Wheel Chat - Your Go-To Mobility Podcast

Wheel Chat: Episode 1 Inaugural Episode - Meet Anthony and Justin

• Wheel Chat • Season 1 • Episode 1

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Join us on Wheel Chat for our inaugural episode as we discuss why we're launching this podcast and dive into co-host Justin Boulos's background and motivations.

Anthony Mitchell and Justin Boulos share the story of their friendship, evolving from online connections to real-life adventures. They clarify complex industry terminology, exploring what we mean by custom, configured, and prescriptive wheelchairs. The conversation highlights the differences between manufacturers like Permobil and distributors like Independent Living Specialists, while also addressing the changing role of Assistive Technology Professionals. Additionally, we examine how occupational therapists contribute to this specialised field, particularly in Australia, making this exploration vital for anyone seeking to understand mobility solutions.

Our vision for Wheel Chat extends beyond mere information; it's about empowerment. We blend personal stories with professional insights to support the emotional well-being of wheelchair users. From discussing our favourite wheelchair models like the RGK Sub4 and Magic 360 to emphasising the significance of tailored solutions, we aim to offer valuable insights for both professionals and individuals invested in mobility technology. Join us on this exciting journey as we explore the world of wheelchair technology together.


00:06 Meet the Hosts: Anthony and Justin
00:13 Justin's Journey to Leeds
01:02 The Start of a Friendship
02:11 Justin's Industry Insights
04:24 Innovations in Wheelchair Technology
08:25 Understanding Industry Terminology
12:49 Legalities of OT Titles in Australia
13:07 Professional Background and Current Role
13:50 The Role of Experience in Wheelchair Prescription
15:34 Podcast Goals and Future Topics
16:56 Quickfire Personal Questions
20:58 Debates and Discussions in the Industry
22:27 Career Journey and Reflections
23:55 Closing Remarks and Future Episodes

Email us :
We’d love to hear from you. If you have any questions about this podcast, please email us at wheelchatpod@gmail.com

Follow us : TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@wheelchat_podcast

Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/wheelchat_podcast/

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of Anthony and Justin.

EPISODE ONE WHEEL CHAT TRANSCRIPT

ANTHONY: Hi everyone and welcome to Wheel Chat. This is our first episode. 

JUSTIN: With me! 

ANTHONY: I'm Anthony Mitchell, this is Justin Boulos.

JUSTIN: And I'm Justin Boulos, guys. Very excited to be here on our first episode. 

ANTHONY: Unbelievable. So, Justin, welcome to Leeds. 

JUSTIN: Thank you. It's a beautifully rainy day here.

ANTHONY: Absolute pleasure to have you. Basically, Justin, let's just tell everyone about both of us. I'm from Leeds, we're based in the UK. So for our Australian viewers, or listeners. 

JUSTIN: Yes, Leeds in the UK and I'm from Sydney, Australia and I've flown all the way out here for this podcast. Nah. 

ANTHONY: Tell the truth. Tell us the nice part. 

JUSTIN: Well, I recently got married to my beautiful Emma who's sitting there in the background and then we're going to go see. So she's from England. So we came to visit her family and we thought while we're in England, might as well come see my boy.  

ANTHONY: Yeah. 

JUSTIN: And then you want to do a podcast. I thought how fun would it be to film the first few episodes live with all this beautiful studio lighting. 

ANTHONY: Yeah. So I mean, it's great to have you here. Amazing.  From our side, we've just been friends now for over a year. You've been doing some really cool stuff with LinkedIn, social media. We kind of reached out to each other, didn't we? 

JUSTIN: I don't know how it all started. We just sort of, I don't know, you reached out to me. 

ANTHONY: I think I was on holiday and we were on the same time zone because we'd been sort of texting a little bit. And then all of a sudden we could actually have a conversation because we were both up and it kind of just ran from there, wasn't it? 

JUSTIN: This is actually the first time we've met in the flesh. It's always funny when you have like online friendships or like I'll go to an expo or something and I've never actually met the person, but you have such a strong relationship with the person just through voice messages. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, yeah, yeah, correct. 

JUSTIN: And now we actually get to see each other in the flesh. 

ANTHONY: No, it's amazing. It's really nice. And we had a really nice night last night. 

JUSTIN: Yes. 

ANTHONY: We hung out. My wife Chloe, Emma, we all went out. It was really nice. Really lovely. Beautiful town. Yeah, but right, great to have you here. I wanted to use episode one to introduce us both, but I think it'd be really cool to interview you. 

JUSTIN: Yes, please. 

ANTHONY: Find out a little bit more about …

JUSTIN: Hate to be the centre of attention though

ANTHONY: Yeah, I know, I know. So we're just going to need to keep calm on that one, But putting the makeup on today was just a little bit extreme, but it's working. 

JUSTIN: It's working. Hopefully the camera's getting me beautifully. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But for everyone who's listening, Justin is a very good looking Australian lad who is really making his way, joking aside, you're really making your way in the industry, aren't you? You're extremely popular, you've just been to Rehacare, how was that? 

JUSTIN: Yeah, that was beautiful. Again, another amazing aspect of my super supportive wife. The first leg of our honeymoon was to Rehacare, because we got married and it was an expo that I've always wanted to go to and it was like literally the two days after our wedding and we're like, we're already going to the UK, if we detour to here, is that cool? And she was like, yeah, let's do it.

ANTHONY: And how was it? 

JUSTIN: Yeah, it was awesome. It's so big. It's so, like we have expos and it was like one hall, is what we would have in there and they would have like seven halls. It was just like warehouse after warehouse of all these new products. And then it was almost a bit overwhelming the first day. I was like, there's not really that much exciting stuff here. But then, you know, it's a four day event. So by the end of the four days, I had so much, so many cool new products that I saw, so many like new ideas and innovations that are coming out. Which is exciting to see because I think it's actually the industry feels like it's a bit dead in a sense. Like how much has a manual wheelchair changed from when you first started to what it is now? 

ANTHONY: Yeah. 

JUSTIN: Different materials and different ways to fold it. It's all the same stuff, right? Although, even with your power assist, they're all still much the same. You know, power chairs, you know, there's differences, but it's not like there's like, whew, like this is like amazing technology. Especially I feel like in like a folding chair, like I don't know which... Like we use like a Quickie 2, is a really common folding chair that we use. And I still, when I do a trial, I'm like, you pick it up and you're like, gotta get it into the back of the car and it's still not like, for the cost of what these custom chairs are, you'd expect it to be like a feather when you pick it up, you know? 

ANTHONY: It should be driving itself.  It should be folding itself, right? 

JUSTIN: It should be driving itself. Everything should be super lightweight for these price tags, but just... not there, but there's definitely stuff coming out. 

ANTHONY: You saw stuff coming out, that’s like the delivering on that promise. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, by the time this podcast comes out, hopefully a lot of the videos should be out. I think I filmed about 10 videos of like products that I thought were really cool. There were so many products, but there was the ones I thought would be worth actually chatting about, I've made videos on, so - 

ANTHONY:  I can't wait to see that. Yeah. What in terms of innovation, did you see any innovation out there? Because that's really my passion at the moment in terms of like in the world of AI, in the world of everything that we're kind of working with, online, offline. It just seems within our industry, we are catching up. It does seem to be getting there. So like there's some cool stuff out there, whether or not the wheelchairs will actually be good for the end user, I'm not really sure, time will tell on that one. But I think even like, did you see a lot of cool stuff on the programming side? 

JUSTIN: Nah, programming, nothing too new with like – 

ANTHONY: Well that killed that. 

JUSTIN: I guess software wise, it's all, you know, a power chair, they just pretty much go.  Where I think is the most excitement is weight and so two things that I saw that were really cool was the Phoenix wheelchair. I don't know if you've seen that. It's like a carbon fibre wheelchair where...  

ANTHONY: And who's bringing that out? 

JUSTIN: Phoenix Instinct,  is the guy, is a wheelchair user from Scotland. 

ANTHONY: Scotland, yeah. 

JUSTIN: From your neck of the woods. Yeah. Andrew. So it's a carbon fibre chair but

what’s so unique is that... 

ANTHONY: Is that what the power casters? 

JUSTIN: Yeah, power casters. So usually you've got rear attachments, like your smart drive, your front attachment, like your Baytex, push rim, like your e-motion or your joystick, like your iXpress and E-Fix. But this is a new category where it's built into the chair. So you can't retrofit it, which sucks because some people want to have a certain chair, but it has to be their chair because it’s the way it’s designed.  But it’s got these powered front casters so when you go over obstacles, the front casters are pulling you over, kind of like a front wheel drive on a power chair.  It pulls you over obstacles.  So even though they're small motors, which is good because it keeps it lightweight, it still performs really well. It's got downhill braking, like know, a smart drive goes uphill, but it doesn't help you downhill. 

ANTHONY: Right, so it's intuitive. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's like, once you do like a cruise control, it will hold you, you can even like actually hit the brakes. Like I had it when I was pushing it, it matches your push, and then I want to stop, I hit the button, and it's like a … and it just stops. 

ANTHONY: Like a smooth, oh I see what you’re saying … It actually starts the chair. Wow. 

JUSTIN: Yeah. So was really cool. And it's so lightweight. I could pick it up with one hand with the battery, with the motors in it, like whole chair, all together. There you go. So that's really cool. I haven't seen the script form or what you can do with aftermarket seating and how scriptable it is, but as a concept. 

ANTHONY: Well, maybe Andrew will get in touch, let us know. 

JUSTIN: Yeah. The video will come out soon. It should already be out by now. But another one that hasn't been released yet, which is really cool was this joystick power assist, which, there's only really two types of joystick power assist. The ones that have like the motors in the hub of the wheels. 

ANTHONY: So what, like an E-Fix? 

JUSTIN: E-Fix iXpress, those ones.  Or like the light drive or the Todo drive, which is like they clamp onto the tire. 

ANTHONY: That's right. 

JUSTIN: Which perform, they're good, they're light, but their performance isn't great. They can make the chair tippy, they wear out the tires, because it's like you're just rubbing on the tires. 

ANTHONY: That's right. 

JUSTIN: But this is a whole new design where this guy, he's made like this camber bar. It's like a powered camber bar. So you replace the camber bar with this … It's like a thicker camber bar picture that yeah, and it powers the wheels and the battery. 

ANTHONY: Oh, it's not even an attachment on the back, which is like what traditionally you yeah, isn't it? 

JUSTIN: You don't get any more tippiness, you get direct power to the wheels because the camber bar is the motor. 

ANTHONY: Now that's clever. 

JUSTIN: And it's powered by a drill battery I think it was like a Hilti battery so if you run out of battery you can just go to the warehouse you know, whatever you guys have here, your warehouse store, grab a new battery, boom and away you go. So it's super lightweight, the camber bar actually, it's quick release as well. So it's picture like a TiLite ZRA. You've replaced the camber bar with this thing. It's not even that heavy. And you can still pick it up as you would like a regular rigid chair. But if it's still too heavy, you can take off the camber bar. 

ANTHONY: And is that coming to market soon? 

JUSTIN: They said sometime early next year. I'm hoping that where I work is they're going to...I don't know. 

ANTHONY: Do you remember where the product was from? Like what country? 

JUSTIN: US. 

ANTHONY: US, okay. 

JUSTIN: I'll find out, maybe we can put a link in the description, the Instagram page. He reckons, I thought, well, anything lightweight doesn't perform well. It just can't. But he reckons it outperforms everything. 

ANTHONY: Okay, well we'll see. Watch this space. 

JUSTIN: We'll see. So there is innovation stuff coming out. There's a bunch of other stuff you can see in the video. 

ANTHONY: All right, well that's cool, thank you. I'll tell you what, what that's actually just made me remember when I was looking through, prepping for today, is I think we should really understand if there's any sort of confusion in language between Australia and the UK. So let's just get this out on the door because this is something that we're going to have people from Australia, people from the UK listening, hopefully people from all over the world really, which is cool because we've both got followers from all over.  Let's just put it out there, and if anyone from any other country wants to send us a note and help us on this one, that'd be greatly appreciated. But okay, so when I call, we call it like mobility products. I know that isn't so foreign for you guys to hear that, but you would call it something a little bit different in the main, right? 

JUSTIN: Yeah, so we have two categories. We have off the shelf and configured. Sometimes we call it custom.  Custom wheelchairs, configured wheelchairs, prescription wheelchairs not really used, but that's...

ANTHONY: We would call it a prescription wheelchair, for sure. 

JUSTIN: We don't really use prescription wheelchairs. I think in America they have like DME and CRT, do you know what are?  Durable Medical Equipment and Complex Rehab Technology. They have like those categories. I'm not super familiar with what that means, so sorry to the US people out there listening. But yeah, ours is pretty simple. Off the Shelf, which is anything you can buy without a therapist involved. 

ANTHONY: Box product we call that. 

JUSTIN: Box products, yeah, in a warehouse, mass produced. 

ANTHONY: Which to be fair, nothing wrong with them, it's just not what we do. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, it's not, yeah, it's definitely not. So I work for a company, I work for Independent Living Specialists and we have a bunch of different divisions that handle different areas. I work for the areas called ILS Rehab and all we do is configured mobility. So anything that requires a script form that is made for particular client, that's what we do.  So that's our two main categories. Is that the same thing for you guys? 

ANTHONY: Yeah, I mean, we would say bespoke, made to measure. Those are the sort of terms that we would use or prescriptive, of course. 

JUSTIN: So that's that one. And then so with your terminology, then in terms of when we're talking about who's in the industry, we have manufacturers, suppliers, that's sort of used interchangeably. Like Permobil, Permobil is like a manufacturer, but then sometimes we also call them supplier. But I work for Independent Living Specialist. So we're also a supplier and independence mobility. 

ANTHONY: We would call it a distributor. 

JUSTIN: Distributor. 

ANTHONY: Yeah. So we're a distributor for all the main manufacturers. 

JUSTIN: Yeah. And there's distributors on distributors. We buy from distributors as well. 

ANTHONY: It all gets a bit confusing. 

JUSTIN: It does get... 

ANTHONY: But I think the reason why I was raising it more, which has been really helpful to listen to, is more so, I think, you'd call it assisted...

JUSTIN: Yeah, we have ATPs and that's a new term that we've been using is ‘Assistive Technology Professional’. I think we've adapted that from the US/Canadian model. That's what they're called. I think they actually have to be qualified ATP on there. And I recently am also qualified ATP now because there's a...there's a resident certification that they have. It's not even relevant in Australia. 

ANTHONY: Do you feel special? Do you get a badge? 

JUSTIN: I do actually get a badge. 

ANTHONY: You do? 

JUSTIN: I get a certificate and can actually put it on my title, so you can put like, know, doctor. Now at end of mine, not doctor, but... 

ANTHONY: Doctor Love. 

JUSTIN: Doctor Love. It's got iNRRTS. It's basically saying I'm certified to, and you got to do it every year to like, renew the registration. So that's like, so we have that. So there's ATPs.

ANTHONY: So we would just like for, if we were saying assisted technology, we would maybe put that in more sensory equipment. 

JUSTIN: That makes sense. 

ANTHONY: It was just so that if we're starting to chat about stuff, when you're saying, you know, assisted, then you're probably more so talking about the wheelchairs. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, exactly. So we call it AT.  And you're right, AT does get referred to like eye gaze technology or speech, you know, sensory stuff. That is also assistive technology. 

ANTHONY: It makes perfect sense because a wheelchair is still assisting somebody, as is a power chair, a manual chair, an in-home chair, static seating. 

JUSTIN: I guess it's true. If I'm speaking to you, or speaking to people within my industry, when we say AT, they know what you're referring to. Complex AT might be a bit more, okay, that must be the script form stuff. And that's sort of allude to more wheelchair stuff. Yeah, basically ATP is who we are called.  We used to be called ‘wheelchair specialist’, but I'm also an occupational therapist by background. And you're not actually allowed to call yourself a specialist in our certification, unless you're have done an extra degree or something to be called a specialist. You can't call yourself a specialist. So now we would say like seating professional or...


again, assistive technology professional. 

ANTHONY: So if I call myself a specialist, will I get into trouble? 

JUSTIN: You're allowed to, mate. You can call yourself whatever you want. 

ANTHONY: But if I'm promoting in Australia, then that ain't going to happen. 

JUSTIN: If you're an OT physio... 

ANTHONY: I'm going to be shot down. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, if you're an OT or a physio in Australia, if not, I don't know if there's a legal thing. It's just more around your registration. You can't call yourself a specialist. 

ANTHONY: No, that's cool. OK, so let's let... I want to... I've lost my tongue. I want to know a little bit more about you. 

JUSTIN: Sure. 

ANTHONY: All right, let's let everyone know. So, OK.  We now know that you work for ILS. 

JUSTIN: Yes. 

ANTHONY: Okay. We now know that you're an OT by background. 

JUSTIN: Yes. 

ANTHONY: You're not a practicing OT. 

JUSTIN: No. So the way it works here is I'm registered OT and I still got to maintain my registration every year. But what I actually like, it's just more of a background degree. I don't actually need to be an OT to be what we do. 

ANTHONY: Okay. 

JUSTIN: So yeah, I don't practice an OT. I don't write reports. I don't do any of that stuff. I'm happy just to spin spanners and tools and...be really honed in on one area of practice. Maybe one day I will go and do the report thing, which I think it's still very translatable skills within the professions, but… 

ANTHONY: I think you're doing a bit of a disservice because I know you. I've known you for long enough now that, yes, you do the job in terms of prescriptive wheelchairs, doing a great job. But I think the knowledge and background and everything that you've kind of gained in terms of your studies and then practice, has massively benefited you and it's benefited a lot of others watching you as well because you don't really approach it just as somebody who's going in and prescribing a wheelchair. You are, everything that you talk about, you are looking at that clinical guidance behind it, right? 

JUSTIN: Yeah. And I think, think it's just, it's just the years of experience. Like it's not really the role of the ATP or what do you guys call them? The wheelchair rep? 

ANTHONY: Yeah.  Let's just go with that. 

JUSTIN: Let's go with rep. It's not really the role of the rep to sort of go into these details, but especially in Australia, it's very varied. It’s not like, we don't have the NHS. So in your system, you were telling me last night that there's OTs that would specifically work with wheelchairs. That's all they do. They have got their own demo equipment. They do their own script forms. That is not like that. This is not our model. I'm not saying one's better or worse.  But the model we have is you have an OT that will see you for a variety of interventions. One might be wheelchair prescription. Now some OTs do just focus on one area. I think that's great. I think everyone should niche down.  The idea of having such a broad field and then having to do one area can be a bit tricky for some OTs. So for me, if I've been doing wheelchairs over and over for like a decade, you sort of have to step up and help these OTs in these areas to make sure you get...a really good outcome. So that means making sure that we get really good information before we get out there on the trial. So, you know, walking them through what that looks like, what to do during the trial, and then through the delivery as well. 

ANTHONY: Amazing. Let's find out a little bit more about you because we can go, we can chat all day about technical stuff and we will do, I mean, we want to use this podcast to really sort of empower ourselves, but also pass on knowledge that we both gained. 

JUSTIN: And that's mostly what we're doing this podcast. So just in terms of like what we're thinking of this podcast, what do we say we want to do? We want to like, I think the main goal of this podcast is that we want to share some stories about what we do throughout the week. It's some pretty memorable stories that help us learn about wheelchairs and seating. Give some inside advice about what we're doing with, like our opinions on certain products or the way things are done. What else do we want to talk about on this podcast? 

ANTHONY: I think we want to talk about emotion quite a bit. I want to talk about understanding the client. And I know we both really care about that, but I...we'll get into it. But I personally think that sometimes that's overlooked. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the person in the chair is the most important. But we can get bogged down in the technical side. We can get bogged down in how posturally they need to be looking the best and everything. But ultimately, if that person ain't happy, then we've kind of not fully achieved our goal. And I'm not saying for a second anyone's overlooking that, but sometimes I feel it could just be not as prioritised as...


getting the right thing. 

JUSTIN: Well, you're sort of desensitised to it. You're doing it day in, day out. So that's, guess, the goal of most of the podcast. But if today's podcast is just about me - 

ANTHONY: Yeah. Yeah. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. So I got some quick fire questions. 

JUSTIN: Hit me. 

ANTHONY: Right. It won't take long. But first thing that comes into your head, favourite food? 

JUSTIN: Thai food. Because I get to eat it with my beautiful wife who loves Thai. 

ANTHONY: Favourite dish? 

JUSTIN: Favourite dish, burger and chips. 

ANTHONY: From Thai? No.  But just like, terms of what kind of food. 

ANTHONY: The Thai's do great burger and a burger and chips!

JUSTIN: If I'm at a restaurant, like, I just love a good burger and chips. It's not Thai. I'd like to go to a Thai restaurant. 

ANTHONY: I got it. 

JUSTIN: I would never get a burger at a Thai restaurant. 

ANTHONY: OK. We need to find out the name for burger and chips in Thai. Favourite singer? 

JUSTIN: I love belting a good Alicia Keys. 

ANTHONY: Really? 

JUSTIN: Yeah. 

ANTHONY: Just singing the shower to Alicia? I can imagine. Yeah. 

JUSTIN: Some people. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, yeah. Nice. Nice. Like it. Favourite manual wheelchair currently?

JUSTIN: I love a good Sub4 it's so light. The RGK Sub4 is just a great chair. 

ANTHONY: Okay, great. Yeah. 

JUSTIN: It has its problems, not perfect, but it's a great chair. 

ANTHONY: Okay, love it. Favourite film? 

JUSTIN: Django, unchained. 

ANTHONY: Ooh, good film. I went through a period where I watched that quite a few times. Now you've said it, I've got to watch it again. 

JUSTIN: It's one of the movies, that, and Inglourious Bastards are two movies that can just watch. If someone says, I've already seen it, I'll watch it again. Happy to watch it again.  It's just a feel-good movie.

ANTHONY: Do you not remember when you were younger you would watch things like over and over and over again? 

JUSTIN: We don't do that as adults. 

ANTHONY: You don't? 

JUSTIN: No. But there's no reason why you shouldn't. Like Star Wars, I've watched a lot of Star Wars. 

ANTHONY: I never watched Star Wars. Or Lord of the Rings. 

JUSTIN: Seriously? I don't know, I've just dropped all the viewers now. 

ANTHONY: You're not a sci-fi man? 

JUSTIN: I just never got into them. And if you don't get into them at the time, it's like you can't watch Star Wars now. 

ANTHONY: You definitely could. 

JUSTIN: You reckon? Yeah. 

ANTHONY: No, honestly.  And you'd love it with the capes and everything. 

JUSTIN: I'm very theatrical. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, I think you could be into it. Favourite power chair currently? Or actually, let's change that because that's unfair because there's lots on there. What was the last power chair you sold? 

JUSTIN: I would say the last one I did before I went on leave was a standing chair. So Permobil F5. Nice chair. Beautiful looking chair. But I would say my favourite power chair would be, I'd probably pick a 360, Magic 360.

ANTHONY: Love that chair. And it's quite new to us in the UK. 

JUSTIN: Is it? 

ANTHONY: In relative terms, like a couple of years now. 

JUSTIN: Yeah. 

ANTHONY: But the 360, actually, no, the 360 would be relatively new because the 360 came out when Sunrise really took over Magic, right? 

JUSTIN: I want to change my answer. I'll say a 360 for a base but for seating any of the Permobil’s.  Corpus Permobil is the best. Like be able to have memory functions, to be able to like tap your position and go into like whatever position you want. The seating system is so strong and durable and adjustable. 

ANTHONY: So we're gonna get onto that. 

JUSTIN: In terms of like the bass, the 360 is one of the better performing ones. Horses for courses. And one day I'd love to like, if we had a YouTube channel, I'd love to actually put 360 versus M5 versus a Dietz versus a Glide Centaur. 

ANTHONY: No, it's happening.

JUSTIN: Yeah, we should definitely. 

ANTHONY: We're doing it. 

JUSTIN: That would be like the curb test or the drop test. 

ANTHONY: Funny you say that, I'll upload some stuff. 

JUSTIN: Yeah, you doing that already? 

ANTHONY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've got that stuff. 

JUSTIN: I can't wait. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

JUSTIN: I want to see the results. 

ANTHONY: No, we've got some really cool stuff coming out, but by all means, we should definitely compare. Your weather's going to look so much better on camera. It really is. So in closing on you, because next one we've got to get me, but in closing on you, Justin, what do you feel right now you'd like to change about yourself? 

JUSTIN: And this is what so … this is actually one of the reasons I signed up to the podcast.  I would actually learn to love to speak with a better pace where people can understand me.  I don't know how I've done so far on this podcast. 

ANTHONY: I think you're doing really well. 

JUSTIN: I would love to get rid of those, the umms, get rid of the umms. I'd love to present better. 

ANTHONY: You know what I find really funny. I asked Justin thinking he'd come up with something really deep, something like he wants to change. But really it's just been about you. 

JUSTIN: Oh, you mean by what I to change about the world? Okay. I will get to the world later. It's about myself. What I want to change about myself. 

ANTHONY: I mean, like I probably meant that more in maybe I should term that a little bit differently. What do you want to develop? What do you want to gain out the next year working together? Like you want to learn something a bit different? You want to something new? Where do want to go? 

JUSTIN: Where do I want to get with this podcast? I still just want to get better at speaking.  I do want to get that out of the podcast. No, but, I just want to have a few more shared experiences. I actually really excited about getting people on the podcast and getting guest speakers and learning more about how people do things, how it's done differently, what products do they use and why. I would love to have debates because I'm very contrarian in terms of, I would just debate anyone even if I agree with you. So I would love if someone was like, like the last post I did at the time of filming this was about moulded seating versus modular seating. So moulds versus modular.  I would love to just have a very friendly debate as to why I think modular is better, but not in a sense of like... 

ANTHONY: Same, but we're going to get there, but I also feel that, you know, that's no disrespect to a mould because actually I think we need somebody to... 

JUSTIN: Yeah, but I want to hear, like, I like the debate of like, I just want to hear what you have to say. And I'm like, yeah, but what about this? I'm happy to be proven wrong. So I've got no ego in a sense of like being proven wrong with certain things, but I think people, especially on camera would be shy to go up against each other. 

ANTHONY: Yeah. 

JUSTIN: And the fact of looking wrong or looking like you're trying to dominate somebody. I'm not trying to dominate anyone or I'm not trying to be right in the situation. I legitimately want to have over a tea or a beer and be like, no man, like, Quickie is blah, blah, blah, blah, and Quantum is blah, blah, and have those genuine chats. I would love too. 

ANTHONY: Let's get them on. Let's get them on. 

JUSTIN: With you as well, I hope we get a debate on. Hopefully we disagree on things. 

ANTHONY: Well, yeah, we definitely will. Yeah, we definitely will. The UK is better than Australia, if we were like that.  The funny thing is I'm not sure I agree with that! We'll find out. We'll find out.  

JUSTIN: Do it and then I'm happy to say, yeah, I guess you're right, horses for courses, is usually just a good way to level it out. 

ANTHONY: So in closing, you've been working in the industry for how long? 

JUSTIN: Nearly decade now. 

ANTHONY: Yeah, 10 years. 

22.35 JUSTIN: Yeah, it's a long time.  You've got one small sub-sect of - 

ANTHONY: You were age 50 when you got into that? 

JUSTIN: Yeah. No, I was straight out of the bat. My first job was at another company working for Quantum actually as a rep. And at that time it was hard to get a job as an OT. And I was just like, yep, someone offered me a job. Didn't even care about wheelchairs. I like technology and I like using tools and it sounded cool. The company, they really sold it. I was going to be flown around Australia for learning. And was like, yeah. And it was, it was everything they said it was. And I learned so much and it was really great, but I wanted to be more with end users,  so that's when I moved to ILS. And then, yeah, that's when I get to actually work with clients and work with a variety of products.  Yeah, and that journey has just been fantastic. I've had great people support me while I've been there. I've had great mentors, great access to a big range. I haven't been limited by, 'We don't have access to that'. We actually go through the opposite. We're trying to reduce the amount of range we have. That's actually probably the more frustrating part is, I want to work with more, but there's too many brands. You know what it's like being a business owner. You can't do every single brand well. 

ANTHONY: No, and yeah, exactly right. And there's always ... I think the amazing thing that we have is options. So, you know, it's not saying that one thing is better than another. It's what's right for that individual or that person at that moment. And that's what's great. And it's, yeah, if they go with you, they go with me, they go with someone else. As long as that client gets the right product, then everyone's a winner really, isn't it? 

JUSTIN: Exactly. 

ANTHONY: So in closing, it's been an absolute pleasure bringing you on and me being on number one. But I look forward to many more podcasts. Yes. Please for the listeners coming in or the watchers, please do tune in for the next episode. We look forward to seeing you on... 

JUSTIN: Wheel Chat. Say the same time. See us together on... 

TOGETHER: Wheel Chat. 

JUSTIN: Wheel Chat on Wheel Chat. 

ANTHONY: I like that. 

JUSTIN: We should make that the slogan. 

ANTHONY: Cheers, guys. 

JUSTIN: Cheers, guys.