Biotech Bytes: Conversations with Biotechnology / Pharmaceutical IT Leaders

How Tech Is Solving The Organ Shortage Problem with Shola Oyewole

• Steve Swan • Episode 22

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The organ shortage crisis is one of modern medicine's greatest challenges, but innovative technologies like 3D printing and AI are changing the game. Please visit our website to get more information: https://swangroup.net/ 

In this episode, I talk with Shola Oyewole, VP of Digital Innovation at United Therapeutics, to explore how they lead the charge in organ development through advanced tech. From creating genetically modified organs to personalized medicine, Shola shares his insights into the future of healthcare.

Technology is reshaping healthcare in powerful ways, and United Therapeutics is proving that innovation and empathy can go hand in hand. Don’t miss this inspiring episode, in which we uncover how the future of medicine is being built today.

Specifically, this episode highlights the following themes:

  • Tackling the organ shortage through 3D printing and genetic modification
  • AI and data governance challenges in healthcare
  • Fostering innovation through teamwork and open competitions

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This video is about How Tech Is Solving The Organ Shortage Problem - Podcast With Shola Oyewole. But It also covers the following topics:

Organ Shortage Solutions
Personalized Medicine Explained
How To 3D Print Organs

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#healthtech #organtransplants #3dprinting #personalizedmedicine #aihealthcare #innovation

Shola Oyewole [00:00:00]:
The goal is to create an unlimited supply of organ so that people don't have to die waiting in line for an organ transplant. As a PBC company, public benefit corporation, our focus is for the betterment of people and our social impact on everyone.

Steve Swan [00:00:27]:
Welcome to biotech Bites, where we chat with technology leaders within biotech and pharmaceutical about the current trends, things that are going on in the marketplace today. I had the pleasure of being joined by the VP of digital innovation for United Therapeutics, Shola Oyewole. Welcome.

Shola Oyewole [00:00:45]:
Good afternoon, Steve. Nice to meet you again. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to your guests and thank you for the invitation.

Steve Swan [00:00:56]:
Sure thing. Always great to talk to you. And I always learn something new every time we speak, so it's always fun, it's always great. Thank you. And yeah, sure. And as is customary in our conversations here on biotech bytes, you know, we'll go through some technologies, but what I first like doing at the beginning of the conversation is just to give our folks, our audience, a quick little rundown, kind of on show, you know, what got you to where you are today, right? You're the vp of digital innovation for United Therapeutics. Good sized company, great company, and you've ascended to that through several avenues. Right? And if you'd like to give us a couple minute sort of debrief on you and your background, that would be wonderful.

Shola Oyewole [00:01:45]:
Thank you, Steve. I have worked in the technology field for the past 37 years. I would say the last 25 years I have worked at United Therapeutics. I was initially the first chief information officer, my 1st 19 years at United Therapy. And for the last six years, my focus has been on emerging technologies. I have a new role, which is vice president of digital innovation. And I know the word innovation is overused these days. So what I like to call it is I look for emerging technologies that I can introduce into my company to help us develop drugs better and faster because our patients confirmed.

Shola Oyewole [00:02:33]:
So what I did today is just that, meeting people like you and brokering relationships with top leaders out there with people in my company.

Steve Swan [00:02:45]:
Thats great, thats great, thats awesome. I love that. Thank you for that introduction. Thats good stuff. Now, I just have to say, before we even start, right, not a lot of companies think like, obviously you ascended right from the CIO to the vp of digital innovation. Not a lot of companies think like that. So I think maybe ill start with that organizationally, right? They obviously saw a need, and you saw a need, right? You created it with them. And for them, you know, was it just something that organically came up, or was it something that you said to them, hey, I should really, you know, probably move into something like this and help us get to that next level? How did that come about?

Shola Oyewole [00:03:23]:
Well, as you know, in any it career, there's going to be a point where you have built for the enterprise and it has gone on steady state, at which point you better ask yourself, what else can I do now that the company, in terms of infrastructure, is on steady state? We're a very, very innovative company. We have innovation coded in our DNA. And I felt this is an opportunity to open up a niche where I focus on technology that United Therapeutics could leverage within business. And, you know, I propose that to my manager, the president of United Therapeutics, and being an innovative person himself, he saw the need, he saw the desire. And I started a brand new department, Department of Innovative Technology, otherwise known as do it. And in fact, the initials of the department indicates what we do here. We look for ideas, and as much as possible with internal venture funding that I have, we try to breathe those ideas into life.

Steve Swan [00:04:35]:
That's awesome. You know, it. Then, you know, again, dovetailing into your organization, it's characteristic of your organization. And by that I mean, you know, I remember you and I, one time when we spoke, we were talking about, and I'm about to mention something that I can connect a link to this. There was, there was a piece in NPR that I had heard about, and you and I talked about having to do with the organ donation situation in our country and how it's less than perfect. Right. But your organization, as you just mentioned, saw that they needed to try and make that better, be innovative and think outside of the box and try and come up with a solution. As you mentioned early on, patients come first.

Steve Swan [00:05:22]:
Right? So to really get to the point where you're trying to put a dent in the organ donation industry in this country in a positive way. Right. And I think that what you're doing is dovetailing and is, you know, a microcosm of that as well. Right.

Shola Oyewole [00:05:42]:
Well, so united are benefited as a first biotech public benefit corporation. And what that means is our focus is on the care of patients, and we're also very socially responsible in everything we do. All right. Now with that said, the transplant industry today, as massive as it is, it is quite difficult to actually get an organ to a patient. There are probably roughly 200,000 patients waiting for an organ. But because of the difficulty in managing such a very complex system, probably less than 2000 of those patients actually get an organ. And that is not suitable for us, because the drugs that we manufacture here are to help manage a disease called pulmonary hypertension. Okay? The true cure of pulmonary hypertension is a dual organ transplant.

Shola Oyewole [00:06:42]:
New lungs, new heart, because the disease occurs between those two organs, and over time, both organs deteriorate with you. A true care for the disease is that dual organ transplant. And if you have 200,000 people waiting for an organ and only less than 2000 get them, what are the chances of helping a patient? And Martin Rothblatt, the CEO of United Therapy, came up with a vision to manufacture an unlimited amount of transplantable organ. And at United Emphatics, that has been our focus. Okay? We use 3d printing, print lungs, and then we use other methodologies to grow or manufacture other organs, like the kidney, the liver and the heart. You may have heard of two gentlemen that have received heart within the last year and a year past. They received organs from genetically modified pigs. So pigs that the genes have been edited such that they can create organs that are biocompatible with humans, okay? So the goal is to create an unlimited supply of organ so that people don't have to die waiting in line for an organ transplant.

Shola Oyewole [00:08:08]:
As a PBC company, public benefit corporation, our focus is for the betterment of people and our social impact on everyone.

Steve Swan [00:08:20]:
It gives me chills when we talk. I mean, I literally have chills when we talk. This is just, to me, so awesome that your organization and you guys have effectively taken this on and are being successful at it, right, with those transplants and such. And like I just mentioned a minute ago, I will connect to our final podcast. I'll connect the NPR piece that I had listened to, which does detail, you know, like I said, the shortcomings of our current transplant system in the US, so that it shows the opportunity that you folks saw and how you're helping patients, just so folks understand that. So to circle back around to it, to technology, to digital innovation, tell me about that. Tell me where you see things going right now. Is there anything in particular that you see coming or that has been going on within your organization from a technology perspective that you think is going to make a huge change for us? Is already making a huge change for us.

Steve Swan [00:09:27]:
You know, anything you want to, want to mention there?

Shola Oyewole [00:09:29]:
You are familiar with the concept of digital twin, yes?

Steve Swan [00:09:34]:
Yes.

Shola Oyewole [00:09:35]:
All right, so imagine a scenario where you can create a digital twin of a person, perhaps a sick person, right, that has a disease, okay? And then you have a digital representation of molecules. So think within a computer, or mathematically, you have a sick person represented mathematically. You have molecules also represented mathematically. Okay. And then you find which molecule can help solve for that disease. That's the future of drug development. Today's process of testing different compounds on different types of diseases, it's slow and arduous, but can you imagine accelerating all that discovery into a computer that can do this a million times faster than a human? I believe that is the future of drug development, where we leverage the power of computing to help us select the right molecules, the right compound that could target a disease. And this is going to usher in the era of personalized medicine, where you actually create a medicine for one person.

Shola Oyewole [00:11:02]:
It will be economically possible to do that today in order to even sustain your business, you probably want to focus on creating a drug that can address a larger population of people, and that is what makes drug discovery expensive and very lengthy for the future, where you can generate a drug inexpensively for a patient of one that is around the corner, in my honest opinion.

Steve Swan [00:11:31]:
That's. I mean, that's gonna be awesome, because I like. Like you just said right now, it's almost like the discovery of the drug process is for the greater good. Right. You know, it's gonna work for most, not everybody. Sometimes it doesn't work for that small part of the population, but for the most part, it will. Right. That's why they go through the testing and the FDA and such.

Steve Swan [00:11:51]:
But now you're talking about one. That's it. It's working for it. It's working for Shola, it's working for Steve. You know, that kind of thing. Now, does that bring about. And this is just me, you know, having a discussion here and thinking about that. Does that bring about a manufacturing sort of issue? Right.

Steve Swan [00:12:09]:
Because if you're making one batch, is there technology? I don't know. I'm just thinking about this. And if you don't know the answer, that that's fine, too. I just thought I'd ask that, does that bring about sort of a. An it issue in manufacturing or any sort of issue in manufacturing that you can think of?

Shola Oyewole [00:12:24]:
Well, since I'm not a pharmacist or even a scientist, okay, it may not be able to solve every kind of disease, but there's certain diseases that are probably solvable, you know, more easily than others. And I would say in those cases where it makes sense from a scale point of view, you know, I believe you could have drug on delivery. Kind of depends on the component. Depends on the. It could be you and I are taking the same medicine but at different doses. Right? So it might not cost more to make a drug for you or for me. The components are the same, the machinery are the same. It's already been approved.

Shola Oyewole [00:13:06]:
All you're doing is giving shola, you know, those ABCDeF. It can be as simple as that, or it could be even more complex. We're written an error where, you know, you could 3d printed pill the tablet. You know, people have. People who have 3d tablet printers at home. They have the prescription filled. The pharmacy, you know, sends a command to the printer that they have at home to help reconstitute, you know, a pill or a liquid that the patient can take. Now, there'll be a lot of logistics behind it.

Shola Oyewole [00:13:42]:
You know, how do you get the active ingredient printer, etcetera. But I would assume that there could be a way that ink cartridges could actually have the basic components of molecules, and your printer just builds them up and prints them out for you. I am oversimplifying things, but that is the future.

Steve Swan [00:14:03]:
I like it. I think that's awesome. So then, given all these different changes that are happening, and I'd love to hear you on this one, given all these changes that are happening. I mean, you were the CIO steady state. Now you're doing the innovation stuff. And with all these different things we just talked about. What advice? Let's say I'm a young CIO, you know, I'm coming into a biotech, right? And I'm a. Clearly, I'm not a 30 year old guy, right? But let's say I'm a 30 year old guy or girl, and I'm coming into, you know, ahead of it role, you know, given everything you know today, everything you've learned along the way, and also the way you see the trajectory, because you see a very futuristic trajectory, which is awesome.

Steve Swan [00:14:44]:
That's why you're the head of digital innovation. I mean. Right? So what advice would you have for me? What would you say to me? Hey, Steve, these are some of the things that you got to think about. Are there other technologies? Are there ways to structure my team? Are there things I need to think about with my team? Are there ways I need to push my team? Not from, you know, whatever. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas out there.

Shola Oyewole [00:15:06]:
I think the one advice I'd give anyone interested in a role like this is you must have a genuine sense of curiosity. You got to be curious. You got to always ask the question, could it be different? Could my patients have a more comfortable quality of life. You've always, you've got to be curious, number one, and you've got to be a patient listener to understand the problem. And I am not naive to think technology solves all problems. Technology just enables to a point, right? I can't solve your problem. I'm not a problem solver. What I can do is try to understand your need, understand where you're experiencing friction, and then think through my network avenues that we can use to help you.

Shola Oyewole [00:16:14]:
Okay? Surely you're going to come in in a balloon and try to solve your problem by introducing some techno, you know, gizmo. No. Now I got to work with you, understand what your needs are, and then connect you to the right technology, the right person, the right idea. I mean, case in point, I run open innovation contests at United Therapeutics every couple of years. It is only open to the employees. On average, there are roughly twelve, 1300 employees today. On average, we get 60, 70 ideas each time we have a competition. Then I run a sharp tank where the best five ideas are picked, and the winning idea gets funding to develop a working prototype.

Shola Oyewole [00:17:02]:
Now, go through all those ideas. Those are ideas that have come from an employee, right? And any one of those ideas could be a great idea. So my job is to go through all those ideas, work with employees to see which ones can actually be developed into a product, which one can be activated. Right? So again, these are scientists, these are employees, these are people that have skills that I don't have. I am not going to build it for them. My job is to create the conduit for them to realize their own ideas. And I'm happy to say we've done this several times. I run a mini venture where I can pay for some of these ideas to a point, and then if the company is interested in making a product out of it, then they take it from there.

Shola Oyewole [00:17:59]:
But all our inventors, our ideators, are recognized where possible, and we provide a status on the development of their ideas corporate wide. So again, you need a genuine sense of curiosity and interest in people, and.

Steve Swan [00:18:19]:
That'S how you foster that, the curiosity with the experimentation and that, like you just mentioned there, that's awesome, right?

Shola Oyewole [00:18:26]:
Spirit of experimentation, super important because, yeah, you've got to be comfortable with failure. You've got to be comfortable with learning, iterating, you know, every time you hit, you know, a dead end, there's got to be an exit somewhere. You got to keep trying, can be discouraged. And that is a lot of what I do, encouraging people to keep trying, building trust, building relationships, building networks, that is very, very important.

Steve Swan [00:18:54]:
We all have our own things that we think about. Right. And we all have our own world. Right. That we live in. And I'm listening to you talk. What you're saying could apply to so many different things. I'm even applying it mentally to what I do.

Steve Swan [00:19:06]:
Right. I see there's pain. There's something going on in organization. I search through my network. I propose the best solution I can, and if it doesn't work, we go on to the next candidate or another solution. Okay. That didn't work because it's the same. You know, you could do this for a lot of different things.

Shola Oyewole [00:19:22]:
It's.

Steve Swan [00:19:22]:
It's just, it's awesome. Yeah.

Shola Oyewole [00:19:26]:
I think. I think it's applicable to most things. Yeah, I agree.

Steve Swan [00:19:31]:
Yeah. And one thing that I think you said in there, which I thought was great, was that these folks, lots of them, have skills that I don't. That's the sign of a humble leader that's, again, not scared to hire somebody better than them that we're going to, like you said, provide that conduit, provide that. That pool, that avenue that they can their Runway. Right. That they can take off on.

Shola Oyewole [00:19:53]:
Correct. Correct. We work very closely together, combining our skills know to bring ideas to life.

Steve Swan [00:20:00]:
Thus, the VP of digital innovation. There he is. I like it. That's great. So I guess my next question goes kind of into working for you and working with the group, right? I was like asking you, or I was like asking folks, you know, what do they. Why would one want to work with you and with your group? You started getting into that a bit, but it sounds like it's a pretty exciting place to be.

Shola Oyewole [00:20:21]:
Well, United predicted a very, very exciting company to work in. I've been here for 24 years and nine months, ten months. Okay. It is. It has been a great experience. The folks here are very committed. The culture here is fantastic. All emanate from Martin Rothbard, the CEO.

Shola Oyewole [00:20:46]:
So with that said, the gene of curiosity, the gene of innovation and experimentation, thrives in this company. And for that reason, people are willing to be very creative, thinking first about how do we serve our patients better, how do we build better relationships with our business partners, how do we impact, you know, society in general? You know, all these things are very important and things that we do and we say. And for that reason, it is very important that I am able to build these alliances with my colleagues to help coax them of ideas and help nurture and build those ideas into solutions. Now, not every idea will be successful. That's not the point, though. The point is, do we have that genuine sense of curiosity, that innovative spirit, to even try? We're doing it for the benefit of our patients, our business partners of society, and that's important. So you need that can do attitude. You need to be able to encourage it and build on it.

Shola Oyewole [00:22:09]:
Any work that I do is built on partnership with these ideas, and I treasure those partnerships.

Steve Swan [00:22:17]:
They're very important to hang on to. That top talent is, you know, well, I mean, if folks have autonomy and folks have the curiosity and the freedom to experiment and not fear of failure, like you said, that creates an awesome culture where folks, they're going to stick around. They're going to stick around for a long time. They're staying with you because, you know, I can't tell you how many times I have conversations with folks where they say, you know what? This one company, I had this kind of culture, and I just don't know how to re. How to recreate it. Right. It was the kind of culture where, you know, we'd come in, we'd start working on something. Next thing we knew, it was 07:00 at night.

Steve Swan [00:22:53]:
You know, that's because they were doing something. They were engaging and they were experimenting and they were. They were creating something. And that's exactly what you're talking about, I think. Right?

Shola Oyewole [00:23:01]:
Yes. Yeah. I mean, you need the right culture. You need the right culture to encourage people to want to give back, you know, to want to do even better. And that's the culture we nurture here.

Steve Swan [00:23:15]:
That's exactly what, again, I hear from people all the time, you know, how do I get to that culture? How do I get back to this? You know, I had it at XYZ company, at this small company. We were building something, we were making something. And in your group, you've created this micro ecosystem inside a larger company that's doing all that and around technology for the betterment of the company and for the patients, you know, which I don't, you know, I don't see why anybody wouldn't love that.

Shola Oyewole [00:23:43]:
So, yeah, we adopt the company culture. This is how the culture is throughout the company. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:23:50]:
Okay.

Shola Oyewole [00:23:51]:
So we reflected what's all done. The company. Yeah.

Steve Swan [00:23:54]:
I want to circle back to technology and specific technologies. I like the culture and I like about you and the company, and I can see why folks would want to work for you and your organization. Are there any specific? I mean, we kind of touched on it a little bit, and I know you've kind of gotten away from specific technologies right. Cause you're just, like you say, creating that conduit. Is there anything that you. And there may not be? I just want to make sure I get it. All that you want to chat about from a technology perspective that you think we should hit on or talk about, or do you think it's more big picture, not about specific technologies?

Shola Oyewole [00:24:28]:
I would probably say more big picture. The elephant in the room, generative AI, everybody. AI has been with us for eons, all right? They just give it a brand new name now. It is generative. I get it. I think there are many opportunities to leverage generative AI in most of what we do day to day, the AI agents, their chat bots, etcetera. However, we have to address that with some caution. Large language models are composed of a lot of text, and I think it is still a mystery as to how the spew results to a prompt.

Shola Oyewole [00:25:19]:
So I use it with caution. All right. If I am not a subject matter expert on a topic, I'm going to look at a response to my prompt with some, you know, doubtfulness, which means I'm going to do some more studying, you know, offline to be sure that things, this response is correct. And I think that should be the general attitude. When you use generative AI, either you're an expert in the subject and you can tell, and if you're not an expert in the subject and you're prompted for it, then it would be wise to use third party tools, third party research, to validate the response you just got. I see a lot of opportunities, particularly in what we call medical information, right? Where in general, pharmaceutical companies have lots of information, published papers, contraindications of different drugs. If all that can be visible can be made available to, say, a medical llmdh, it may make research much faster. If you're a doctor, you want to prescribe a certain drug, but you want to be sure about contraindication or compatibility with different conditions, the patient or other drugs the patient is taking.

Shola Oyewole [00:26:47]:
I think as a doctor, you could leverage a medical LLM to do a query, say, hey, I have patient here with these kind of side effects, with taking these drugs, age, weight, gender, whatever, and you get a response. But because you're a medical doctor, you can validate that response, right? Does this sound right based on your training? Now, if this is totally new territory for you, then I would say back that up with extra research. You know, is this true? Let me validate it with my colleagues. Let me check third party websites or whatever doctors do. But I think in terms of care. Things like your medical LLM could be very, very helpful. You can also apply it in drug development. Does your company have arsenal of recent material, you know, regarding your drug development process? Well, could you throw all that into an LLM and ease out more information, tease out other therapies or other doses of your drug? All that remains to be seen.

Shola Oyewole [00:28:00]:
I think you need proper data governance first upon which you build your AI competency or center of excellence. So that's my view on generative aih. It is very, very promising. Or should we use cautiously?

Steve Swan [00:28:18]:
Yeah, I'm getting conversations with folks, and some folks are saying along the same lines that there's a lot more juice we can squeeze out of the EHR and EMR kind of data. You know, really just look at what's happened with the patients from a therapeutic perspective and what the reactions have been and so on and so forth. And like you said, maybe go after something else. You know, there may be something in there that we just don't know, you know, as long as we can take that data and really make some sense of it. There's just so much data.

Shola Oyewole [00:28:48]:
There's so much data. I think the challenge is data governance. You know, what kind of data do I have? What kind of data? How is this segmented? How is it validated? All those things are very important in trying to build and AI does of excellence.

Steve Swan [00:29:08]:
So one last thing, one last question I always like to ask folks before we go, right? I always like asking folks about the live music. I'm a big fan of live music. Right. So I was like asking folks, you know, what, if any, right? Have they seen any live acts that they really like or something they want to point out any point in the past something that they really thought was, was great. And I'd like to throw that question to you and ask you anybody you've seen, anybody you've, you know, over the years, you'd like to share a mention to the audience. I asked this of everybody at the end of every conversation.

Shola Oyewole [00:29:44]:
I can't say I've seen many large live event, oh, I wouldn't call event, I would say concerts. Right. I've seen a few, probably a handful. But I remember watching my project. He came into Washington, DC over 30 years ago and his performance was outstanding. I mean, he is, he was a showman, the attention to detail and he pleased the crowd. He gave us the performance of what I consider of his life. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was very engaging where we stood up the entire time dancing.

Shola Oyewole [00:30:30]:
You could see the results of his work ethic, right? Brilliant performance, engaging. He gave you what you wanted.

Steve Swan [00:30:41]:
Yeah, yeah.

Shola Oyewole [00:30:42]:
And, um, that just tells you the kind of person he. He was.

Steve Swan [00:30:46]:
You know, he puts it out there. He put it all out there from what I never saw him like. But that's what I hear. You know, the only, you know, and I may have mentioned this to you in the past, the only thing that I think of when I see Michael Jackson or think of Michael Jackson now is I recently saw the documentary of we are the world, right? And he and Quincy Jones, right, and some others, but those two and Lionel Richie. Right. Put that together and it was just. It was awesome. Watching that and watching those guys put that together was just, I thought, phenomenal, you know? And again, that's another, you know, testament to leadership.

Steve Swan [00:31:23]:
Right.

Shola Oyewole [00:31:24]:
I encourage leaders to go watch that documentary. How do you get such a large group of stars who are in town for what, today? For an event.

Steve Swan [00:31:40]:
For like one. Like an. Like a night. Right, right.

Shola Oyewole [00:31:43]:
For one night, you convince them to come spend time in the studio for six, 8 hours to hammer out one song. How do we get that amount of star power in one room, right. That, to me, that's leadership, that's trust. I mean, in Michael Jackson, a Nick Jagger. I mean, look at the big name, isn't there? You're able to convince them to come and dedicate some of the skills for a worthy code. That, to me, is an example of fantastic leadership. I encourage everyone to watch it.

Steve Swan [00:32:29]:
My favorite part of that whole thing is, and I'm about to, spoiler alert, with some folks that see this, I'm about to give away about five minutes of the video, but Bob Dylan standing in the room, they're trying to get Bob Dylan to do a solo because Bob Dylan's Bob Dylan. He's pretty big, right? He couldn't do it. He couldn't do it. In front of those 40 folks, or however many there were, they move everybody out of the room. Stevie wonder pretends. Stevie wonder pretends to be Bob Dylan and chose Bob Dylan how to be Bob Dylan. And Bob Dylan's like, oh, that's how I do it. So then he sang his part.

Steve Swan [00:33:03]:
So he's imitating Stevie wonder, who was imitating him. And the other guys were staying there. Quincy Jones was standing there, I believe, and Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson, they were all standing there while Bob Dylan did it. I was just blown away. I'm like, here's probably one of the biggest stars, you know, out there with all these other huge stars. And it just, it's just the whole thing, the way the whole thing came together again, like you said in one night, and they keep showing the clock, these guys were down to whatever. They were there for 7 hours, 8 hours, 9 hours. You know, it just kept going.

Steve Swan [00:33:34]:
It was awesome.

Shola Oyewole [00:33:35]:
That's an example of empathy, right? You know, putting yourself in the shoes of the person that's struggling and then helping them out and, I mean, what was Bob Dylan gonna sing? He was gonna sing, what, for what, five, six, 7 seconds? All that effort, right, was to help him belt out of seven or 8 seconds of song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So empathy is very important as a leader.

Steve Swan [00:34:02]:
Put yourself as a leader.

Shola Oyewole [00:34:03]:
Yeah, correct.

Steve Swan [00:34:06]:
And it adds to that team, that team that, you know, everybody's got to pull each other along or otherwise the team doesn't get there. Right. You know?

Shola Oyewole [00:34:12]:
That's correct.

Steve Swan [00:34:14]:
So I'll include also on this, I'll include the link to that documentary as well.

Shola Oyewole [00:34:19]:
Yeah. That way it's easily accessible and. Yeah, that's a good idea, Steve, so.

Steve Swan [00:34:27]:
People can see that. Yeah, well, good. I mean, usually that's where I end, so I just, you know, anything else you want to add before we, before we call it a day? I really appreciate you taking the time with us, by the way.

Shola Oyewole [00:34:39]:
Oh, thank you for the opportunity. I cannot think of anything to hover again, but, you know, I look forward to engaging with you again and watch your other podcast and learn from the other leaders you've been talking to. I think you're doing a great job. Congratulations. Well done.

Steve Swan [00:35:01]:
Thank you, thank you, thank you. I've been told I got to take compliments better. Yeah, I'm never real good at that, you know, so people tell me, hey, you got to say thank you. You know, I'm always like, oh, I don't deserve a compliment, you know, I'm just doing what I do, you know? So thank you. That took a lot. That's a lot for me.

Shola Oyewole [00:35:20]:
You're welcome.