man, in the undergrad to med school to residency to physician pathway, it's head down, head strong, 12, 14, 18 hour days. It's not something you have time to just sit back and pontificate and be like, should I do this, should I do that?
You have to be dedicated and you have to be resilient and I totally understand that. Every once in a while though, you kind of do have to stop and smell the flowers and say, okay, what am I doing?
Because I'm about to engage on a 20 year educational path that at the end, I may not be happy about. My personal experience, it's not that I wasn't happy.
It's that once I started practicing medicine within two years, so maybe not as quick as your UPS story, but within two years I was like, man, this is not what I thought it was going to be.
This is not quite what I want to do. I had just gone through an additional 12 years of training and I'm like, well, what do I do now?
And when I made that decision to do something different, which wasn't the traditional clinical path, it felt like going through a divorce. I've never been through a divorce, happily married.
But it was like this weird tearing away from what I thought I was supposed to be doing to what I wanted to do.
I had just sacrificed a significant part of my life dedicated to this relationship of healthcare or medicine. And now I'm saying, yeah, I don't want to do that anymore.
And it's not just as easy as giving it up, right? I had to go back and figure out what do people who work in startups do?
I was asking very fundamental questions that high schoolers would be asking, but I was a professional. And so it was a very awkward time for me. It was hard.
And I just don't want anybody to have to face that similar situation just because they didn't give the few minutes of thought that they could have prior to engaging on that pathway.
I love that. There's a couple of paradigms on it. I told myself I'm not going to commentate on this, but then you wrote me in bad. I now have to.
It's my fault. It's my fault. Okay.
No. Your opportunity. Your opportunity. But yeah, you got to share the mic now.
So the divorce aspect. I'm a professional divorcee. I'm twice divorced now.
So I will say your experience 100% correlates. Absolutely. The paradigm shift is 100% relatable.
And I know there's sensitive people who would say it's not, but that's why I get to be your guy and say, no, your analogy sound. It works out.
It is. It is exactly what you described. Maybe and then some. But again, I haven't experienced your experience. So how would we know that? Right.
I hope what people gain out of this communication right here is that it's not necessary to argue with people, right?
Or to create conflict where there's not one just because apples and oranges are different. They're also both round. Okay.
They are. You can find the similitudes. They're similar size too. We don't have to create conflict in our life.
So there's another concept you talked about on there that got me and that was I want to expound just a bit further.
You use the word have to in relation to this 20 year career path. And I would expand that to a bit further of a paradigm of and you talked about how when you said you say, you know, you have to commit to this crazy.
I think that's one of the challenges to the people faces. They believe that and that's not true. You know, it's not absolute truth. It's truth from one angle.
But Patch Adams comes to mind for one. You know, and yeah, I love that movie. You know, it's just a movie and somebody could say that. Right.
But in addition to that, I had a I had a bishop in my church when I was young and he sat me down and I was I was my my my wife was pregnant from my first child and he's a Jackson.
I know how busy you think you are. It's never life's never going to get less busy for you ever.
You need to get your order. And this is the nicest guy in every moment. But he sat me down and he gave me one of the sternest talks and I've ever had saying order, order, order, order.
You're going to do all the things that you want to do and make them happen. You need to get order in place. It's not going to get easier. It's only going to get harder from here.
And so for those who are grandparents and for those who are parents of five children plus, I'm sorry, man, but but the whole residency process, the whole doctor process, a little bit of a cakewalk.
You know, and again, I didn't go through that per se. I say a little bit of a cakewalk.
Same thing with any Marine who's been through boot camp but then goes to war and actually experience the depths of a prisoner of war. You know, like there are levels to all this stuff that we can survive and go through or that we can thrive in in spite of.
And so I hope that people add that to it, realizing that, you know, if you're the type of person who come from the divorce home, you know, who grew up in poverty or semi poverty or with abuse, and there's all these stats saying you can't do it.
That's one of your super strengths in the world. I know what those feelings are like. And so it's there. There is there's up for any and I know I'm not going to break through with most of those people who are on that path laser focused.
But hopefully we catch some of the ones a little bit before that, or the ones who are open minded have to say you know what I get to make time for my priorities.
And I get to choose how I'm going to go about this process and maybe it means less Netflix and less wine.
But I can choose, you know, different different realities just paradigm. What are your thoughts on that any any pushback.
No, it's funny, I was about to say, sort of to your last point, something that I learned from going through all that is everything is relative. So you adopt a certain perspective from your experiences, and you apply that perspective and future events we all do this right.
And when I left medicine, one of my first jobs was working with startups. And I remember seeing those are around me like kind of running around with her, like chickens with their heads cut off anxiety, screaming, it was a big event that we're hosting and there was a lot of reasons to be stressful.
I'm like, look, nobody's dying. This is not an ER or not resuscitating someone this isn't like you said war, it allows you allowed me so much to kind of just take a second, calm down, realize, provide that sort of perspective that otherwise I wouldn't have had and I gone through what I consider to be somewhat
traumatic residency. But yeah, I think you're right. I think it is a superpower in the sense of if you can apply that perspective, and your future endeavors like that's, that's a strength. It's not something that's going to hold you back. In fact, it's only going to propel you and allow going back to sort of our original kickoff discussion, it's, it's going to allow you to get be resilient, and be someone who can remain calm and times of change, and apply, you know, a level of resilience.
And apply, you know, a level head, which is always the best perspective in those situations so so 100% agree, and have experienced something similar and wish that I can, hopefully I can project that to others and kind of understand what that means.
That's the thing in projecting and putting out there so far, I'll find you, you know, every every great strength every leader with tremendous strengths comes with tremendous weaknesses. So I'm usually excited to find those sooner than later with my friends and family so I know what to expect.
So, I'll find your, I'll find your weaknesses eventually.
But no weaknesses here Jackson.
Right there beside the humility trophy. The no weakness man.
Alright, so, normally we go into powerful lesson next, the most powerful lesson you can share. We might come back to that I want to make sure that we honor your time, as well as the audience's time to and and get to this, the aspect of improving the health industry
and translating tech languages between clinical engineering and brands. So if we have time we can circle back to the powerful lesson or you can redirect me this is your show not mine.
So, when it comes to communication and tech languages between clinical engine clinical. These are three different things clinical engineering and business leaders.
What does that look like what what do they need to know what are they doing at the, at the highest level not to the beginners the ones who are in the trenches right now. What are the things they got to be working on.
Yeah.
So, maybe I'll make this one quick and we can go to powerful lesson because I think it's all a little bit related.
I mean I first started looking into what does it take to build something new, a new technology, a new process innovate into this complex industry that is healthcare. I started to find buckets and people will explain it to me as in buckets which I thought was really
interesting and helped me to kind of grasp through a framework of where do I fit in.
So, the first framework was hey there's pharmaceuticals. There's medical technologies and that can be like an MRI machine or new surgical tool.
There's digital health, these are apps, these are software programs.
There's biotech, this is, you know, a little bit a little bit like pharma, but they're able to break it down and they showed. Look, it's also startups, middle sized companies and large companies, startups are the ones who are creating something new and shaking up the pot.
They're shaking up the status quo. They're the annoying brother that's got a new idea that keeps bothering you over and over and over until one of them actually makes sense, and they pop up and then the larger companies sort of take that on and say okay we'll acquire that technology, we'll build it, we'll say we're innovative and actually somebody else did it.
So once that was explained to me I started to understand better the bigger picture. Then it came down to the buckets within that industry.
There's clinical obviously that healthcare is physicians, nurses, technicians, anybody that's operating in the hospital.
There is what I'm calling engineering here but that can really be software engineers that can be technical people that are developing makers, they're developing the product.
And then thirdly there's entrepreneurs those that are responsible for building the business that becomes the vehicle to get that technology to market.
And once I understood that those three buckets then I started to piece together what's the problems within those industries. They're talking past each other because they all have their own jargon, they all have their own dictionary.
They all want to be the smartest guy in the room so a lot of times they're speaking in a format where these other buckets can't understand and they don't want to understand.
So I quickly started to say well I have engineering background, I understand clinical because I'm a physician. If I move into understanding more business then I can sort of be the sort of a bridge between those three buckets and improve the way that we take new technologies to market.
That's kind of what I feel like I'm doing now and I'm obviously learning a lot and still learning and always will be learning.
But that's where I see myself living is like I'm not a clinician, I'm not an engineer, I'm not an entrepreneur, I'm like all three. I'm a generalist, not a specialist.
So I'm okay and it took me a long time to figure out how to be comfortable with doing that as opposed to being the guy who's like, hey he's the gallbladder expert, I don't know, pick some random thing.
He's the guy that does this, this and this and this and that's what he's known for. I'm not that person. So I've learned to live like on this other side of things so that's kind of...
I'd still call you a generalist, a specialist and an expert. And the reason why is because it's not for the sake of the dictionary, it's for the sake of the interpretation of each human.
So some people will say the term I love you for instance, me saying that to my son is going to have a different effect than it's going to have if I said it to you.
It's going to have a different effect than if I said it to a brand new woman that I'm dating or to my ex-wife.
There's my meaning behind it but there's also the interpretation from the person on the other side and a person who's been traumatized by the word love from years of abuse associated with love might absolutely hate that word.
And say, whoa, this person's coming at me to get something from me. So I would just, again, not trying to coach you but anybody who's listening, right?
It's really, it's for all you visionaries out there. If we strive to not play the semantics battle and we get behind the behind the word to the principles of what's practiced, we can see the value that exists there.
And the value of having somebody like you who has that specialized expertise to bridge those communication gaps is super unique.
You know, that's something that I've gotten to do in my role with companies. That's the same exact area that I sit in.
When I was at Restaurant Connect, we were full service fine dining and I'm still a junior co-founder of that company.
But when I was there in the face of the company and learning to become such, I had never eaten in a fancy restaurant in my life.
The fanciest restaurant I had eaten in was an Olive Garden. You know, and that's, that's pretty fancy. For me it was the top, you know, I had no idea.
I had no idea there were restaurants more fancy than that. You know what? And I love Olive Garden. But it's like the McDonald's of fancy. It's everywhere, you know, and they got great prices and stuff too.
So shout out to Olive Garden. I love you. But I'm talking about servicing restaurants that have $100 and $200 plates.
I didn't know what a deuce was, which is a two top. I didn't know what a two top was. He's like, it's a two top. I'm like, what's a two top?
It's where two people sit at a table. I'm like, oh, you know, what's an expo? What the heck is that? I thought that was a conference.
You know, they're like, no, it's the person who gets the food to blah, blah, blah. You know, there's so many. I don't drink. I don't know anything about alcohol.
And so here I am talking to Grand Master sommeliers. I'm beyond and like I'm trying to pick up the lingo. But my role wasn't to become the sommelier.
It wasn't to be the expert either in building the technology. It was to bridge the gap so that they could understand each other in terms of what they needed to be the communication liaison so that all parties improved,
which improved the whole operation. And you're doing just that. Lance, I want to read a quote from you. This is a part of your vision submission and it fits really well. In fact, we have to hide behind it a little bit. You can play with this with me and like pretend like we're in a rowing boat together. This is cool.
I'm just going to hide in it.
I'm running you over. All right. My vision is to continue to challenge the way we think about health care. Each actor or entity involved in innovation has a different mentality.
And the obstacles are generally those of communication between all of these active parties, all these actors. I'm lucky to be able to translate technical languages between the clinical field, the engineering field, and the business speakers.
And yeah, man, I've seen your tolerance of my dad jokes and humor mixed with the ability to dive deep into the technicalities tells me a lot about your ability to appreciate where different angles come from. So super cool.
All right. So you want to you want to throw down a power lesson before we wrap up. This would be the most powerful lesson that you could share. This was your last chance to talk to visionaries. What would the lesson be from your experience? Yeah, the thing I actually feel like I tell myself this every day.
And that is it's easy to be a critic. I think people are paid to say no. It's really the first thing that we go to when we're introduced with something new. So as an example, I have a new technology I present to you, Jackson.
Your mind immediately goes usually will go to why it won't work. And so you start to ruminate on why that thing is defective or why it will never be adopted. And I think it's maybe more so in my industry than general.
But positions in particular who I speak to every day, day in and day out are sort of in a position to be super sensitive to what could go wrong, obviously, because it could hurt a patient.
And so if I had to sort of pay it forward, it would be to, you know, understand understanding that I think allows you to then make the necessary next move, which is to sort of bucket that recognize it, take note and move forward.
But don't let it affect you emotionally or don't affect your passion for moving things for it because change is not easy and nobody is going to be like, oh, yeah, that sounds great. Let's go.
Like, that's not going to happen, even though that's our expectation sometimes. So that's one thing I'd pass forward for sure.
I love that. That's fun to throw down a new paradigm on that, too, because this is so fun, dude.
The you happen to use the word you when you made your statement about me saying no, my instinctual reaction is common and is human was to say not true about me, which is in essence, no.
Right. That was my instinct. And within a split second, though, because of my entrepreneurial personality and and what I've learned along the way, my immediate shift to know was how am I not?
You know, how do I embrace this opportunity? We as entrepreneurs are a very strange breed of people.
I can't speak for all of us, but there's a lot of us that when somebody attempts to put a limitation on us, our immediate our immediate response is to look for solutions to the opportunity at hand.
So when I'll add to the I love the lesson. Yes, our immediate natural instinct is to often say no and or we shifted to the S man culture, where our other opportunity is to often say yes.
When if we would add a different layer, that what's much harder to do is to say, tell me more about that and listen to understand the depth and practice.
Tell me more about that. Tell me more about that. Really getting to understand the subject. If we could gravitate from reacting like animals, from responding like humans to listening to understand like great leaders, then our communications across the board.
Mine would improve dramatically if I if I maintained that in my as my as my every opportunity response and situations where people are trying to be understood with me.
That's a great addition that I agree. This was a beautiful lesson on life. This is an awesome opportunity to talk visionaries who are out there. If you would love to share your vision on our show or like to, we would love to have you.
So definitely in the show notes, notice the application buttons. You can check out and see the process for submitting your media kit or your bio to simplify that. You don't have to have a media kit like Bill Gates to be on the show.
Give him double shout outs today. And also we'll have links in there for connecting with Lance. Now Lance, we've got Piranha Thoracic. Just kidding. Piranha Thoracic. Is that how you say it or is it Prana or Prana or Prane?
Prana. Prana Thoracic is right. Prana Thoracic. Awesome. C.C.S.O. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you to talk about communications in general and feel free to again chop this.
Everybody knows who's listening. You can chop this video up Lance and use these segments as well to influence your market as you see fit. You're welcome to use the show. Anybody else who's out there to feel free to use my stuff.
I don't this copyright stuff where people like say you can't use your stuff and you can't use your music and all that. Use my materials. They're yours. They're meant to bless everybody's lives. So Vision Pros, thanks for joining us today.
Lance, we appreciate you being here, man. This is great. Thanks so much for having me, Jackson. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Take care, everybody. Have a great weekend. Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent weekend. And I'll see you next time. Bye.