What all medical device founders should know with John Kapitan, CEO of Kapstone Medical

Today's guest, John Kapitan is the CEO of Kapstone Medical, a company he founded in 2007 after 15 years in the medical device industry as a design engineer and regulatory affairs executive. John is an entrepreneur and expert in medical device design and commercialization.

Prior to creating Kapstone, John was a founding member of Altiva Corporation, a spinal implant company that was sold to Exactech, Inc. in 2008. His experience also includes AcroMed Corporation, DePuy AcroMed, and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation.

John received his BSME from Cornell University and MBA from the Weatherhead School of Management. He has designed and managed development for dozens of commercialized products, is an inventor on over 20 patents and patents pending, and has authored multiple industry articles. John enjoys spending time on his farm in Asheville, NC with his large family.

Insights from the discussion: 

• Don’t sacrifice your best idea for your first idea, spend more time in ideation phase than in the product development cycle
• How to make marketing/sales/product and quality the offense and defense strategies of the same team
• As a founder/entrepreneur you need to seek work life rhythm, not balance 

About Kapstone Medical: 

The Kapstone Medical Mission is to Inspire, Equip and Guide. Kapstone Medical partners with physician inventors and manufacturers to develop and commercialize new medical devices. We do this by providing services for design, prototyping, patenting, quality systems, and regulatory approvals. Kapstone Medical provides product development, quality management, and project management solutions to clients who value the knowledge, depth of experience, and resources that a highly capable outsource partner has to offer.

Show notes:

Website: https://www.kapstonemedical.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnkapitan/

John's email: jkapitan@kapstonemedical.com
Call Kapstone Medical: (714) 843-7852

Be a guest on the show: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEU7Owi8VDv30hzmWbj4JsXPKyfsWvKXHMeghEAyirAbR18A/viewform

Music by keldez

Qualio website:
https://www.qualio.com/

Previous episodes:
https://www.qualio.com/from-lab-to-launch-podcast

Apply to be on the show:
https://forms.gle/uUH2YtCFxJHrVGeL8

Music by keldez

Transcript

0:17

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. If this is your first time being here. Welcome. We share inspiring stories of people on the front lines of life sciences, bringing life saving products to market. And if that sounds like you, or you want to share your story, we'd love to hear from you. There's a form in the show notes here to apply, to be on the show. if you have an idea or know somebody, please submit their name. We'd love to get in touch. Today's guest is John Capitan, the CEO of Kapstone medical, which is a medical device consulting company They're a full service company for pre and post-market medical device companies in the U S and Europe. We wanted to bring John on the show today, not only because of his experience and expertise in medical devices, but also because he's a business owner, a serial entrepreneur and inventor, and he's got a lot of great advice. About how to run a company, how to think of marketing and sales and quality functions, like the offense and defense sides of the same team. And today's show, he talks about the proper mindset for medical device founders, like behaving like a medical device company long before you're actually approved. And as a founder, how to not sacrifice your best idea for your first idea, which is really interesting concept. And he talks about that a little bit. One of the things that I personally love that he shared is how to have a work-life rhythm, not balance. And lessons he's learned from running a family farm on the side he jokes that he has a 21st century job living in an 18th century farm Um, but lots of great advice well-rounded person loved having john on the show and hope you get some valuable insights from it as well let's bring them in

Grant: 1:46

John, thank you so much for joining the podcast today. Really excited to have you on the show.

John Kapitan: 1:51

I'm looking forward to being here and to our conversation. Absolutely.

Grant: 1:54

John's had a pretty interesting background and. Launching products as an inventor, a business owner, entrepreneur, a lot of other things. But John, just for those who don't know, you tell us a little bit about your career, how you landed on starting Kapstone medical, and some of your experiences leading up to.

John Kapitan: 2:09

Absolutely. So by background, I'm a trained engineer design engineer. I've got my mechanical engineering degree from Cornell university and really wanted to get into the biomedical or biomechanics field from day one. And had a chance to work with the Cleveland clinic, which is from Cleveland, Ohio. So it was coming back home after I graduated and. Got into an area that I thought was really fascinating. That was biomedical engineering from the standpoint of creating products in partnership with surgeon inventors or physician and ventures, not all of them are surgeons. And that really piqued my interest in this whole area of product development for medical devices. So that's subset of of life sciences that I've lived for the past 25 to 30 years has been in medical devices. And in that day-to-day. Trying to solve a clinical problem was really what drove me. And so I worked at first with mostly pediatric cardiologists and in trying to get. Trying to put our arms around what the clinical problems they were seeing were, what some potential solutions were, and then trying to develop those solutions into a device that we could either take the market or spin out or license out to a larger company and OEM. And like I said, that really drove my passion for this area, in my interest, in, in seeing those products. So fast forward, I've worked with both large companies and small companies mainly like to stay in the small company area, just because I think it's so dynamic, it's challenging. It's fast paced and it's a broad spectrum, meaning that there's no chance if you're in a small enough company to get pigeonholed into just one area. And and that's all you do. So the companies I've worked in, I've worn many different hats and done many different things. And to me, that's just what drove me. The reason I started Kapstone 15 years ago is because I was seeing. In the model that we were using for outsourcing and insourcing relative to product development again for med medical devices. And what I mean by that is I was on the, I was on the company side. I was director of product development, director of regulatory and quality all at the same time. As I said, when you're in a small company, you wear many hats. I'm not recommending. But but nevertheless, we were three or four people and we had to all do different things. So what I was trying to do is make my life easy. By developing some technologies in-house and then also outsourcing to various companies to just help us go faster. Put more products into our, the hands of our sales reps satisfy that many surgeons we were bringing on board and their desire for, to see improved products. And yet we had a limited internal staff. So I started outsourcing and the challenge I've found. There were a couple, but the main one was that I thought it was making my life easier by outsourcing, but I was actually making it harder. And the reason I was making it harder is because I found a product development, engineering firm. That's great. A design firm and they were awesome, but that's all they did. And they looked at the world through the lens of engineering. I then found a regulatory professional and that person. It was good, but they looked at the world through only their lens and same with quality and so on, as you can imagine. So what I ended up doing was playing traffic cop, right? The regulatory person didn't necessarily talk to the quality person who didn't have a relationship with the engineering team and, or the manufacturer. And so there was, there were finger pointing. There was a lot of miscommunication and I was having to try to put the pieces together myself. And so I thought, wow, Why not develop a company, starting a company that did all of those things under one roof so that we can have a single source solution, have a single point of contact for our customers. Who, again, w I was on that side of the equation. I was on the company side, hiring consultants. Now I'm a consultant getting hired by companies. But my approach was to develop a single source solution to alleviate the headaches that I was finding when I was on the company side, again, trying to hire people like myself. And that's what we did 15 years ago, and have grown the company now to where we literally can take a product cradle to grave or concept commercialization, depending on how you look at it with all of those residents areas that are necessary under one roof, or at least under our umbrella organization. Our customers have a single point of contact for all of their needs. And that has really blossomed from 2007 when I founded the company

Grant: 6:27

to today. Yeah. That sounds like an answer to many, a medical device. Founder's prayers to have it all wrapped into one. When you've vertically provided a solution vertically integrated from developing and concept testing, product development, all the way through. Post-launch into regulatory affairs and maintaining quality management. Long-term I think one of them, you said, yeah, go ahead.

John Kapitan: 6:51

I was just gonna say what a lot of people don't understand, and this is maybe one nugget is that, if you're a founder you're or you're an inventor and want to get a company off the ground often, they don't think about the requirements and the cost or the time or personnel for that matter of being a medical device company. So all of the effort is on developing the product and that's great. I totally believe in that. But in addition to that, you are a medical device company before your product gets to market, because if you're not setting up. Your quality system. If you're not operating the company in a way that you're going to operate, once you get your regulatory clearance or approval, whatever the classification may be, then it's going to be a rude awakening. Come the day that you want to start distributing your product and your, you find out you're missing, a, B and C in terms of your organization. So it's something that we do with. I guess you can say we're an incubator, but we're an incubator taken to the next level. And we're very much focused on the end game or the exit or the commercialization of that, not just on the early stage concept generation, which we also do, but there's a lot of elements to consider in that process, going from concept to being in the market that many people just don't know about or put off till a later date. And then again, they get that rude awakening.

Grant: 8:04

Yeah. Yeah. The broader perspective there is so valuable. We've talked to many people who have said similar things where they say in an effort to get the product developed as quickly as possible, because that's what, capital or VCs or people who have invested in the company want to see, they want to see the product. And so they'll focus on that. I'm hoping to get it to market quickly, but when they sacrifice quality, it ends up taking a lot longer because they have to double back and redo things that they thought they had already, workflows and things like that they thought had already been done. And another thing that I think you'd have an interesting perspective on is maybe that tension that as an entrepreneur, you face. Let's say that, getting funding is one of the biggest business challenges that a, medical device, founders that we've talked to face, how do I get money to get this off the ground? And hire my team and do all the product development that can be very costly. And so you have that additional pressure. With product development and adding quality to it. How have your companies that you've in your clients or in your own background you've worked with, how have you found that they've been able to balance that tension between those, which unfortunately I think can be seen as competing parts, right? Product development and quality. Do you use, do you see it as is there a world in which quality can actually. Enhanced product development or make it accelerate. Versus I think the accepted ideology today is that they tend to be, it tends to be dissonance and tension between the two. What are your thoughts on that?

John Kapitan: 9:26

I completely agree that quality taken broadly a broad sense of the term. Creative to your value. In other words, it doesn't have to just be a lot of people look at this. Like they would look at a sports team. Are you on offense or are you on defense? And they look at sales and marketing and product development is offensive. This is how we're creating actively creating value. Unfortunately, they look at quality as a necessary. It's our D our defense against the FDA coming in and shutting us down, or it's our cost of just being in this market. And let's just do the minimum acceptable and what I think they failed to realize when they have that kind of viewpoint, that quality is just a cost center, it's just a necessary evil or it's just, trying to keep us out of trouble is they fail to see the positive ways that. Looking at product development with a quality lens and I'm not sure. Letting quality drive the process. I'm talking about using quality to supplement or to come alongside and help create value with product development and in doing good design control, a good design control. For example, just to take one example, you can use many in the realm of quality systems. Good design control is not, does not have to be. It does not have to be expensive and doesn't have to delay projects in fact, written the right way. And in a pragmatic way, I would say with that is a good fit for the company culture and size and what they're trying to do. I believe increases value in a very proactive or offensive way to use the sports analogy in one way, by mitigating risks. We would be paying for, or, that company would be paying for if they didn't do that. So often you mentioned the example of somebody who's under the gun because they have investors and we want to see a product out as quickly as possible. In doing that and taking that and casting. Good design practice or best practices, and quite frankly, any other areas of the business may and usually does result in longer timelines delays and upset investors. Of the mistakes that were made or the pitfalls that are falling into the, or the just the things that were, are overlooked. And so just a company that doesn't view quality as an offensive opportunity, I think there's also in the product development route. And I talk about this all the time because I see it so much. We always tell people, don't fact suffice your best idea for your first idea. And what I mean by that is often. People are quick to jump over the definition of the problem and jump right into whatever the first solution is. They could think of they get investors around that idea and then they try to move as quickly as possible to market that particular. Product or that particular design. And what I see happening is often that's maybe not the best solution to the original problem. If they would've spent more time framing the problem, asking the right questions and planning their efforts, instead of just jumping into what we all love to do, which is prototype and test. No brain stuff and hold it in your hand and show it around. But the more they do in addressing those initial questions, formulating good questions, talking with people in the industry, potential customers, focus groups, that kind of thing. The more time they spent in the ideation phase, generally the more valuable the concept is that's coming out or one or two, maybe multiple concepts coming out of that. Call it phase zero or phase one of your process into the real meat of it, which has the product development cycle. And I think savvy investors will appreciate the work done before the whatever widget, that they're taking a look at as far as potential investment goes, because they realize that the company understands that this is a problem to be solved and there may be different ways to solve it. And we've evaluated the alternate. And now this is the one we've selected for this, and this reason. So don't sacrifice your best idea just for the first idea and it's, you can use that analogy for business planning. You can use it for product development and other things, but I think there's a few mistakes that people tend to make that I have seen over and over my career. And again, the one you brought up in terms of not giving quality. The the weight that it's due or the credit that it's due, quite frankly, in the development process and others. So those are just a few weeks.

Grant: 13:49

Yeah, I think that I love that analogy, the sports analogy of defense and offense. We were talking to a VC, a partner at a large VC firm at Venmo Menlo park ventures. And he was saying that when he's looking at an investment, he'll press on their quality practices to see what their attitude is about quality. Not necessarily if they have a quality management system in place or what they're using or whatever it may be, but just their attitude about it. And that. Make it more interested or less interested in participating in an investment round. And like you said, be very conscious of quality at the early stages at least have it part of your initial plan, because that can actually turn on a lot of savvy investors,

John Kapitan: 14:27

it can turn on or turn off. Yeah. Depending on where you are on that spectrum. And I will tell you that I've seen real life examples of at the end of not getting funding, but at the end, when a product and a company is looking to be sold and they're in do Dylan, this is, this actually happened. This company I was working with, they were in due diligence with a potential acquirer and of course, part of due diligence on this company part. This acquires part was to look at the product and in the company from multiple angles, obviously sales and marketing and that sort of thing. But also they have their quality people do a deep dive into not just the documentation on the product itself that they were looking to acquire, but also the quality system of the company, because it gave such a good perspective of, where along the spectrum does this company live relative to its views on quality and. That was going to have a very real impact on the valuation of the product at the end of the day. So part of the deal was the valuation was increased because it was a very solid, very robust quality. The solid quality documentation package to go along with it. And what it did for the company was to mitigate risk and allow a more seamless transition into them, owning the product. And that means they own the design history file and all of the quality problems. And along the way that kind of went with it they own that. And they knew that the better it was set up in terms of develop. With the quality system, the fewer headaches, they were going to have down the road and integrating it into their own system. And then of course, into, defending it as time went on as their own product. Cause they, they buy the product. That means they also buy the quality. Oh, the quality system, if that makes

Grant: 16:07

sense. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. That's a great story. Maybe we jump into some of your experience working with other companies, what are some, you've worked with a lot of companies at Kapstone. And so we'd love to hear just maybe some of the most memorable moments of clients overcoming challenges helping them launch and scale, some of those success stories like this one, you said where they had a very robust quality management system in place, and that added significantly to the evaluation of the acquisition. So I guess maybe some of the greatest hits of Kapstone clients or something like that.

John Kapitan: 16:37

That would be tough, but we do have the advantage of working with literally hundreds of different clients, because we are, we don't have our own products in the market. So we're agnostic from that standpoint, if you will. And so we get to work with companies large and small all the way up from the biggest players in med tech, to companies that have one person, and one idea pre-funding creak pre-commercialization and it's just fascinating again. Keeping on this theme of quality and product development or your views on quality? It's really fascinating because just as many examples as we've that we have, that I mentioned where value was increased because of the proactive approach to quality. Unfortunately, we also have the opposite, we've have some examples where our clients, despite our best efforts to guide them other than. I just didn't want to pay for quality and didn't want it now. I'm not talking about quality of the, the design itself, but really more of the ancillary activities that kind of wrap around the development of the product, like a robust risk analysis, for example, and they just wanted it. Quite frankly, let's see how quickly and cheaply we can get this done. And and I have seen in one particular case upon a potential acquisition, the value significantly decreased because of that. We have the example of the value increase and really the Goodwill accordingly, because a company that's got a solid quality system is seen as knowing what they're doing and appreciating, what needs to be done to be a. A medical device company, both legally and ethically, quite frankly. But we have also, other examples where it just doesn't pay to skip, important aspects of the quality system and their valuation was knocked down. I think if you look from the standpoint of you asked about, highlights, there are many one of the initial. When, one of the things we really like our mission statement that I developed 15 years ago and is as true today as it was then is to inspire guide and equip our customers to realize their dreams. So these are not our events that we're trying to revive. These are their dreams. And if we can inspire them to envision. A new reality with their product or their service or their company and existence, then we've done our job. If we can guide them along the way, avoid those pitfalls and foresee the risks and mitigate those risks, then we've done our job. And of course, if we can equip them with the tools and the resources they need, that's why I developed it as a single source solution. And I think some of our most memorable highlights. Has been working with individual physicians to take an idea that they have had. And usually it's one idea in their lifetime or maybe two, but they're not like companies that are pumping out three or four products per year. This is a different, this is. Aspect of our customer base. That's really fun to work with. These are individuals who are passionate about what they're doing. They're maybe they're physicians or individuals with just a, like I said, a passion for what they do and for how to improve it. And we've had a couple of examples of physician and mentors come to us and say, look, I admittedly know nothing about how to develop a product. I've got this great. I've got some limited funding. Can we work together to see this thing to fruition? And quite frankly, most of them were not as driven by the financial potential financial gain as they were by seeing their product come to life. In their hands or somebody else's hands to benefit their patients. And I truly mean that. I know it's easy to say and nice to hear, but it's true that we have the benefit of working again with lots of different individuals and different companies of different sizes. And the highlights for me are those that do it for different reasons. And we have several examples of taking literally could be a napkin sketch, could be maybe more refined past. Publication or something like that, developing those products on, I would say a fairly limited budget, being pragmatic. And and then getting those sold to companies that were able to distribute those products. So we've got examples of, products for hand surgery. Had an example with a podiatrist, similar thing, these are niche type products that might fit really nicely into the hands of a larger company, but they were the ones that. That this inventor had that they wanted to see, and we were able to help them get it to fruition. And that's really what. Yeah,

Grant: 20:53

I would imagine it's almost I mean yourself as an entrepreneur, I'm an inventor vicariously being able to go through the ups and downs of that again with somebody and work closely with them. That sounds very fulfilling and I love the concept you have there. I know a lot of people who listen to this show are. The innovators pioneers doing a lot of groundbreaking things. But they also are driven by some kind of passion, some mission, some higher good that they're working towards. The altruistic entrepreneur, maybe if you wanted to give it some kind of definition those are some of the funnest people to be around for sure. That kind of leads me to the next question, John, which is as in the medical device industry over the last 15 years that you've been, helping a lot of clients, you've seen a lot of evolution. Both in terms of, new regulations the, I'd say the oncoming of software as a medical device, as a kind of a new and interesting category. And but we're still at the beginning, I feel like of this category of life sciences evolving and bio being more part of a daily life thing, for a typical consumer. And I just am curious to know what your thoughts would be in terms of how the industry. Yeah, how you see it evolving or other things you, you would hope about in terms of over the next decade or so how do you see things changing?

John Kapitan: 22:00

Good question. I see a couple of things and this is going to be, it's a broad question. So maybe a little bit of a broad answer, but as far as our world goes, and again, we live in the med medical device world of the life sciences industry. So it's. By definition, somewhat narrow, but I see a couple of things. Number one is I see more devices being developed for patients. At home or in ambulatory surgical centers or in other settings, not just the hospital, or the operating room. And I, along with that, I see a big focus on human factors, industrial design designing for the end of year. Some of the things in early in my career, unfortunately I have to admit, we didn't think much about it was all about the technology and how it functions. Not as much as not as much about how it would be perceived or used or what what were the what was the feedback on how it felt or was it. To learn, to just pick, pick up and be intuitive in terms of how to use some of those factors are weaving their way into what we do every day and have quite frankly, for several years now where we're talking about human factors much more often. And I think that's partly driven by this. Expansion of where and when medical devices are used, like I said, many are used to at home now. I think it also includes the merger of embedded electronics and software apps on your phone, that interface with devices and just giving it a much Broader, user experience and more sophisticated user experience. So that's something else I see. I think the other trend is, or one of the other trends, cause there are many would be the personalization where we're talking about patient matters. And again, this is not new that we've been talking about it for several years, but it's really starting to come into its own where we're talking about. Look, you are an individual. You are an individual patient with individual anatomy and individual needs. And we're not going to just try to. But in small, medium or large into, into you as a device, let's say an implantable device. In this case, we're going to custom tailor our device to fit you. And so the whole concept of patient matched implants or patient specific technology, I think is getting better and better with the I would say large-scale adoption of additive manufacturing or 3d printing, certainly helping other factors are helping as well. I think the other thing to consider. Over time. And again, I have the benefit of now almost 33 decades of doing this. You have different regulatory climates. And what I mean by that is if you're just looking at the United States, for example FDA will from time to time, look at the focus on different things. Maybe it's cleanliness and biocompatibility and in the future or in the past, it was more. I dunno testing or design controls or something like that. Again, not that anything is not important. And of course, they're going to look at everything relative to your regulatory submission package, but there seems to be these kind of hot button topics from time to time, mainly driven by product failure, product, recall where we're trying to improve the system as an industry. The other thing of course is. The U S versus rest of world. And right now it's as people would probably nod their heads and agree, it's very difficult or can be very difficult and lengthy and time consuming, or time consuming and expensive to get approvals in Europe right now under CE mark. Because of the move from MBD to MBR. But also because notified bodies are fewer and farther between the queue times are long. And a lot of people that would have gone to see mark route first and FDA second years ago are going FDA first and see mark second. So coming to the U S first, countries outside of the us are coming to. Getting approval here using those funds to, to fund their commercialization efforts outside the U S so there's different trends on the regulatory landscape, but I think from a technologist, that landscape it's really the patient match technology is really exciting. And then the kind of taking the devices to the next level with the embedded electronics and software, and that kind of thing is also fun to see.

Grant: 26:04

Yeah, that was a fantastic response. And more devices being developed at home with 3d printing and really connected the trend of 3d printing to people creating their own like hyper-personalized devices, just in their own basements. That's a, that's something I hadn't really thought about before.

John Kapitan: 26:22

Yeah, right now, What I was referring to is really more at, as an industry where we're personalizing for patients. What, what you just described is probably not that far off, patient, prince, and I'll say, it's interesting cause this is true for lots of other areas of your life. And I forget about life sciences for a second. If you look at. The internet of things, right? Connecting your appliances to the internet, or, being able to have a 3d printer in your house. At some point you'll be able to design and print your own replacement parts for whatever it is. You're, your car or your coffee maker or your.

Grant: 26:52

Yeah. Yeah, there was a, somebody that was on the show. Oh man, almost a year ago now, I guess he had implanted he had created these little silicone chips, like his credit card and his pass on different fingers. And he would use his hand as his wallet. And, a medical device, a medical device biohacking at the same time. It's really interesting. I'm not saying that's where we're going to move as a general population, but that it's not too far off, I guess you could say. One of the things that I think I'd be remiss if I didn't ask you, John, is and we'll link to your bio and a couple of things in the. But one thing that I thought was really interesting is that you also run a family farm and have been doing that for a while now. And it's when you look into it, the mission behind your family farm, I think is really inspiring. But, I think that you're very similar to people that listen to the show where you have you have a business, you're a business owner. You're growing that and focusing there, but you also have. Life, where you have other personal aspirations or things. And it seems like your family farm is a place where you can reset refocus and kind of take that white space as Mr. Rogers would call it a white space of time where you can be silent and think about your. How you're helping improve the world, how you're helping other companies launch and scale and get these life saving products to market. I know you've talked about this in the past, but just would love to get a couple of snippet here. As we wrap up the episode on just how you've maintained a work-life balance as an entrepreneur and business owner, as well as these other things you have, like this family farm, how that all plays into it and what lessons you've learned.

John Kapitan: 28:15

Yeah. Yeah. And it's I when we talk about this and I've done podcast just as a subject before, cause I think it's so fascinating. I think it resonates with people quite frankly. That, to me, it's really hard to talk about work-life balance and they're almost, it almost doesn't exist. And what I mean by. When we're balanced, we're not moving right. If we're moving forward, we're always in a state of imbalance. And before we recover, think about walking, you walk, you're standing still and then to walk you're putting yourself in a position of a controlled fall until the leg hits the ground and you're able to restabilize. And then you just repeat that process over and over again in a similar way. I think it's really challenging to just try to be imbalanced because things are always happening. Things are always changing at work at home, both. And I think the better term to use would be a work-life rhythm. And so we try to develop this rhythm where we're not just doing one thing all day every day and defining ourselves by it because I think any of us burn out by doing that, and I've got, I know lots and lots of people who would raise their hands and say, yeah, that's me. I define myself by what I do. Okay. Whatever, a hundred hours a week. And then I'm just burned out. So we offer on the farm a bit of a retreat from life, if you will. At least from the day-to-day hectic a hundred mile an hour life that many people live especially in this industry, to be honest with you. And we like to say it's more of a farm farmstead than a farm. We're not a really a commercial operation. What we are as a retreat for people who may need to come and unplug. And just talk life, talk, fade, talk, business, talk all three. And we'd like to smash it all together. And sometimes that makes people feel uncomfortable at first. And certainly we're not trying to force anything on anyone, but I'll be honest with you when they come. They just feel like the sense of, okay, I'm going to breathe. And I just want somebody to listen to me. And so it's just fascinating. We've got a large family and a bunch of animals and we're constantly learning. And so sometimes lessons will spill over. The homesteading life to the bit, to the business, to what we do running the business, and sometimes vice versa. Something I see or experience in the business world will certainly find its way into how we do things as a family and a family farm. And I think the benefit of that, we often joke that. And 18th century lifestyle in the 21st century career. And we're doing it all at the same time and that keeps things interesting. It also keeps things in perspective and allows us to, like I said, apply the lessons learned in one area to another. And I think one of those big lessons is just how to work with your hands. We're a society where we're so dependent upon typing on a computer, or hitting buttons on our phone. And we're losing quickly that Ability to an interest and knowledge about working with our hands. And so that's something we teach our kids and we do personally all the time, my wife and I is to, whether it's getting in the dirt and growing something or fixing something, creating a work of art, whatever it is, the working with your hands compliments the working of your mind. And I think it makes the two better. And that's why I think the. Aspect of what we do resonates with people. Cause it's much too one-sided for most people I find in terms of yeah,

Grant: 31:24

That's not typically what we talk about on this episode, on this podcast, but that I think was there's a lot of things we can take away from there because we're all humans, John, right? We're all people involved in this industry to try to advance it in some way or another. But at the end of the day, we're not robots we're people and we have individual needs and things like that. So just appreciate you sharing that. to wrap up the episode we'll ask one last question to you and then let you go about your day or go back to the farm, whatever is next for you. But if you could leave a voicemail to everyone in the industry and you knew that they would all hear it what would you say? would it be a piece of advice you'll leaving that voicemail for.

John Kapitan: 31:57

Wow. So it Kapstone we live in a world that's a little bit different. Where, again, as I mentioned our mission statement, we're trying to help others realize their dreams. And I would leave a voicemail around the fact that there is a way, if you've got ideas to realize those ideas, there's, you may have people always talk about passion, right? You have to have passion for what you do. And I agree with that. But pure passion alone is not. It is unbridled. Passion is not necessarily helpful. You hear things about, you need to be patient and persistent. The other piece I would add would be pragmatic. I really think that at the end of the day there, there is a way for you to realize your ideas or your vision, for example, but let's be realistic. And I think if we can understand that, not everybody's maybe going to share your enthusiasm maybe at first. Detractors. And there are cheerleaders for your idea. I think as long as we recognize that there is a place there's an, a way to do it, we're gonna help you again, just getting back to the mission statement. We're going to try to inspire guiding, equip And as long as there's an opportunity where we can be realistic about, Hey, this may not be this may not rock the world. Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. But if we're realistic about our goals and about our risks and about just what this is going to take. Whoever is listening to this, they recognizing that there's going to be some ups and downs. I think that there's a tremendous opportunity to continue to build value, not just save lives or patients or improve their quality of life, but really helping those that come up with his ideas, realize their dreams. So that's going to be way too long of a voicemail, but somehow we can condense that at the end of the day. I think outside the box and there's plenty of people that are, that will be willing to help you.

Grant: 33:48

Yeah, that's great, John, thank you so much for joining us on this episode of, from lab to launch would love to continue the conversation and talk continue to talk here and follow what you're doing at Kapstone and we'll link to your company, your LinkedIn profile and all that kind of stuff in the show notes. But if there is a place where people to get in touch with you, if they wanted to reach out, how can they how can they.

John Kapitan: 34:07

Absolutely. So the best way to reach us is take a look at the website first Kapstone medical.com, K a P S T O N. medical.com. And our, my email address could be in, I guess it could be in the show notes to Jay capitan@Kapstonemedical.com or call us at(714) 843-7852. And we'd be happy to talk. Awesome.

Grant: 34:29

All right. And we'll link all that in the show notes Thank you, John. Have a great rest of your day and we'll be in touch.

John Kapitan: 34:34

I really appreciate being here. Thanks for the conversation.