The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast is a deep dive into what 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing mean for prosthetics and orthotics. We’re Brent and Joris both passionate about 3D printing and Additive Manufacturing. We’re on a journey together to explore the digitization of prostheses and orthoses together. Join us! Have a question, suggestion or guest for us? Reach out. Or have a listen to the podcast here. The Prosthetic and Orthotic field is experiencing a revolution where manufacturing is being digitized. 3D scanning, CAD software, machine learning, automation software, apps, the internet, new materials and Additive Manufacturing are all impactful in and of themselves. These developments are now, in concert, collectively reshaping orthotics and prosthetics right now. We want to be on the cutting edge of these developments and understand them as they happen. We’ve decided to do a podcast to learn, understand and explore the revolution in prosthetics and orthotics.
The Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
Live from AOPA 2024: Interview with Myomo CEO Paul Gudonis
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Join us as we embark on an exhilarating journey into the world of prosthetics and orthotics with a live recording from AOPA 2024. With over 1,800 attendees and 20 new vendors setting the stage, Joris Peels and Brent Wright capture the dynamic atmosphere of the event. This episode spotlights the spirit of innovation driving the industry forward, from the latest in 3D printing technology to pioneering products such as an orthosis for tremor patients and silicone printing techniques. Experience the collaborative energy that is pushing the boundaries of what's possible in prosthetics and orthotics.
We are honored to feature Paul Gudonis, CEO of Myomo, who takes us through his extraordinary journey of technological innovation aimed at helping individuals with upper extremity impairments. Paul shares invaluable insights from his background in engineering and business, his transition to Myomo, and the company's major milestones. Listen as he recounts the inspiring moment when paralyzed individuals using MyoPro rang the closing bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Paul's stories about the profound impact their work has had on patients' lives are sure to leave you motivated and inspired.
Explore the global ambitions and entrepreneurial spirit shaping the future of orthotic prosthetics. In this episode, we delve into a company's commitment to advancing arm and hand functionality, securing reimbursement from major insurers, and expanding internationally, including a joint venture in China. Paul Gudonis offers a fresh perspective on how an entrepreneurial mindset can transform the prosthetics and orthotics industry. Reflecting on the balance between doing good and achieving personal success, this episode critically examines the dynamic intersection of innovation, entrepreneurship, and impactful patient care.
This episode is brought to you by Advanced 3D.
Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast
Speaker 1Welcome to Season 9 of the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. This is where we chat with experts in the field, patients who use these devices, physical therapists and the vendors who make it all happen. Our goal To share stories, tips and insights that ultimately help our patients get the best possible outcomes. Tune in and join the conversation. We are thrilled you are here and hope it is the highlight of your day. This is the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. With Yoris Pils and Brent Wright. We are super excited to share with you some of the recordings and interviews of people that we met at AOPA 2024. So our first guest is Paul Godonis, the CEO of Myomo, so let's lean in and listen to what he has to say. Okay, yoris, we are live. I don't know if you, Yoris, I'm using my phone, so can you check just to see if we're live on your phone or LinkedIn or what have?
Speaker 2you, sure sure, I'll see if we're actually actually actually actually live. How is AOPA dude? That's what I want to know.
Speaker 1It's so great. I mean the energy here is very high. The last I checked with the organizers, over 1,800 people here. So you know, for us it's a big part of the population of our field really is here. Energy's high. The vendors have been good. There was probably like 20 new vendors added for this show that they've never been to another show. So that's been pretty wild, pretty wild. And you know we've had some. We're right up at the front, so people are walking in, so people kind of walk and I'll kind of move this that way there, just so you can kind of see. So people come into the entrance and then they walk down and they walk right by us. So it's pretty neat. We have a little banner that says On Air, the Prosthetics and Orthotics Podcast. And look at this, it's pretty neat. We have a little banner that says uh, on air, uh, the prosthetics orthotics podcast. And look at this, don't make fun of me too much.
Speaker 23d printed chairs. Super nice. Did you make that or did something get out there?
Speaker 1that was um from dive design. So, uh, I've got, I've gotten to know adam pretty well and I said, adam, I need something awesome for AOPA, for my podcast. So all my podcast, people sitting in the 3D printed chairs ready to rock and roll. So it's been great. What's really been interesting is this and you have said this all along about the prosthetic and orthotic industry. You're like you guys have to find a way to play together. Like everybody has their strengths and and and weaknesses. But if we actually came together as a team, we would be better off for it. And there are pieces and parts and you always talk really big like give me an API, let me use your system, you can use mine, and I think that is kind of the spirit of there. Oh, there's a lot of 3d printed stuff here and we expect it to be here.
Speaker 2You told me let's go back a little bit, like a couple of steps back. You talked about these new vendors, right? Who are these new vendors Like? What kind of is it all software? Is it software materials? What is it?
Speaker 1So a lot of it is software. Software is it software? Materials? What is it? So a lot of it is software, um, but then, um, like we'll be interviewing somebody a little bit later on they have a orthosis for people that have tremors, so their, their hands are shaky and it's some I, I don't. I don't know what it is, but you put this thing on, it's like a glove or something, and then ah, yeah it's, it's amazing it's like noise canceling, but then for tremors, right that thing I think correct, correct yeah or something.
Speaker 2I was like how are they doing that?
Speaker 1yeah yeah, so, um, there's that um rapid liquid print. I know you've talked to those guys. Before they're here, I'm showing off some stuff I love it.
Speaker 2It's like, basically, they're printed to a fat, essentially, and they get really a less-to-mare kind of materials that are very durable, very strong, and you can use it as a grommet or a cushion or some kind of shoe-like thing or some kind of dampening thing or something like that. So it gives real possibilities to make something really big and high-volume that we couldn't do before. We just couldn't do something that that would be a last americ kind of bumper. That would last a really long time. Uh, so I love rlp, the rapid liquid print guys. Yeah, I think they're really nice as well. I really like that as well. All right, so we've got a rack of liquid print and the other 3d print stuff, or is it just the 3d printed stuff? It's just enmeshed with everything.
Speaker 1Now that's the kind of what's happened. I think, yeah, so you're seeing a 3d printed stuff like on with you know, it's just normal, so it's in a lot of different booths and and so I think the normalization and the, the idea of this as a tool and you don't have I mean, you have some people that are kind of like hoarding the technology, but there's more of an openness Like this is what we're doing, and I think, it's awesome.
Speaker 2Okay, that's good. I mean, it's just a higher maturity stage. But you can share as well. If you know more, right? If you just, if it's all based on some silly little secret and it's really easy to do, then yeah. Then not sharing is a pretty good thing to do. And if you've got more process behind it and you've got design, methodology, stuff people can't copy, yeah. Then at one point, patents, whatever then at one point sharing becomes a little bit easier.
Speaker 1So we got Paul here. I'm going to give you the headset here, can?
Speaker 3you hear me.
Speaker 1I can hear you now yes. So there's going to be a little bit of delay.
Speaker 3Right, ok.
Speaker 1It is just the magic of the interwebs, right? So you're going to be, we can, I mean, we're going to be casual here and we are already live, so I'm, and that's fine, that's just part of the deal, right? So you're going to be recorded from over here. I'm recording here and then can you see Yoris.
Speaker 3Yes, so Yoris is in Spain. He's my co-host.
Speaker 1So yeah, so this is really cool. So Yoris has been traveling, and so this is the first time that he's been able to join me over the last couple of days, so this is perfect.
Speaker 2Perfect, muy bueno.
Speaker 1Yeah, so he's from the Netherlands. Do you speak much Spanish?
Speaker 2Joris, A little bit, but I don't know Okay, yeah, I'm a little embarrassed with my Spanish actually so but we could one of these days. We gotta do it, we gotta try to do it in spanish, but but not today not today, right okay, like six weeks.
Speaker 2so my spanish I went out with some friends I, we live in valencia, valencia the thing to do is a bocadillo, which is like kind of like a second breakfast at 10, 30, um, uh, but with friends or colleagues, and so we had that and my Spanish was atrocious. I was just like uh, uh, uh, uh, all the whole time, so. So, if we're going to try the whole Spanish thing not today, maybe in a couple of weeks when I climatize a little- bit.
Speaker 1So uh, yeah. So you're going to see it's not necessarily buffering, but you're going to see a more pixelated picture probably of all of us. Just know the audio is very clear. That's coming in on LinkedIn, but just know that I'm going to be putting all this together.
Speaker 1So, yeah, I'd like to welcome to the show the Prosthetics and Orthotics show the CEO of Myomo, paul Godonis, and I've started to get to know him more and more as they are growing and scaling their business, and so it's going to be really fun to hear kind of the journey. He has been there since 2014, I believe, and he'll be able to fill in some of the blanks taking them public. So they got to ring the bell on the stock exchange and I'd like to get a little bit more about that. And now they have an L code. So, yoris, I know we talk a lot about reimbursement and how important that is for the US market. Well, having an L code now opens this up to more clinicians to actually get paid for the devices, and the expectation is to get paid, because Medicare now pays for it, and so that means all the private insurance follows. So, paul, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3Well, thanks for the opportunity to meet with you and your listeners.
Speaker 2So tell me a little bit of how you got involved with Myomo.
Speaker 3Well, I joined the company, which had been spun out of MIT a little over a dozen years ago now. So in my career, I've got an engineering degree MBA and I've been launching. So, in my career, I've got an engineering degree, mba and I've been launching new technologies. Throughout my career, I launched the first cell phone network in the US, built an internet services business the BBN business to a billion dollars in revenue when the internet was being commercialized, and then I worked with inventor Dean Kamen running the first robotics competition, and then, through that, I met the team from MIT who had this big idea let's go conquer paralysis of the arms which had never been done before. They had some key patents that were developed at MIT with assistance from Harvard Medical School, but they needed a CEO to commercialize this, and so I saw this as a big opportunity to help patients, because there's millions of people worldwide that have upper extremity impairments, and so I came in and joined the team.
Speaker 3At that time, it was four people, didn't have much cash, but had a big dream, and we raised capital and then, as you said, brent, we went public in 2017. There was an opportunity, thanks to the JOBS Act, to list a company on a national exchange. We went to the New York Stock Exchange. They said we really want to attract growth companies like yours, and especially what you're doing in medical technology. So they invited us to listen to the New York Stock Exchange, which we did in June of 2017. And then we had what they'd never seen before two paralyzed individuals. Jessica, a young woman who'd had a stroke. She used her MyoPro to ring the closing bell. And JJ, a veteran who had gotten his device through the VA, banged the closing gavel using his MyoPro, and it was broadcast all across the CNBC network. It was a really exciting time to raise visibility and get capital so we can start to expand the business.
Speaker 2I have a question. I think it's interesting that you've worked in so many different industries. Do you just like, do you come into a company and say, oh, this is completely different. Or do you do a lot of like, studying the market of, for example, prosthetics or orthotics? Or are you really trying to build a business that's completely different every single time? What's your approach?
Speaker 3Well, well. I've been able to learn quickly whenever there's a new opportunity. So, for example, cell phone technology is brand new, and so you created that new business. We invented another company, cellular Roaming, so you can go from city to city. So what I try to do is meet with the subject matter experts in an area, immerse myself in it, and that's what I did here at Myoma when I saw this opportunity. I don't have a healthcare background. I guess one of the things I have done is been able to attract a really good team of people who, in this case, understood orthotics, prosthetics, biomedical engineering, reimbursement, and that's why we've gotten to where we are today. So we'll do. Almost $30 million in revenue this year is what we have projected to our investors.
Speaker 1And I think one thing, yoris, that's interesting about this and this is why I enjoy having just such a variety of guests on the show is there's so many people that want to help, right, so they see the orthotic and prosthetic business but they're like I don't want to necessarily be a clinician, but I have skills in other ways. I can scale a business, I can, I can talk to investors, I can do fundraising, and it takes all types of people as part of the team to create a great um, a great device to really make an impact on people. And so it's been fun to hear like hey, I'm not a clinician, but I know I can contribute and I know that what I'm working on makes a difference in people's lives.
Speaker 3Well, that's right. You have to know what you don't know, and so we've been able to attract a team of CPOs biomedical engineers, specialists in reimbursement, a chief medical officer, which I'd never recruited before the only other time I would meet with a doctor I'm wearing a Johnny doing an annual physical and now we have a wonderful scientific advisory board of very respected individuals in this field. So you've got to be constantly wanting to learn, and that's what I learned when I was getting my MBA at Harvard was lifelong learning and you just have to be curious. Also, I spend a lot of time in the field because what I've learned during the course of my career you can't run a company from behind a desk so you got to be out in the O&P clinics, in the rehab hospitals. You have to be out there in the research studies. So that's how I've really positioned myself to really understand in a new company, in a new industry, how do you succeed? Again, as I said, you got to be out there with the people that you're working with. And what I love about this business unlike these other technology companies I was with you're providing a technical service, whether it's internet service or software.
Speaker 3This is very hands-on with the patients, because we emphasize patients first, the patient care aspect of our business. In fact, every month I run an all-hands meeting where we do it on Zoom for our people in the office, people across the country, people in Germany. We always highlight a patient story. Where it's individuals, we take a video of them. Sometimes we'll bring them in to tell our people hey, here's how you have changed my life. We even do it with our board meetings. You know, every board meeting I start with a story of one of recent patients. Like one recently was a fellow who had a stroke in 1997. 27 years ago he hadn't been able to use his arm. He was using his arm a quarter century later for the first time.
Speaker 2Huge impact on his life. And how does this? Well, first off, how does this work like? How does it actually like the actual device work for the, for the patient, and for what? Because it's a limited number of people that could use this right. It's post-stroke, and then specific outcomes can use this right.
Speaker 3So my thought, so, uh, the way the body moves is you want, if I want to move my left arm, I'm basically sending a signal from the right motor cortex through the central nervous system into the peripheral nerves and then, if you're a healthy individual, your arm responds. You can move your arm, you can feed yourself, and when a muscle tries to move, it emits a trace micro voltage called the electromyogram or EMG signal, which is emitted by the muscles and you can read it on the surface of the skin. Now, healthy individuals, we have 100% signal strength. But for the individuals who have some type of upper extremity impairment so I'll take stroke, for example the blood clot or hemorrhage often kills neurons in the motor cortex and, as a result, these individuals have an attenuated signal, maybe less than 1% of what a healthy individual has, and so that's why they struggle. They're sending such a weak signal from the motor cortex. The arm doesn't move, it just is flaccid at the side or might be tightly spastic. They can't control it. However, just thinking about moving the arm creates enough of a signal, my own being the greek word for muscle that emg signal on the surface of the skin. That are sensors which are non-invasive, they just sit inside the brace as you think about moving your limb. It basically picks up that signal and translates it into motion and there's a few motors on the device and you can basically restore motion.
Speaker 3That's how the company actually was named MyOmo my Own Motion because the MIT grad students who came up with the concept invited Maggie, a 32-year-old stroke survivor, to try on this prototype and it's like a typical prototype, had a lot of wires on it and so on. She put her arm in it and she hadn't been able to use her arm for three years after the stroke. And he said try moving your arm, think about it. And she could move her arm for the first time in three years. He said, gee, this is like my own motion, hence the name of the company, myomo.
Speaker 3And your comment about the size of the market need there. It's huge. It's about a 1% prevalence In the United States. Over 3 million people, over 70 million people worldwide, have suffered a stroke or other type of injury, for example, brachial plexus, shoulder, nerve injury from a motorcycle accident. We've helped veterans who suffered from a traumatic brain injury due to an IED explosion in Iraq or Afghanistan. It might be someone who's had an incomplete spinal cord injury. So it's a very large prevalence. In fact, if you know 100 people, you probably know someone that could benefit from this device.
Speaker 2Well, and is it only for the arm? Are you also doing legs or really focused on the arm, because that's the biggest impact?
Speaker 3Well, we are focused right now because we're still a smaller company we have 170 people now growing but we want to be best in class in the arm and the hand, the upper extremity, because there are a lot of other options for people with lower extremity impairments, whether it's a wheelchair, a walking aid, a C-brace, an exoskeleton lots of different options but there's been nothing for the arm and hand. And so we said, look, we want to invest in class there. In fact, it's the biggest style called the white space in the orthotics and prosthetics industry, because there are already many products for upper extremity, lower extremity, amputees, some advanced technologies, of course, as we know, but in the orthotic space, while there are a lot of options for the lower extremity, this is the only product available that really restores function, not just like a resting splint or a sable this restores function to those impaired individuals Okay, that's really exciting. Or a sable, this restores function to those impaired individuals.
Speaker 2Okay, okay, that's really exciting, I think, and also, like the first device or the first cohort of devices, this must have been ridiculously expensive, right? You have no scale, right? Everything's unique. How did you bring the cost down? Did you just eat investment money until you had enough patience to bring the cost down, or were all your strategies on making these things cheaper?
Speaker 3Well, we patience to bring the cost down, or what were your strategies on making these things cheaper? Well, we continue to enhance the technology and you know we took advantage of the fact that motors became smaller, microprocessors became more cost-effective, better algorithms, so we're able to do that and we're also now scaling up our operation so that, you know, we can serve more and more individuals and we're really pleased that we've gotten reimbursement now from CMS. Here in the United States we're getting private commercial plans like Medicare Advantage plans, blue Cross, blue Shield. The VA is paying this for veterans and over 100 VA medical centers here in the United States are covering this, and we're getting good traction among the statutory health insurers in Germany.
Speaker 2That's really cool. And how do you guys look at the rest of the market? Because I've noticed that a lot of US prosthetics, orthotics companies, like 95 of their focus is on the US and then they do like a little bit on the other side. Are you guys more internationally oriented? Are you going to be more internationally oriented, moving forward?
Speaker 3Well, right now about 85% of our revenues in the United States, the rest primarily Germany, a little bit UK, australia and so on.
Speaker 3And we'd like to expand internationally to other markets. It takes a couple of years in every new market to obtain the required reimbursement, because that's really the barrier to patient access is reimbursement. And now that we've done a certain amount of research here in the United States, we published several really good research papers which we reviewed with the medical directors at CMS for Medicare coverage. It's really opened up this whole Medicare Part B population here in the United States. So you'll see over the next couple of years a real big focus on serving these Medicare patients who we had to turn away Up until now. We get thousands of people contacting us. They see our advertising, they see our social media posts, they see our website. They say, boy, I'd like to get this either for myself or someone, say for a family member. We had to turn them away until now. So I think you'll see, in the next couple of years at least, an increased focus on our US patient base.
Speaker 2Okay, that's really cool. And how do you look at? For example, we were discussing a couple of annual reports from publicly traded companies and we realized that there's countries with hundreds of millions of people in it. Think of a country like Brazil or Indonesia. These are countries that are a lot less wealthy, also per capita, than the United States. How do you look at these kind of markets? Because there are people in there that could afford your device. Getting into that health system is also a challenge. Hey, maybe France makes a lot more sense because they're wealthier, also a big country.
Speaker 3Are you looking at that emerging markets as BRICS and all their kind of similar type countries, or are you like no, that's way far ahead for us? Well, I started over five years ago looking at the world's largest market, which is China. There are over 14 million paralyzed arms in China, as you point out. It's a very big need there. Two and a half million strokes every year, which means about 800,000 people every year are left with hemiparesis, inability to use that arm, and so we have a patent for China, and so I found a joint venture partner.
Speaker 3They're Riser Medical. They've got a financial partner, china Leaf Ventures, and so we did a technology transfer agreement with them. They're paying us license fees upfront, plus over the next 10 years. Our shareholders have a 20% interest in this joint venture company, jiangxi Myomo. They're getting ready to start production and sales in greater China. I've been there. Our occupational therapist clinical staff has been there demonstrating the technology at rehab hospitals, at physicians. They're now in the process of getting what's called the NMPA, the Chinese version of the FDA, to approve this product and hopefully by the end of the year they can start serving those patients there.
Speaker 2That could be really exciting. That's huge, huge, huge. And generally I mean, if you're this size, you're $30 million in revenue and at one point you've got to make a nice little choice. You've got to equal auto book or, oh sir, that kind of thing. Is that something you guys are thinking about? Are you like you think really there is a position to be that independent, strong company, making you forging your own path? Because they snap up a lot of businesses and and and your size and and smaller and bigger, like and consolidate them? Do you think that's a really it's a better to go alone, let's say, well, we certainly have the opportunity to go build a major company over here.
Speaker 3As I said, there are just in the United States 3 million potential candidates. Now not everyone is an appropriate medically qualified candidate so we have very strict inclusion-exclusion criteria which we've established with the CMS medical directors. But that's still several hundred thousand people and another quarter million enter this prevalence population every year. We've only delivered a couple thousand devices so far, so we're at really the early stage of market penetration of a huge and growing market just here in the United States and, as you point out, there's other international markets. So our plan is to go build a major profitable company here for our shareholders, for our employees, for clinicians that work with us in the O&P industry and for the patients.
Speaker 1And I think one thing to note, yoris, on all that is you know, this company, you know, essentially was founded in 14, but there's technology that goes back a little bit earlier than to MIT and that sort of thing, and so they have a ton of data and right now the currency for the O&P market is data and they have a massive head start.
Speaker 1They've been expecting reimbursement essentially for 10 years and it's been a lot of blood, sweat and tears and probably banging of the heads and that sort of thing of like hey, this is an underserved population, we need it to get here. So I think one of the things that to Paul's point is yes, there's a lot of white space in the upper extremity market and we have all the data. So, because they've been tracking outcome measures, emg signals, and they track all that because this is a connected device through a computer right now, but then they're also hoping for more and more ability to collect more data that is useful to the patients, the caregivers, and to make a better product the caregivers and to make a better product.
Speaker 3We're here at AOPA and I just attended the lecture series where two case studies were presented on research on several prosthetic and orthotic products.
Speaker 3And, as you point out, brent, we invested in research several years ago because we realized in order to get adoption by the O&P professional community plus to get insurance reimbursement, we needed to provide real-world evidence. So we started our own patient registry a few years ago. We enrolled new patients that get a MyoPro. As you point out, we get data on usage. We also follow up these patients every month to find out how they're doing patient-reported outcomes and, as a result, we had several papers published that were very compelling that says look, this is valuable for patients across the age spectrum, not just younger stroke victims, but many people 65 and older, because two-thirds of strokes happen to people 65 and older and they're covered by, usually here in the United States, medicare or Medicare Advantage plans. So we want to demonstrate that these individuals can get real value from this product, and it does. It improves their quality of life, their independence and help them reduce falls, ultimately reduce their healthcare costs.
Speaker 2Yeah, that's really cool. I like that. And this research thing, though that sounds really expensive. When did we start on this? When did you guys start? Was it like really? I mean, I guess it was always MIT kids around. I guess it may be really close to your DNA. Let's say, to start this first, but it just sounds like a really expensive undertaking. You have to do a really long time for it to pay off, right.
Speaker 3That's right. I mean, it took over four years from the concept stage and we had to form this patient registry, we had to enroll patients and we engaged members of the scientific community to review these results and publish the papers. So it is a long journey but, as you know, in this field of life sciences that's what it takes. It's all about the evidence on outcomes and that's why we made that investment. Is that's?
Speaker 2what it takes. It's all about the evidence on outcomes and that's why we made that investment, and how much of your time is actually focused on, like you know, day-to-day annoyance of stuff that crops up. And then how much is focused on, like you know, doing the things to make plans happen. How much is focused on, like planning.
Speaker 3Well, now that we're a public company, I spend less time fundraising. When we were a private company, I think I spent 90% of my time fundraising. Fortunately, steve Kelly was our chief operating officer so he made sure everything ran during that period of time. But now that we're public, I have to meet with investors on a quarterly basis. We do investor conference calls and meetings and so on, and so now I'm able to look at the big picture. How are we going to scale this business?
Speaker 3I've been able to recruit a really good team of senior executives, from Dr Kovalman, who's our chief medical officer, to Micah Mitchell, who brings a lot of experience in the DME business, heads up our commercial operations. We have clinical leaders, engineering operational leaders, so now we're really in the process of scaling the business. We started this year with 100 people in the company. In the process of scaling the business, we started this year with 100 people in the company and knowing that reimbursement was coming from Medicare. We've now scaled it up to 170 people and we've announced that we are moving into a new facility. We're in the Boston area. We're moving out to a larger campus on the suburban Route 128 area, so we can double our production here in the next year, I think that's awesome.
Speaker 1Well, Paul, thanks so much for coming on. I think we need to get you on the full-length show. Would you make time for us for that?
Speaker 3Sure, just let me know, brent, when you'd like to have a follow-up on that. We could talk about a couple months from now, our success in engaging the ONP community, because we've got a number of them who've approached us here at our booth at IOPPA said boy, I'd love to now serve my patients because I fit AFOs on all these stroke survivors and there's been nothing further armed and now I can meet that need. So I'm looking forward to provide an update on that next time we get together.
Speaker 1I think that's great, I think, yeah, so. So, yeah, we're super excited to have you on, especially with yours here, and thank you for your insight. And, uh, yeah, we look forward to catching up on a on a full length where we can do a deep, deep dive into, uh, what's going on. So thanks, paul.
Speaker 3All right, thank you again, all right.
Entrepreneurial Perspective on O&P Industry
Speaker 2I thought that was really good, I think I think I think I'm really interested in this whole entrepreneurship plus orthotics and prosthetics, Because a lot of people come into this business because they like the craft or they want to help people and a lot of them end up being entrepreneurs. They end up being their own business people, they end up manning their own business. All of a sudden you have to learn management. All of a sudden you have to learn accounting, marketing, sales, all this stuff. So I'm really excited about what happens when somebody who's just like a pure entrepreneur, like Paul, pure entrepreneurial guy cell phones, we can do cell phones, Bandwidth, we can do bandwidth and now he's doing this kind of device when a guy like that comes into this market, how does he look at the O&P industry compared to all the other stuff he was doing?
Speaker 2So I really really look forward to talking to that guy and just to see how different it is, Because I think a lot of the O&P industry has an opinion of itself as being this kind of cuddly, kind of cute kind of industry, with everybody kind of like helping everyone else. Hey, but this is an industry. People make a lot of money there and other people don't. So I think it would be really interesting to see what an entrepreneur does with that and then how you balance kind of doing good with doing well yourself, and you know I like that very much Thank you for listening to the Prosthetics and Orthotics podcast and a special thanks to Paul Godonis for sharing his time and insights on the podcast.
Speaker 1We hope you have a great rest of the week and stay tuned for more interviews in the weeks to come.
