Shark Tank makes it look so easy!  But coming up with something new isn’t like it is on the TV show, especially if you are a physician inventor and looking to enter the landscape of medical devices.  Filing for patents and writing business plans, pitching potential investors, while at the same time seeing a full waiting room for patients can take its toll. 

But for surgeon Dr. Swarna Balasubramaniam,  it has all been worth it.  After countless abdominal surgeries, she created a device that could shorten hospital stays and improve patient outcomes.   Now the CEO and founder of Noleus Technologies,  Dr. Swarna Balasubramaniam has now dedicated her life to bringing this cost-saving medical device to the marketplace. All potential and active inventors need to listen to her inspiring story on this episode!

https://www.noleustechnologies.com – Noleus Technologies

Contact Information for Swarna Balasubramaniam, MD

swarna@noleustechnologies.com

Transcript:

Mike Woo-Ming: Hey it’s Dr. Mike, welcome to another edition of Bootstrap MD . This is the podcast for physician entrepreneurs , I love spotlighting physicians, medical doctors, who are in the trenches, who are starting their own businesses and really putting themselves out there.

Because as it’s not one of the most easiest things out there to do. And. We’ve got a great guest today. I think we actually met we were both speaking in Texas with our mutual friend, Dr. Michelle Mudge, Riley. She has a conference called physician helping physicians, and I got to know her a little bit more.

We were on  a session virtual session this summer. And eventually we got, I said, I’m wanting to interview you. Eventually. We got our schedules together. She’s a very busy, female physician and being a physician entrepreneur. So I’m so excited to have her on Swarna. I’ve just got to quickly read your bio and then we’ll get right to it!

She is  Dr. Swarna Balasubramaniam  a surgeon inventor and a full-time medical device entrepreneur. She actually recently left her practice last year. She’s the founder of Noleus Technologies. It’s a Houston based medical device company, focused on developing and commercializing innovative technologies.

Intended to accelerate, recover and to improve outcomes after surgery. She’s a board-certified colorectal and general surgeon by training as 20 years of experience as a practicing surgeon and surgical practice owner in Sugarland, Texas raised in Boston, completed medical school and general surgery training at an institution I’m familiar with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

She actually came out here to the west coast as a general surgeon at Kaiser Permanente for two years prior to completing a colon and rectal surgery fellowship at USC, she was experiencing basic science research in the areas of radiologic imaging, cardio, renal physiology, molecular oncology, and clinical translational surgical research.

And. Dr. Balasubramaniam, I am so excited to have you on the program today. Thank you for coming on Bootstrap MD.

Swarna: Mike, it’s my pleasure. And you did a great job there not only saying my name, but with my background, it was a lot of different things going on there. It’s been a long ride and it’s not over yet.

And I’m having a great time doing what I’m doing and, part of what I love doing in addition to this new career I’m in. Is letting physicians know that this is a possibility with a medical degree. And so I’m excited to come on your show and share that passion with your listeners to see if they might get a Pearl or two that helps them on their journey.

Mike Woo-Ming: Again, it’s a pleasure to having you on. And when I interviewed physician entrepreneurs, I’m always curious about their background how it got started. So when you first were deciding to start your own company, was that something that. You initially did prior to applying for medical school or how did this all come about?

Swarna: Life is just a, sometimes a long walk and then you take the opportunities when they come. My story begins that I actually was never going to go to medical school. So I actually was a chemistry major in college and I was going to go to graduate school in chemistry. And I was really good at research and everyone pretty much had slotted me for that and myself as well.

Yeah. The problem was, I didn’t really enjoy any of the summer internships. I had doing that. And suddenly in my third year of college, I decided I want to go to medical school because the only thing that seemed interesting in this research job I had at the national Institute of health was the doctor who was doing research.

And I said, I’m going to do medical research and be a doctor. My parents were like, what. What’s his big change, but I just decided, so I’m just that person. And then after I did that, I basically did more research and I thought I was going to have an academic career. And then I something bad happened in my residency.

My mom actually died. And life throws all kinds of roadblocks in your way. And at that point I was exhausted. I, Push myself through a surgical residency, which was not so easy. I was doing all kinds of things. And I decided at that point, instead of doing a fellowship right away, I would go ahead and work, of course, that didn’t please any of my academic attendings at all, but nonetheless, it was what was needed.

And so I went to work. As you pointed out at Kaiser, in Southern California. And after a couple of years, I did a lot of things there. We implemented some new technologies Localized breast cancer surgery instead of having mastectomy did some other things. And then I decided, you know what, I need to go back and see if I still want to be an academic surgeon.

So I went back to USC was really lucky. Dr. Bob Barrett was head of the program there and he took me into his program and. It was just great. I just liked what I was doing. And I think part of it was an ability to focus more on something. And along the way, he ran a really robust clinical research program where he did a lot of work with industry.

And that seemed interesting to me. And then I tried an academic job working in New York with one of the Montefiore, with the Montefiore system. Tim at one of their hospitals, but ultimately there were a lot of issues, which I won’t even get into. And I decided to take a job in Texas. And that’s how I ran to Texas as fast as I could.

And I worked for a large multi-specialty group practice. And then basically after I did that, I decided I would be better off working for myself. I wanted that control of my schedule, which I really wasn’t getting. And so I opened practice here in suburban Houston. Then, which is a super, it was a super growing area, even as little as 10, 12 years ago and practiced.

And I had a great practice. I really enjoy taking care of my patients, but I think it happens to a lot of people, as they progress in their career, Practice of medicine is great, but if you’re not an academic or in a large institution, there’s only so much so far, you can go with it.

And there’s a certain certain kinds of biases against women still. And people certainly have minority status. And I just saw that, I thought to myself I turned 45 one day and I said, what am I going to do with the rest of my career? I got another 20 years of this and, am I going to keep doing the same thing?

And I dabbled in doing other things. I thought about, doing opening a surgery center, doing all kinds of things. And I just kept thinking I got to do something else. Cause this was just not stimulating enough. And along the way, I basically had an idea and the backstory is about 15 years before that I had an idea for a medical device because when we operate, we have all kinds of technical problems.

And we, at that time, it was a technical problem with taking gallstones out. We doing a lot of laparoscopic gallbladder surgery and we had to manually crushed the gallstones before we remove the gallbladder, which sounds crazy. And I was like, hey, there must be a little device. We can , invent to do this.

To make this go faster. So I drew a picture and then basically talked to a bunch of engineers. Everyone said it was done. There was nothing out there. And I didn’t do anything else because back in 2000, what did I know? I just kept operating. And then when I moved to Houston, a rep walked in my office with a device.

That basically was my idea from that many years ago, from 10 years before that, I was like, Hey, I was sad and I was. Glad all at the same time. So this time when I had an idea back in 2015, I was like, Oh, remember that time when your idea was pretty good, maybe this is a good one. And so I just started following it and basically found patent attorney to try and see whether anyone else had thought of it.

And, having a little bit of experience from my previous dive into devices and then. I got a lot of encouragement. The patent attorneys were really excited and they knew more about it. I didn’t really understand it, but with their guidance, I just kept following it. And then basically it just it started to consume me this device to help patients recover faster after abdominal surgery.

I think your physician audience will understand that every time people have abdominal surgery, they have this period where their intestines don’t work and they’re stuck in the hospital waiting basically to pass gas, eat and go home. And that’s, pretty long stay. It can be anywhere from five days to two weeks, depending on the patient and the surgery and all kinds of other comorbidities.

And so I was just got more and more obsessed with this idea and I knew it would work. Because it’s basically a translation of an existing technology. So I just kept following it along. And then basically, one time, one day what happened was basically at the end of 2018, it was swallowing up so much of my time to do this.

And I realized I was having so much more fun following my device than I was practicing, which was great because surgeons always say, what’s the best thing you can do. What’s the most fun you can have with them. Your clothes on and that’s operating, but, that’s the thing about it that it just became so enticing to think of helping so many people at once instead of one belly or one hemorrhoid at a time, I was like, okay, this is the thing to do that in 2019, I basically stopped practicing and have been working on this full-time ever since.

And so I think, one of the things I hear from a lot of physicians who are thinking about, leaving medicine is they don’t like practice. And I hear that because, and I feel that because one of the things about practices it’s become really administratively difficult. And I think also, you get to mid career and really not, everyone has an opportunity to keep doing different things.

I think, if you’re an academic institution or you have a lot of Kind of administrative roles for a medical society. You have some different things to do, but not everyone is either drawn to those or has those opportunities. And I was in the same boat, but I think it’s really important to find something else that you get excited about.

It becomes a lot easier to leave medicine. I think it’s harder to leave. Because it is a risk. You make a good salary as a physician and it’s difficult to leave all of that, unless you have something else that’s, exciting and worth taking that risk for. So I’ll stop there and see, what kind of feedback you have about that?

I totally agree. As someone who has coached and worked with doctors in the past, many of them have been burnt out and they look to entrepreneurship as a way. Of going there. But I think the thing that you bring up is you have to be passionate about whatever you’re going to be doing. If, whether you’ve inventing something or you’re starting a business, because I see people who, yeah, I want to start a business, but I can tell they really don’t have the passion for it, or they don’t feel like they don’t have the experience to do.

Mike Woo-Ming:  And I said there were other things that you can do. You can go in and do some non-clinical work or something that’s a bit different. Maybe taking away from the patients. So business is not necessarily. The answer, but I think what you brought up is that you did have a passion for it. You did have, you had a problem.

You knew that there was a problem. You had a solution that can reduce the amount of time that you’re spending in the hospital, saving, thousands, perhaps millions of dollars, multi-millions of dollars. And,

Swarna: But I want to bring up one point what you said there. My, I didn’t really have a lot of experience in business, so I think, no one really has any experience.

I think the big thing is that, you have to, you have to spend some time figuring out if what you want to do besides practice is exciting to you. So I think that’s the big thing. So I think, there’s a lot of different things you can do. And I basically, worked on this for three and a half years while I was still practicing.

Now I cut my practice back a little bit, but I made sure that this was exciting and viable before I left. And so I think, it’s not really about experience cause I think it’s tough to have experience because medical training is. So all consuming, but I do think, definitely whatever you try out, you can do on the side, because that’s a great thing about medicine.

You can maybe even if you don’t own your own practice, you can try and negotiate some shifts or something. So many physicians are employed. Now you can work your schedule. So you have a little bit of free time every week to work on your side project and see if it’s viable. And it has holding power for you.

Mike Woo-Ming: And just as an, as in medical school, no one had any experience, but they threw us in front of patients in third year medical school. So we learned from mentors, we learned from attendings. So in your. In your entrepreneur journey. Did you have mentors? Did you have family members who were entrepreneurs that you could ask for advice?

Swarna: Oh, heck no, the thing about it is that the entrepreneurial community is very giving. So the one thing about it is in entrepreneurship, people help each other, and so there are these, all these resources out there where you basically, go and ask people for a little bit of help at a time, and then you get feedback and development help.

And, those exist at universities and different cities and then accelerators. And so they’re in different business verticals. So if you wanna. I’m in medical devices and life sciences, you go seek out help in those kinds of situations. So there are a lot of resources out there.

I think it’s difficult. To say that anyone would have entrepreneurship because when an entrepreneurship, if someone has A different kind of businessing, like owning golf courses or owning different kinds of business. It really is very different than what I’m doing. And so I think it’s difficult to find it so close, but there is a plenty of resources out there to find that stuff you just have to start looking and, with the internet these days, you just can surf the web and get a lot of information about what to do.

And if you are interested, if people are interested in. Learning about, device entrepreneurship or life science, entrepreneurship, you can simply go to the web and look up like Y Combinator is a great accelerator and they talk. And so accelerators are places where ideas and small companies become big companies and they grow ideas and develop.

Them and, commercialize them. And so you could simply go to that website and see what they have to say and all the components, and then, start working on something. They even have a free it’s called startups school, where you can learn about the different components of doing stuff like that.

Now, I didn’t know about that before I started, but I think he’s a great resource, entrepreneurship has really come a long way with the internet. And especially, I would say in the past few years, it’s there’s a lot more resources. And this year in particular, because of the pandemic, there’s an enormous amount of resources that have been put onto the web.

So I think I would tell your listeners if they’re interested at all to check out those few resources and then, you can learn more by. Contacting people are going around, but the number one thing, if you really want to leave medicine and do something else is you got to get a LinkedIn profile going.

I see so many doctors that are not on LinkedIn and the business world revolves around LinkedIn. And if you’re not on LinkedIn, it’s really hard to connect with other people.

Mike Woo-Ming: Well, a lot of information there, a lot of great how to information that you just gave. So let’s say a physician is listening to this call right now.

They have this idea. They’ve had it for the last six months a year. They found us some they’re invented something it’s worked in their own clinic and now they want to take it and they want to see where they can go. Your recommendation was to be a fine incubators in their

Swarna: community. Yeah, I think that would be reasonable.

Or you could go to a Y Combinator. The first thing you need to know is that, something needs a patent. You, you need to need to assess there’s two parts to every medical invention. There’s the medical part of it, which doctors are great at knowing if something is actually gonna sell.

Solve a problem. And then there’s the business side of it, which is a great mystery to most doctors. And so the business side of it is how do you make money with the thing? And that is quite specific. And it’s also quite different based on each type of thing, whether it’s a test or a drug or, a diagnostic test or a device.

And so it’s really variable. Now doctors have some advantages because they understand insurance, at least some doctors do, but so the business part of it is where most doctors need lots of help. And so that’s where, going to accelerators or going to your local university business school and see if someone will help you.

To make an idea of understanding a business plan is really important. And I would say that the very best thing to do is to just start reaching out. There’s no course, that’s going to make you an expert at this, but you just have to start reaching out for help. But I will tell doctors that if you have an idea don’t go and publish it on the internet or go blabbing to a lot of people, because then it becomes difficult to patent that idea.

And a patent is important in, making sure that you protect your idea so that it can make money.

Mike Woo-Ming: Okay, so then the next step would be one of the steps you do is find a patent is that the time where you should start considering. Having an attorney on board to considering doing NDAs and things like that.

Swarna: Oh, I think, you can find a PA a patent attorney and you don’t need any huge names. You need someone with obviously, some experience in the field and you file. What’s called a non-provisional one-year patent. Just protect your idea. Yeah. And then you have anyone you tell, you have them sign a non-disclosure agreement, and then you start feeling out whether your idea has any business legs.

And I think, doctors are pretty good at knowing whether their idea has a real medical legs, in the sense that it’ll solve a problem and it’s needed. But really the business part of it is where I see doctors are a little bit weak and. I think it’s normal because we don’t get any business training.

Now, on the other hand, there’s a ton of these business guys and engineers who have ideas, especially in the medical device world, but they have no idea whether it’s going to solve a medical problem because medicine is very complex and unique with the workflow and stuff. So I think, from from the standpoint of not understanding the business side of it versus not understanding the medical side of it, we’re at a huge advantage.

Mike Woo-Ming: Now let’s talk about it. Your situation. So you had. You started you had your device, how did you start spreading it? Did you have colleagues that you wanted to, for them to test these? How did, how did it start for you?

Swarna: Yeah, so that’s great. So I started off wondering if it, my idea, I felt like someone must’ve thought of it. I was just like, God, it’s like technology. That’s already out there. It’s negative pressure therapy and someone must’ve thought of this utility. And so I was just, basically, that was why my first step was to go to a patent attorney and say, I’m sure someone thought of this.

And they were shockingly no one’s thought of it. And I was like, really that’s crazy. So then we filed the patent and then I was like I think it’s a great idea, but does anyone else think it’s a great idea? Sorry. Say that again. How long did the process take? Because I know God that takes forever or so basically once you file a patent, you won’t hear anything back from the patent office for three years, and then you can go through the whole process of, getting a patent issued.

That’s a process. And so a lot of times, When something starts off patenting, it’s like in a research lab and there’s no idea of forming a company. So it you can do a patent independent of forming a company and commercializing something you need. So that’s often universities patent stuff with no idea that they’re actually going to develop it into something that’s just a way of protecting your idea.

So no one else steals it basically. And so that takes a while. And then after you have, I had the Penn, that was like does anyone else think it’s a good idea? So then what we did was basically I started talking to other surgeons I knew and showing them the idea, and if I thought there were people who would actually steal the idea, I made them sign a non-disclosure agreement.

And then, cause. Most doctors won’t do anything because, they don’t a don’t know and B they’re not, but there are people who will like, we all know from our training, who would be like that. So that’s diverse. And so basically once I got a whole bunch of surgeons who were like, immediately Oh my, my goodness, this would be so awesome.

And yeah, I get it. Then, it was like, what’s the next step? I needed to build that business plan. And so I’m in Houston. And rice university has a business school here and through the graduate students there, I was able to build a rudimentary business plan, doing some market research on understanding how much money we could make with this, because let me tell ya, no investor going to give you any money unless you show them that there’s a big.

A business opportunity. And then once we did that, we were able to start, talking about it in a pitch competition. So that’s like a big thing with the startup world. And so we entered a pitch competition in 2017 and I basically won. And so I was just like, Hey, that’s I wasn’t ready for that.

I was just like, I didn’t, it was my first pitch competition. And I was just like, okay, let’s see what this is all about. And then we won and I was like, Hey, I like this, just kidding. It was a kind of like the way you communicate your idea to people and you do it in a way, so you don’t give away the state secrets.

And then once we did that, people started to be like, Oh, maybe this is something serious. And then, you keep refining, and then you learn all the steps involved in commercializing something. And from that point forward in 2017, we have a prototype. Now we’ve developed an, a large animal model to test it in.

So the DA requires you to test your device in animals before you go into humans. And now we’re at a point where we have to get some feedback from the FDA and then proceed forward. So then we can file for FDA clearance and then go into humans and et cetera, et cetera.

Mike Woo-Ming: When was the day where you decided I need to focus on my business and close my practice? What was the thing? What was the catalyst for that?

Swarna: That’s a great point. I think the day came, so that was hard because, I like operating, I loved it. And when you spend so much, not only you, my whole identity. I think this is really true for a lot of physicians. Your identity becomes wrapped up with being a physician because, we spend enormous amounts of time, mental energy, physical energy doing that.

And everyone calls you a doctor all the time. And so it’s tough to give that up, that’s how you’re known. I live in a. And a suburb where if I go anywhere, chances are even as a subspecialist. People like have seen me as a patient or they know me cause there’s their family member saw me.

And so I’m always doctor to everyone. And that’s a little bit of a weird public persona that you have. There are bad downsides to it, when you spend your whole life working, 60, 80 hours a week doing stuff, it’s just becomes like part of your nature. But I think what happened was one day, like basically.

I think I had a case scheduled and then I had something else that was going on and the case got delayed and I got super irritated because it meant that like my other business thing would totally have to be rescheduled because of the, or, and, that happens in the, or, All surgeons have cases rescheduled because of surgical emergencies.

And we understand cause some other patient has needs the, or more, but I was just pissed because I was just like, God, cause I’d waited a long time to talk to this other person and yeah. That’s just really hard. It meant it pushing it back so much. And at that point I realized, because at that point I was only practicing about one third time and it was the minimum viable amount I could practice to make it economically worth it.

And at that point I realized if I’m this irritated about a case being rescheduled, maybe it’s time to just quit. And I could spend, and I wasn’t having enough time to focus on my business to begin with. And I was just like, okay, you don’t have enough time to really manage this business and grow it the way you need to grow.

Cause you know, I was already working like a dog constantly and then the other, 10 hours a week I was spending so practicing, I could totally like. Put it into the business and I was mad about the or thing and, we all get mad sometimes, but I was just unreasonably mad and I was just like, forget it. Okay. It’s time to stop practice.

Mike Woo-Ming: So I’m always curious when doctors are in the trenches like yourself, they’re out of practice just to get a bit of a flavor. So you’re out of practice. Now what’s a typical day look like for you.

Swarna: Oh, so different. It took me awhile to get used to like what, how it’s different.

Because I think as physicians, we just are used to pushing ourselves through no matter how we feel, because the schedule is largely dictated by other people, whether it’s your office scheduler or the Orr or your patients calling you and yakking about whatever, your time is never your own.

And then when your time becomes your own, it’s very different. There’s still a lot of focus you have to do, but Stuff is not so automatic for me now, partially because I’m doing something I’ve never done before, so that I have to focus a lot more. And I have to spend a lot of time learning, which is different, once you get good at practice of medicine, you still learn.

And of course we do CME, but 90% of what you do is like autopilot, right? I could practically close my eyes and still do an appendectomy or do a colon resection because basically I’ve done so many of them, it doesn’t go away. Yeah, not literally, but so that’s the thing about it.

It’s very different. So I get up and then, especially with the pandemic, it’s really weird. So last year, I did a lot of traveling. I probably went on 20 business trips. Cause you know, you have to go meet investors and pitch and stuff, but the pandemic has really changed things for business. And I think it’s probably some of it’s going to stick around because it’s been so long.

That, we do so much on zoom now. I get up and then basically I start work at eight o’clock and then I work for a period of whatever, like three hours really intensely. And then, I structure my work. So I do some like projects, like things I have to focus on. And then I do what I call the.

The busy work, like the answering emails and then, doing all the little administrative things and then take a break for lunch and you have to really structure your day in a very different way than you would when you were, in practice. So it’s very different, but there’s a lot of work to do, nonetheless.

I still have what I call three shifts of work. So I do work in the morning, take a break for lunch, do a little bit of busy work, work a little bit more intensely. Take a break in the evening, maybe do some exercise and then have a period of, two or three hours in the evening where I do intense work again.

So it’s it’s a long day, but that’s just, it takes a while to get used to working differently. Think work versus, Running around work. That’s what I call it.

Mike Woo-Ming: Control of your schedule for the most part, right?

Swarna: It is a joy though. I have to say, being in control of your schedule is like phenomenal feeling. And I was like, most people live this way, their whole lives. That’s just crazy.

Mike Woo-Ming: And your team is a virtual then I assume when you work from home.

Swarna: Yeah. I think in general, I think. When you do like medical entrepreneurship, if you’re in certain areas like maybe Silicon Valley or you’re in, even in San Diego or in Boston, there’s other people right in the area with the expertise you need. But in Houston, there’s not really so many people. And so our team has been distributed to from the get-go

Mike Woo-Ming: wonderful, but this has been a great. Snapshot at what you do. What advice would you give? Someone who’s considering getting into medical devices. You’ve, we’ve talked about it before, but just some of my words of advice or encouragement you’d want to give to someone out that’s out there.

Swarna: I would say that, I had zero business training. So I think that’s important to realize because a lot of people, I’ve talked to who come to me specifically for advice are always just should I get an MBA or is there a course to do this? And the answer is not really. And I don’t think an MBA is really useful. It’s not for this purpose. It can be useful if you want to do consulting or certain kinds of things, but not for the medical administrator.

That’s a certain kind of healthcare MBA, but I think if you want to do something like this, the first thing to do is to see just start, you can do a little bit at a time and check out your idea.

And basically by using some of the resources I mentioned earlier, going to those websites and then just start seeing if your idea’s any good. If your idea is good, then you can start working on it. And it’s not something that you have to quit your job to start working on. This can be a night and weekends kind of thing, and you can put in a little elbow grease and just see how it goes, because a lot of it is done virtually and over the internet through emails and conversations, and every doctor can find a little bit of time at lunch breaks and, at five o’clock to have a phone call or two and then figure out what’s going on.

But I would just say start instead of just daydreaming about it for another year, just try and put some, just. Try and put it into action and, make yourself a small goal. Oh, I’m going to talk to, two people this week to vet the idea. And then, even if it’s as small as, Hey, find that doctor on that podcast who became an entrepreneur and ask her, some specific questions, everything you do is a little step in knowledge.

Mike Woo-Ming: There’s a lot to learn, have fun with it. Along the way. I truly enjoyed our talks and where can they go to find out more information about yourself or your device? Where can a, we’re going to go and find it?

Swarna: My website doesn’t have much because we can’t say too much until we have approval, but you can go to noleustechnologies.com to learn a little bit, but if you’re interested in learning more about how to do some entrepreneurship, I’d be happy to talk to anyone for sure. A 15, 20 minute conversation to give them a little direction and they, people could just email me.

And it’s my first name. swarna@nolinastechnologies.com. And I think that is the easiest way to get started because it’s really tough. I totally understand that when you’re working as a physician and this world is very nebulous and the resources are out there, but there’s too many and there’s no direction. Sometimes it helps to have a little bit of specific direction to get started.

Mike Woo-Ming: I love it. Thank you again, Swarna, I know you’ve been busy. I know it took us some time to get it, but I can definitely feel that people are going to get a lot from this call today. So thank you so much

Swarna: excited. And I thank you for doing this and helping doctors have an outlet and some ideas, and I’m, podcasts are great. That’s been my pandemic hobby to start listening to podcasts when I go on my daily walks. So I’m all about them. Thank you again, Mike.

Mike Woo-Ming: Thank you again, everybody. Thank you for listing. And just as Dr. Swarna said. Don’t wait for another year. If you have an idea, just start. It’s all about keep moving forward.

All right. Thank you. Thanks again. I’ll let you know when this call is up. Thanks again.

We’ve covered all types of businesses on the BootstrapMD podcast, but one of the areas that we have not covered  that has had a tremendous amount of interest is developing successful phone apps.  This internist reached out to me over six months ago, and I’m so glad we are finally able to bring him on the show! 

Dr. Daniel Erichsen is a sleep specialist and the founder of Bedtyme, an app to help people overcome insomnia through better sleep education. We cover, warts and all, how he brought this app to the marketplace, and is now certifying sleep health educators to spread his vision even further.  I think you’ll enjoy and learn a lot from this lively interview!

LINKS MENTIONED

Bedtyme –  health app to help insomnia sufferers restore the power of sleep

Https://www.bedtyme.co

The Sleep Health School – online sleep education and coaching portal

https://www.thesleephealthschool.com

Sleep Health School Youtube and Podcast
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UC_tdQDMQon0CfD0xAbZPNDg

RAW TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 0:17
Hey guys, it’s Dr. Mike Woo-Ming. Welcome to another episode of BootstrapMD. If you’ve been following us on the program, you know, I love to spotlight physician entrepreneurs. And actually, last summer, this doctor reached out to me, and unfortunately, I don’t know if it went into my spam folder, or not, but once I heard about his story, I said, I need to have this physician on. His name is Dr. Daniel Erichsen. He is from Eugene, Oregon. He’s a sleep specialist. But he had an idea about just basically sharing his message more out into the world. You know, outside of his patients, he saw that there was a dearth of information on insomnia and other aspects related to sleep, and he wanted to create an app. And I know many of you are interested in either creating an app or maybe you have an app available, and maybe you don’t know how to market it. He was actually successful six weeks after he launched his app. We’re gonna hear all about the trials and tribulations that actually led to creating a website for certification of sleep providers. But enough from me, they want to hear from you, Dr. Daniel Erichsen, welcome to the show.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 1:31
Thanks so much for having me. I really, really enjoy talking to you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 1:35
This is good. And, you know, I think a lot of times when I have a lot of doctors who either are entrepreneurs, or what I call want-trepreneurs, and maybe they live vicariously through us, and I always try to highlight examples of doctors who are actually out there in the trenches. So, before we begin, I always like to hear about origin stories, a little bit of a comic book nerd, you know, how did Peter Parker become Spider Man? So how did you become, from Dr. Daniel Erickson to the sleep coach?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 2:08
So absolutely, it’s a good one. And you know, I love this origin story. So I’ll share mine, which is this one. So just very briefly, my core specialties are actually in pediatrics, and I was I did my residency back in the Bronx, New York. And I thought I was going to be like, I knew I needed to, I wanted to niche down to become a little bit more narrow, and I thought it would be an intensivist maybe, or something like that. But I realized that lifestyle wasn’t for me, I wanted something more kind of, you know, more lifestyle friendly, if you will. And it so happened that a friend of mine just mentioned, hey Daniel, do you know that there’s a fellowship and sleep medicine? And I was really curious and intrigued, and I applied, got it, got the fellowship, and I really enjoyed it. And during fellowship, I learned mostly about sleep apnea. That’s like the big thing and a little bit about insomnia. But then, as I started practicing as an attending, which is about 10 years now, 10 years ago, now, I saw that insomnia is really, really a big problem. You know, just as big as sleep apnea. A lot of people struggle with sleep. And I would teach these methods called cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. It’s kind of a mouthful, but it’s quite straight forward. And I would always, or very often, I would ask people, you know, when I heard them talk about their insomnia, I would say, Have you heard about CBTI? Have you heard about CBT? And you know, either they would say no, or do they go like CBD? Yeah, I’ve tried that. I’ve tried CBD. I was like, no, not CBD, CBT. And so anyway, that’s this just a way of saying, like, I realized that there were millions of people struggling and like, really, virtually nobody got like, a helpful message. So that’s, somewhere along the journey, I was like, there has to be a better way. There must be a way of getting the message out there to people. And that’s how I kind of transitioned, you know, towards being a sleep coach.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 4:00
Now, you know, most of our listeners, we do have doctors and non doctors but you know, most of our listeners are doctors. And I can’t even remember if we got any education on sleep. I know a lot of us had lack of sleep, I know I did in my residency, and we continue to have this and obviously, it’s a huge problem. So can you define for us, what is your definition of insomnia?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 4:26
No, no, that’s really good question. I’m very important because it’s there’s often a lot of confusion, sleep deprivation, which which we had as residents, is very different. That’s just you don’t have enough opportunity for sleep. And when you get a chance to sleep, you typically have no problems whatsoever sleeping you asleep really easily, in fact. Where as insomnia, it’s a struggle. It’s when somebody tells you like, I just can’t fall asleep. I can’t stay asleep no matter what I do nothing helps. And that’s the sense that there’s something wrong and basically, they’re really, really trying hard to sleep but sleep just doesn’t happen for them. That struggle, that is insomnia.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 5:03
So, when you were deciding to create an app, first, why did you consider creating an app for insomnia?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 5:13
That’s a good question. And that actually goes back to a not very successful venture with an app actually many, many years ago. This was just after I finished fellowship. And I had this idea that you could create an app that people could take their smartphone, and use this, you know, the thing you use like, when you’re jogging, you put on your arm? People could put their smartphone on their legs, and check if they had like leg movements, kind of like restless legs in their sleep and monitor it. And that’s one of those, like, you create a product that nobody wants. There’s no interest for that whatsoever.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 5:47
Or at least it’s hard to market.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 5:49
It’s hard to market, exactly. And hard to get people interested in. But that was with a friend who was a programer himself. So apps were a little bit on my radar. And I had a little bit of experience with it. And, so I just felt like with everybody having a smartphone and the ease of just downloading an app and being right there, that sort of, you know, led me towards thinking an app would be a really good way.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 6:17
Now, the app is called Bedtyme, and that’s B-e-d-t-y-m-e, so it’s with a “Y”. How did that get started?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 6:25
Yes. So what happens so in clinic, very briefly here, the core of CBTI, is that, someone who has trouble sleeping often spends a lot of time in bed, and actually, when they spend less time in bed and are more sleepy when they go to bed, that typically helps. So I had this idea, and I realize it was kind of a naive idea that, you could basically boil it down to an algorithm. That if somebody said, Okay, I’m going to spend this amount of time in bed, and it calculates how much percentage of that based sleep, then it could do a suggestion, it could be basically almost like an automatic solution. So I thought that was fantastic, when I thought of the idea. And so I thought, this could be a simple algorithmic solution that could really help people. So and the idea actually came to me during the sleep conference in 2017, in June in Boston. I just I had that idea. And it took awhile, It took about six months until I started executing it. And I found online, on like one of these websites, I found a developer in Russia that could build it for me. And, you know, it was expensive, it was like 40 bucks an hour. And the total cost of creating that app honestly, was probably like $40 or $50,000 or something. And the sad part of that was that, my wife actually was sort of skeptical. She was like, Daniel, how is this actually going to help people? I was like, Oh it’s gonna work great, people are just gonna sleep better. But she was right. When we launched that first one, people used it, but nobody actually got better. Because it was lacking in education and support and guidance, etc., people didn’t really do much better. But another learning point here is that you often have an idea and you launch it, and then easily at that point, I could have easily gone, Oh, no, it didn’t work. Let me like scratch the whole idea. But I knew there was something there. So that became a complete rehaul, where instead, I added a curriculum and built in coach within the app. And that’s when it really started to work. So you mentioned like, six weeks after launching, it started making money. That was actually a relaunch, but since then, it has is starting doing really, really well.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 8:43
So you mentioned it cost, maybe $40 to $50,000. Was it just the development time for the algorithm? Or was this guy taking you for a ride? What’s what, tell me more about that? That’s a pretty expensive for an app. Or is it? I don’t know.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 8:59
I would say overall, I think development costs are coming down quickly, but I think they were a good company. It was just that the way I had created it, It was pretty complex and it did require a lot of work. But what then happened was, actually was very serendipitous, my kids had a playdate with another kid, and they’re dad was mentioning that he was an app developer. And he actually did different types of apps where the first one was like native only for for iOS only for Apple. But there are these softwares now where you can create for both, and we used so he used that. So anyway, long story short here, that recreating it actually became much less costly than the first one. So for anyone out there thinking about it, we use software that can can create for both. And that becomes much less costly.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 10:08
Now, so you found a local developer, a friend, or a friend of a friend. Did that seem to speed up the development process, rather than going overseas?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 10:18
It was much, it was so much better. You know, imagine with the first developer that was in Russia, and again, they were nice people. But it was also like, I’d have to sketch things on a paper, take a picture and send it to them, they created it, they sent it back to me. Then I’d have to say, oh no this is not what I wanted. And also, what was so nerve racking, honestly, was that whenever there was a bug, I had to describe it to them, they had to try to figure it out, and then create a new build, and it could take like weeks. And in the meantime, a client couldn’t access anything. It was very nerve racking, it’s so much better to have someone within the company. And by the way, the local person, we found his name is Hank, I gave him a part of the company, for him to become the CTO. And that also, when we have somebody on board like that, it makes a huge difference.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 11:13
Yeah, yeah, that opens up a whole lot of new questions. And I know we’re gonna probably gonna get a lot a lot of feedback from this call. But just so I have the timeframe, so you originally launched it in 2017?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 11:28
The idea came June 2017, started actually working on it with this Russian company in like January of 2018. And launched it for the first time in, I want to say was like, August or September of 2018. And then it took about like, six months to figure out that the initial thing wasn’t working. We relaunched it with the same Russian company, like a second relaunch, you know, when was that? That was like,maybe mid 2019. And then, the final reversion happened, and then that relaunch was about the time I emailed you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 12:09
Okay. Okay, so that was in July.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 12:11
Yes. 2020.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 12:13
So when you initially made your deal with the local developer, was it strictly cash for services? Or did you say, Hey, I’m going to give you a piece of the company? When did that discussion happen?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 12:29
No, no, absolutely. That is a very good question. And it’s a nice piece of the story there. So we had this play date and he talked about how he was an app developer. and me and my wife, and by the way, she’s a big part of the company, most of the good ideas come from her. We were kind of like, He’s perfect for us and he lives in Eugene. It’s kind of crazy. So I literally when I came home, I just texted him and said, Hey, do you want to meet up in Starbucks tomorrow? And we did. So he came there. And I was a little bit nervous, because I really wanted him. But I had to, like, convince him that this was a good idea. So I basically told him, like, Listen, we have this app. And we have seen that people are willing to pay money for this type of service. And we have brought in a little bit of money. So I was just convincing him that it would be a good deal. And I offered him a small percentage in the company, for him to become the CTO. And now he has a team in China that he works with for other purposes, so he just oversees it. And then we’ve paid them a little bit anddevelopers, but that that’s how it happened, basically.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 13:31
Great, great. Great. That’s really good to know. So let’s talk about the app itself. I know we talked a little bit about it. It’s called Bedtyme, and what it’s all about.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 13:44
Absolutely. So again, when somebody has trouble sleeping, like insomnia, it’s sort of like an anxiety and miseducation thing. So it’s really pretty straightforward. And by the way, I want to quickly mention that there is this very successful app for weight loss that is called Noom, you know about it? We basically have the exact same model, we took it from them really. So every day on the app, you get this like an educational text module…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 14:16
We might have to edit that out, by the way, just kidding!

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 14:24
No problem. Although, I don’t think they mind actually, I’ve told them that I took it from them on Twitter. They said something like, Oh, you know, good for you or something like that. So they know it. But yeah, so every day you get an educational text module and and you have access to coaching within the app. And that actually, is it. So every day you learn something and there’s a little tracking function, you can count see how you’re doing? And that’s it. It’s pretty simple that is it.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 14:53
So you’re going to steal my thunder because there’s this joke that I had my back my head, you just give them content so they fall asleep. How does it work? It’s a paid model or free trial? How’s the financials? How do you set that up?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 15:12
Yeah, exactly, I think it’s called freemium. So it’s free for one week and then, it’s kind of like Netflix, you sign up for free, but you do give your payment information, so if you if you don’t unsubscribe, then you are subscribed, and you will be charged after one week. And, we started off with a two week free trial, and then it was, I believe, $39 per month and then we went up to $69. And, the thing is that it requires a lot of education and coaching. So if you compare to other products, this is still very cheap. So we actually just a few weeks ago, we upped the price to $129. So after a free trial, it’s $129, which I think is going to be a good price for a long period of time. But people are still purchasing it, it’s still doing well, etc. So that’s our current model.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 16:03
I gotta ask, are you willing to share numbers? Either like users or revenue, you know, from the app?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 16:10
Absolutely. So at this point in time, in my interface as a coach only, I only see the clients that I talked with in the last week. So there are probably more, but I think I have around 40 to 50 active paying clients. But we only recently changed the price. So I’ll share with you that at this point in time, the app is bringing in probably around $2500 a month.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 16:37
Very nice. Very nice. Now, I know that you’re a sleep specialist. Has that been able to allow you to reduce your hours? Or are you still working full time? How has this effected your job, your career?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 16:53
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So I’m still I haven’t actually paid myself anything from the money we’re bringing in. And I have gone down to a part time position. So I went down 100% to 70%. And partly it is because yeah, I really want to focus more on the side projects. And, partly it was because of COVID, too, things became very slow. I’m RVU based, so it made sense also to decrease my time. So right now, I’m working 70%, three days a week.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 17:24
Now, I like what you said, you know, it’s very difficult to hit a home run when you’re first up at bat. And it’s actually gratifying to hear, you mentioned that you had a failure, your first first attempt didn’t succeed as you wanted it to. You got the app out of the way, it’s successful. It’s on iOS, and now it’s on Android as well. You mentioned that you there are companies out there that let you do both. And then I guess, if you could go back in a time machine and change it, you probably start with that. Are there any other lessons learned from from this app? Or did everything go as smooth, as you’re telling us it did?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 18:12
No, it was not very smooth at all, actually. You know, again, the first version of the app, which was quite expensive, the idea was not sound, it was not a good model. So I think for anyone out there that has this, you know, fairly ambitious like entrepreneur idea, your first product may very well be not that great. But you can learn so much from that if you’re willing to change trajectory, learn from from what didn’t work, then iteration by iteration, you will get to a product that works. That’s huge.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 18:52
Now, sometimes you see things like with Shark Tank, or they’ll have a commercial where they’re launching a product and they click the on button, I’m sure seeing this in like dollar signs appearing. But we all know, that’s not reality. How did you get your app? How did you start marketing it? How did how do people find you? I don’t know what the landscape is on sleep related apps out there. How did you really stand out in the marketplace?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 19:23
Oh, that’s a great question. And that leads us to kind of a whole different topic. So when I started working on this app, I was like, I think I’m starting to become an entrepreneur. I have to learn more about this. And you know, went on YouTube and like heard people talk and stuff like that. And one person that I came across that you probably come across them is Gary Vaynerchuk or Gary V. So for anyone who isn’t familair, he’s many things but one thing he’s really good with is marketing and social media, etc. So one thing he said I believe I heard him say it, and I read it in one of his books too, was that whenever you have an idea, you’ve got to start talking about it, you got to start talking about your idea. And that, that hit home with me, I was like, I gotta do that. So I started a YouTube channel, like two and a half years ago. And I just talked about sleep and insomnia, and shared whatever I knew about it. And that became super important for many reasons. I will say actually, number one was this, that I thought I understood insomnia, but I didn’t. You know, I only partially understood it. Then when people would submit comments, I was like, oh, that’s a good call, I haven’t thought about that. It really made me understand and my teaching improved immensely. That was number one. Number two is, I built a following. Little by little, and this is a slow process, but little by little, more and more people found it and the channel grew. So when I had a product, I had somebody that could share it, and they almost became like my beta testers, you know, my followers. So that is basically all the marketing is through that YouTube channel, and also word of mouth and a little bit other things. But that became really helpful.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 21:10
I love it. So basically, free content. So you’re not paying for advertising at this point?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 21:18
No, I mean, we’ve done like, $10 Facebook campaigns, fiddled around a little bit, but it really, it’s only content marketing, exactly. Just sharing helpful information, and then a lot of people just come to you then, because they trust you and want to work with you.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 21:37
So your company, you said your wife is involved, as well as, of course, the CTO. Are there other employees that you have or is that about it?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 21:47
Yeah, that’s really it. We have one more partner, actually. His name is Alexander, he also serendipitously found me on the YouTube channel. He happened to have a company where he does like UX design, you know, user interface design. And he helped with designing the app. So that’s the four of us, the partners, and we’re in that space of a startup where, we’re doing everything like marketing, coaching, you know, everything ourselves. But I think we’re very close to being able to hire somebody. I think that the next step for us is to hire a second coach. And so that’ll be the next kind of like, litmus test of the model here. Because a lot of the clients I have are people that sort of know me from the YouTube channel. So, will it still work when we have a hired coach? I’m sure it will. You know, again, we have to tweak it, but that’s kind of the next step for us.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 22:46
Well, and obviously, you’re in a space that is going to continue to grow. I assume from the pandemic, you know, I don’t know anybody who’s been sleeping soundly since the pandemic. Maybe right place, right time. But did you see any changes from when you when you launched? I guess, it’s hard to say. Because you actually launched it during the pandemic? For the most part, right?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 23:08
Yeah, that’s right. I think, again, when you’re in the phase, you have some natural growth, and I don’t know if it’s accelerated with the pandemic or not. But, just generally speaking, I can tell that definitely the pandemic has affected people’s sleep, and there a lot of people having trouble sleeping nowadays. It’s like that combination of the stress, but also the isolation and inactivity. Insomnia, a lot of times comes from, you know, if you have a lot more time on your hands, more time to ponder your sleep and more things to focus on, it actually typically gets worse. So, yeah, it’s a lot more people have trouble sleeping now.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 23:44
Yeah, I mean, just from a personal standpoint, my son actually has a lot of issues with insomnia. And you know, it’s because his mind’s racing, and then it’s just a vicious cycle. And, I know we spend money on it. Everything from pillows, to cool blankets, to meditation apps, CBD. Not yet CBT, but yeah, it certainly is a big issue. But you didn’t rest on your laurels, you decided to create something called the Sleep Coach School. What is that about?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 24:21
Absolutely, it started off as kind of a separate project. But now I see there’s a lot of synergy between the two. So during this journey, I was on Twitter, and I connected with these two guys, Michael and Martin, who are both here in Oregon, and they’re also really into like helping people with insomnia. So we chatted here and there, and a common theme was that we were like, Oh my gosh, look at this article, it’s so unhelpful and this is going to cause so much stress. Also like, Oh, look at this person that calls himself a sleep coach, but all they say is not helpful at all. And then Martin, he was like, I wish there was some kind of like certification. So you could at least know that this person knows what they talk about, you know? And then I was like, there’s nothing like that, why don’t we start that? Like, you know, why don’t we start actually certifying coaches? And Michael, the other guy who was like, Yeah, sure. And Martin had a lot on his plate so he didn’t join. But me and this other guy, Michael, we did that. So it became an online school is called The Sleep Coach School. And it was really designed for someone, our initial thought was maybe someone who’s a counselor, or maybe doctor who wants to learn more about it. But I realized, after a while, that probably isn’t going to be the thing because doctors, counselors, we already have so much on our own plates. But so what we see now is that, it’s mostly somebody who actually had trouble sleeping, got past it, and now wants to help others. Those have become most of our students that we certify.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 25:53
I think it helped too because, I believe you have an MD or a DO behind your name. That actually accelerated the process and made it more, certifiable, so to speak. Or legitimate.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 26:06
Absolutely. And I think, to this day, still, being a doctor, it means something, a lot of people have confidence in doctors. And something I thought about, that may be helpful for anyone that tunes in here. You know, as a doctor, you do some things that are kind of pure medical. Like, you cannot call yourself, I don’t know, a knee coach and start doing knee operations. That’s not gonna happen, that’s not ethical, that’s not right. But then you have things like, in sleep, for example, we have insomnia. Which is really not medical, it’s just education and guidance. And, you had your guest from the other podcast, was named Kevin…

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 26:48
Cucarro, yeah,

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 26:49
Cucarro, for example, a pain doctor who sees that education, about your relationship with pain, for example, is often what the problem is. And you can see that, as a doctor, you actually do a lot of coaching, too. So you could have, for example, a pediatrician who tells people how to potty train. They could become a coach for that. It’s a silly example, but what I want to say is that as a doctor, you have a lot of opportunity, because you actually do a lot of coaching. And you could take that into a whole different space, if you want to.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 27:24
What I like about this, I’ve coached doctors for years, and I’ve had a couple of sleep doctors who wanted to do entrepreneurial. Unfortunately, they got into some financial issues. I know, one particular doctor, he had a sleep center, that because of declining reimbursements, he had to close it. So, it’s gratifying to hear someone, a doctor who like figured it out. And yes, it is something that you can do. And it sounds like, not only are you generating revenue from it sounds like you’re having fun doing it too.

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 28:04
Absolutely. It’s super gratifying. I mean, literally, almost every week, somebody sends me messages saying, I’m sleeping again, after so many years of struggling and it’s like you changed my life. You know, which is, by the way, all of us really, went to medicine for that. Right. And you can do that in traditional medicine but, you can do that as a coach too. And it’s, it’s super gratifying. Absolutely.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 28:31
And then in addition too, talk about your reach now. I mean, obviously, you would have your patients in Eugene, but now, you know, I assume you’re you’ve got people from all around the United States and maybe beyond?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 28:43
100%. I had a client that came on, you know, on Bedtyme on the app, popped up as a client yesterday and she was mentioning like, Oh, it’s super hot here, I’m in Australia. And I was like, so cool. It was so cool. I love every client wherever they are, but just reaching people in Australia or you know, wherever it’s really cool. Yeah.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 29:04
Well, it sounds like you’re having a fun time. All the best of success to you. The name of the app is Bedtyme B-E-D-T-Y-M-E at bedtime.co. Dot C-O if you want to find out. And thesleepcoachschool.com, you also have a YouTube channel and a podcast also called The Sleep Coach School. It’s been great talking with you Daniel. I know a lot of people are gonna get a lot out of this. If you have any advice for you know, an aspiring physician, App Inventor or developer. What advice would you give them?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 29:43
Absolutely. I would say you know the classic one is just do it. Go ahead and do it. If you have that within you and feel like, I should be doing this, I wanted to do it. Do it. And the thing is that yes, it I spent a lot of money on initial product that didn’t really work that well, but I learned a ton from it. And if you’re willing go there, learn from things that may not be that comfortable in beginning, you can really get to a place where things turn around, you make back your investment and beyond. You help people and it can be fantastic. So just take the plunge, do it, and you’ll learn.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 30:21
Thank you so much. I so many lessons that we learned here. I love how you pivoted, you didn’t give up, you knew that you had something of value to the world. And I’m sure there were times when you wanted to stop, right? You wanted to say, enough’s enough. I know for you, or maybe your spouse, family and friends. But I think the world is a better place for it, guys. So Daniel, any last minute thoughts before we end the call today?

Dr. Daniel Erichsen 30:52
No, I just want to say that if anyone is just curious or wants to connect, have questions, then, you know, I’ll share my bio with with you, Mike, and very happy to talk with anyone that’s even remotely interested in anything I do.

Dr. Mike Woo-Ming 31:08
Oh, wonderful. Well, thank you, Dr. Daniel. Again, it’s The Sleep Coach School, Bedtyme is the app. If you’re considering an app, and to want to learn more about it, I think, Daniel made a very generous offer out there. And I really appreciate it learned a lot. As always guys, don’t stay stagnant. Don’t just think about the idea over and over that someday it’s gonna happen. It’s not gonna happen, just like Dan says, unless you actually just do it. So again, guys, it’s all about keep moving forward.