Episode 277 | Merom Klein, Principal at Courage Growth Partners | Building Courage in Medtech: Turning Fear Into Adoption, Investment & Innovation

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Starts with medical discussion. Talking about the future. What comes Next with Project MedTech?

Speaker A: M hello everybody. I'm Lindsey Deneen, Director of Marketing engagement at Project MedTech and welcome to another episode of the Project MedTech podcast. If we can help you in any way, or you would like to suggest a future guest, you can email us@infoorojectmedtech.com if conversations like this are helpful. That's exactly why we bring people together at our signature events, the Midwest Showcase, the Startup Symposium, um, and Coming to America. For more on our events that include networking, education and pitch competitions for startups, check them out@www.projectmedtech.com. we even have sponsorship options. If your company is also dedicated to accelerating medical technology to impact patient lives, reach out today to get involved. The Project Mentech podcast is proudly sponsored by Ward Law. Wardlaw Office, LLC is a boutique law firm specializing in the practice of patent and trademark law. They are committed to providing inventors, entrepreneurs and businesses of all types with personal and professional services and are flexible to meet your unique needs. It is their goal to both educate on how to secure valuable patent and trademark protection and to provide high quality services at, uh, rates affordable to independent inventors, startups and small businesses alike.

Speaker B: Today's episode of Project MedTech is brought to you by Wheelhouse. DMG Healthcare and Medical device marketers carry a burden their agency partners have never felt. Real compliance risk, real regulatory exposure, and real accountability to leadership for every dollar spent. We built Wheelhouse for exactly that pressure. The expertise, the technology and and the data infrastructure to deliver exceptional performance for medtech and healthcare brands. Learn more@wheelhousedmg.com without further ado, let's dive in.

Speaker C: Okay, Marom, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker B: Hey, Duane. Good to see you.

Speaker C: Yeah. So, uh, obviously we had, uh, your, your. Your partner Y on the, uh, podcast previously. Um, she would have been in the episode two 50s. I can't believe I'm blanking on the, the um, uh, number. Honestly, it's actually crazy. I think I just recorded an episode with her and you know, we're already like on episode 265 like she was 15 episodes ago, which is wild. But anyways, um, uh, so, so if people are listening in, go find uh, Yi's podcast and listen to that. But, uh, mom, it would be great if you did an introduction to, um, who you are, what you do, and then we'll go from there.

Speaker B: So. Thanks, Dwayne. So, first of all, I really appreciate the opportunity to share with you some of the advice that we give investors and operators about what creates value in this environment. And Yohi explained a lot of the environment we, the environment we're in and we're going to talk about what you do to adapt to this environment. So I'm a business psychologist by background. Um, business psychologist is kind of like a sports psychologist in bringing out the best in people's thinking and decision making and ability to form connection in a business context. Like a sports psychologist does that in a sports context. And uh, the focus of our work has been for God, 30 plus years on working with innovators. Working with innovators largely in therapeutics, devices, diagnostics, um, health, it, um, but not exclusively in healthcare, on changing industry practices and changing the standard of care. And in this environment it takes a lot of courage to invest in that sector, to adopt in that sector. And it takes courage to build courage for people to invest and adopt in that sector.

Speaker C: Yeah, you know, one of the things so, so, so you're not, you're not necessarily proposing like, you know, there's, there's innovation, um, uh, systems that you can innovate within. Right. There's, there's, there's different, yeah, I'll call them systems that, that help people innovate or ways to handle things. So, so you're proposing a system that, that doesn't lead to a uh, specific um, uh, innovation outcome. You're, you're saying that you're trying to build the proper ecosystem dynamics around a leader so that they can bring out the best in people and let those people be the innovators. Is that kind of how this is working?

Speaker B: Um, yes. And perfect. Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, the thing that we've got to get better at is recognizing the signs of fear. And not everybody is upfront like, like I'm afraid of this. I mean there are people that cloak that differently. But if you don't recognize the signs of fear, someone is going to say to you something like uh, wow, Dwayne, that's really, that's really interesting. This was a great meeting. Let me talk with my partners and get back to you. And you know, and if, if you were on our other side of the ocean in Israel, one of the questions that we get is why, why are Americans so rude? They say something like, I'll get back to you, let's do lunch, let's get together when you're in town and then nothing happens.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And it's, you haven't decoded that. That was what we would call a level two, wait and see. And it was not a Level four, let me lean in and take action and make this happen.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And. And if you're not reading that correctly, you're going to think that someone is with you and then you're going to find out that what you counted on them, um, it just, the transaction isn't what you thought it was.

Speaker C: Yeah. And that's a big problem for startup companies. You know, I mean, you think about how many people in the startup world, you know, you're dependent on a lot of people to have a successful startup, whether it be an investor, whether it be, um, uh, team members, whether it be, uh, potential clients. Right. Being able to read through some of that because what you just described, you know, like we consider that the, the Midwest, the Midwest way of saying no, you know, hey, that sounds great. Really cool. You know, let's stay in touch and see if our paths cross again. There might be some potential synergies. Thanks again. You know, it sounds really positive, but they're telling you no, you know. Yeah. Um, or at best they're telling you

Speaker B: that they're not ready or you're not ready now.

Speaker C: Right? Yeah, but they want to leave the door open. Yeah, yeah. Um, okay, so, so, so yeah, talk to me a little bit about. So you said you've been a business psychologist for, for 30 years. Right. And um, uh, Yohi talked a lot about the, the book, um, uh, on our podcast. But yeah. Ah, how do you, uh, build this courage in this environment? Maybe lay some of those dynamics out there and also talk a little bit more about. Yeah. That, that fear factor and how debilitating that can be.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, investors are telling us all the time that they're afraid of committing money, time, reputation and deals that don't go anywhere, that it's promising science, it's an unmet medical need. They see how you can maybe even bring a product to market, get it launched, get it past the regulatory authorities, generate a little bit of revenue, but they don't see how they can earn a return. And if they don't see the pathway to that, um, you're going to get that Midwestern, you know, gee, let's stay in touch. Fair. Um, but you're not going to get someone lifting from level three. Gee, Dwayne, let me ask you one more question about this. You know, I was wondering, I talked to someone. What do you think about that? To level four, which is. Okay, let's set a meeting. I know my partners are going to be skeptical. I want to give you their. In their concerns right now. Let's Think about how you're going to. That's a level four response.

Speaker C: Marom, can you break down these levels that you're talking about here? Um, yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. So level one, level zero is. I either I flat out say to you, I'm not interested. Level one is. You're making me uncomfortable. And when I'm uncomfortable, my first instinct is to blame the defects in what you've engineered and brought to market rather than going, you know what, Twain? Uh, I just need to upskill and I don't know how to work this. Level two, it's interesting, but I'm um, waiting for the timing to be right. The product market fit, the readiness. There's some things that are unknown, that it's just too soon. Level three, I'm actively learning. Show me more. Let's schedule a time to find, to find things out. Let me take a next step in diligence with you. Level four, I see problems with this and I'm, um, collaborating with you in being part of the solution rather than part of the problem. And that might be my own upskilling. So. And in almost any game changing, in almost any game changing improvement in healthcare, if what you're designing really is game changing, you need to change the game and you can't just be in, oh, I see how the game could be changed, but there's a knowing doing gap. And that means you've got to upskill to play the game differently or change the game you're playing.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And level five is where I go, dwayne, you've got to look at this. It's got to be part of your next showcase in Philadelphia. Now I'm a champion.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Right. And these levels you're describing, people can move up and down this scale after each interaction, and I'm assuming correct, in

Speaker B: an instant you can watch them up in town. And so the art and the science of building courage is you don't have courage. You can't have courage without fear or reluctance or some level of risk aversion. It's

Speaker C: makes total sense, right? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker B: Uh,

Speaker C: maybe unpack that a little bit more. Ah, so you can't have courage without fear. Is this when you spend time with entrepreneurs, is are you are and you're trying to build courage, Are you trying to figure out what they're fearful of?

Speaker B: Um, sometimes.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: Uh, but more often the key to success is equipping them to figure out what someone on the other side is afraid of.

Speaker C: I got it.

Speaker B: That's why we talk about making courage contagious because if you don't build that, that courage, you're just going to leave someone in whatever state of readiness they started or they're going to regress down. So can I give you an example from, um, the automotive world that, uh, really doesn't have direct. Well, it does have direct application to MedTech Innovation, or I wouldn't be referencing it.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, this is good. Yeah.

Speaker B: So we bought an Easy.

Speaker C: Yeah. Nice. Yep.

Speaker B: Well, we thought so.

Speaker C: Okay. Okay.

Speaker B: And. And then we started to have some difficulties with it. And our expectation was, you know, it's basically. It. It's basically a cell phone on wheels. It's an electronic device on wheels. And so we've learned you don't buy an Apple computer without Apple Care and Genius Bar and, you know, the things that you need. And so we called the dealer and we got into an argument about, well, the charger didn't work. Well, what charger did you buy? Well, we got the charger that came with the car. Yeah, but what brand of charger was it? Uh, I don't know. It was in the trunk of the car when we picked it up from you. But we don't sell chargers. And this volley back and forth, and meanwhile, I'm not able to charge the car. Now, um, compare that with what you'd get in a comparable situation if you bought the equivalent of a $60,000 Apple computer.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker B: And. And then the ultimate answer. Oh, yeah, we. Yeah, you're right, we do sell chargers. Well, we didn't used to on that car, and we just don't sell a lot of them. So they manufactured the car, they got the it part right. But within the first two months of ownership, I came really face to face with how much I needed to learn about a different ownership experience. And, um, I would say, lights on, nobody home. Um, the lights weren't even on, and nobody was. And. And here we are now in a political environment where we've got people attacking electric vehicles. It's not the way we should go. It's, uh. And. And so. And there's all this stuff about range anxiety. And. Think about what would happen if they said, you know, if you buy the car, you get the first month of, um, EV care free. Then there's a subscription, and they're actively engaged in taking you to level four of upskilling you and understanding this is a whole new world that you're in.

Speaker C: Yeah, so. So you're. What you're proposing is, especially in this example, is like, so. So, um, yeah, we were early ev Adopters. Um, uh, you know, we, um, we're now on our second ev. Um, and uh, fortunately for us, it's worked out swimmingly for us ultimately.

Speaker B: It has for us too.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker C: Yeah, but I, but I get it. So your, your point here, especially as it relates to medtech, is like early adopters are, are, are, are easy to obtain. We tell everyone this like, you know, getting your first clinical partners, getting your first people to buy your product, you know, those are easy things. But getting the laggers, the people who are more fearful of adopting a new technology, is much harder. So the example you're giving here is. Yeah. How do you, when you talk to those customers, figure out what is their fear so that you can help take them from a level zero, one or two to a four or five.

Speaker B: Right. Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, and it's, I'm, I'm assuming it's the same thing in, in, in raising capital as well, which, which is probably more applicable for some earlier stage companies.

Speaker B: Well, yeah. And if you're raising capital, let me give you the promise that we hear in due diligence and in pitch sessions.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: This fits into the standard of care perfectly. You don't need to change a thing. And it doesn't. And it may be really subtle, it may be just the feel of this in my hands is different from what it was.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And I've got to adjust what's been encoded in muscle memory. And if I'm your early collaborator, I've been part of that design, I've upskilled without even being aware that I'm upskilling. And now I get it in my hands. In theory, when I looked at the demo, it looked really easy. But now on the guy pulling up to a charger and figuring out what's a J277 one and what's a, uh, and what's a CCS and what's a this and what's a that. And I'm looking it up in the manual and my granddaughter is crying in the back seat and, and nobody's prepared me for that journey. And so the whole brand promise, my whole level of trust begins to erode and I'm now in a deficit. And that's where investors have lost value and it's gotten to the point where they just don't believe it anymore.

Speaker C: Right. Yeah. Because they've been spurned by these pitches, these claims, these things. Right. Um, let's talk about, let's go another step further on that and how in, in the importance, um, especially on the investor Side. Ah, the importance of this. When you take on investor money as a startup, you know, we always say that the company is no longer yours. You have a fiduciary responsibility to those investors to deliver a return on their invested capital. Um, and when you do bring a person in, an investor in, they invest in your company, you obviously have them at a level 5. If they're investing, great, awesome. Something happens that it takes it down to a level one to zero, whatever it is, but you go down that scale, how do you regain some of that work, uh, you know, after that? Because to your point, like trusty roads takes forever to earn trust, it takes almost no time to lose it. Um, um, how do you gain that back? Uh, because an investor, it's like, it's like getting married, you know, I mean, you're in it. Um, and depending on how much power that person has, you know, if it's. It could be, if it's a board member, right. That now you're. Now you definitely need to regain that person's trust back. So, so how do you, how do you work on that?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, the first thing is, again, you've got to notice it.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Which is got to notice it. And that is a, uh, skill set. And not everybody expresses it in the same way. Based on personality, based on culture. So if you're working across cultures, you've got to recognize how that gets expressed in the culture in the style of the other person. And if you don't recognize it or you go, ooh, okay, I dodged that bullet. Well, good luck with that in a marriage.

Speaker C: Right? Right.

Speaker B: And then you need to raise more capital or you need someone to make an introduction, and that's where that comes in. And Dwayne, it's not just investor money. Uh, I mean, I was my last company and we didn't raise investor money, but I was the hotshot, know it all. This was my company that I founded on the back of my dissertation research. And all this work on courage and a robust innovation champion culture. And we shot out with a whole bunch of revenue right out of the gate. And I hired people. And,

Speaker A: uh,

Speaker B: it was. I had some things to learn because I thought I was the smartest person in the room. Um, and, and our graphic designer sat across the room for me and she said, mirom, you've got to understand, this is no longer your company, it's my company. And it wasn't investor money she was talking about. It was pride, commitment. What, um, what we heard one, um, biotech founder talk about as he wants People coming in with an attitude of being citizen owners. And that's a mindset that, that people start using the term we rather than you or they. And, and they, you know, there they wake up at night and they go, I just found the solution. And they write it down.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And they take that one more call or email and that's what we want of our employees as well.

Speaker C: Mm.

Speaker B: So, so that recognition that you're fostering that level of courage, ownership, ingenuity, that's what level four is about. And in the era we're in now, the problems are just too complex and too multi sided for one person to solve them all or for one person to get indignant or judgmental or um, if somebody is struggling with that when what we need to do is lift their ingenuity and give them the courage to do it.

Speaker C: Mhm. Yeah. So, so, so when you talk about these, this internal team, right. Like your graphic designer made this comment to you. Right. So. So, um, the same thing applies to internal teams. I would assume at a small startup though, like I can see when it comes to like investors you can bucketize them. Right. Like maybe the same fear that angels have is different than the fear that VCs have. Or uh, maybe there are similarities, may, there's differences. Customers, you can bucketize customers as well. How do you do that with individuals on your team at an early stage? Um, because, and the reason I ask this is like yes, at a, at a large company it might be easier to do because maybe the marketing department, you can kind of bucketize into what their fears are. Engineering might be different. You know, you can start to see how groups. But, but in a uh, small startup where it's like maybe there's 10 of you, 20 of you, and everyone's wearing a bunch of different hats, that task seems more daunting and more individualized, which creates more work. Right. But, but I'm just curious. Yeah. What's, what's some of that advice there?

Speaker B: Well, it, it's first of all is that you are a team within a team. And I guess the, the question is who's inside and who's outside.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: So, um, an investor, an investor says, um, I've got some concerns about the direction I see you going. If you've bucketized them, then you recognize the fear and your response is, get out of my space, this is my company to run. I'll call you when I need you. That's the impact of bucketizing. And so you've just mentally taken someone that you want saying we feeling a citizen ownership looking out for you being part of this collective and you've just put them on the outside looking in and you haven't given them a voice to be part of the collaboration. And so even if you're right and it all works out, what happens to their sense of ownership?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: What happens when you ask them? You go, this is way more capital intensive than we thought it was going to be. Will you double down with us?

Speaker C: It's probably no.

Speaker B: Or, or at best it's, let me, let's call an investor meeting and you come to that meeting and they're going to grill you about every piece of advice they gave you that they thought could have saved you and you it. And now you're on the defensive rather than working together in making it happen.

Speaker C: Right? Mhm. Okay. All right. So um, when you see, when you work with startups and they don't, it doesn't have to be just life science specific. You've been talking about some really good advice. Different ways to move people up and down. Where, where do people struggle the most? Is it the identification piece of this like you mentioned earlier?

Speaker B: It's way. Yeah, uh, I'm sorry.

Speaker C: No, no, no, no, go ahead. I, I, I, you mentioned, you mentioned that, that realizing how people are maybe trying to tell you is important but, but yeah, I didn't know if that was it or there's another piece that people struggle just routinely the most at.

Speaker B: Yeah, I'd say it starts even before that.

Speaker C: Dwayne.

Speaker B: Um, it starts with the definition of what's the value proposition?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And if the value proposition is the it rather than the it plus the upskilling, plus the getting to be part of a user community that is reshaping the standard of care, plus being part of a patient advocacy. And if, if your value proposition is too narrow, then you're in essence you're, you're not thinking through what is your level of care when somebody runs into difficulties. So there, there was someone I met through Project Medtech and I, I'm going brain dead on her name, but she talked about being a, having a contract service surgical, um, being a surgical medical device sales rep and being in the OR and watching, watching the operation and having the idea in her, her muscle memory even though she's not a physician of what this should feel like, listening for the sounds and being able to guide a surgeon and say, okay, this is what this device is like. This is what it should feel like. This is. Yep, yep, yep, yep. Okay, yep. You heard that Great. Now you're. That is a level of intimacy. That's what you get at a genius bar.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: A Genius Bar. My 92 year old mother can come into an Apple store and the, and the, and the guy or gal at the genius bar can walk her through doing something on her iPhone or on her computer and he's in her head about looking through her eyes of what this experience is like.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so if that's part of your value proposition and then that's got to be part of your investment plan because any investor is going to say, you don't need that, that's too frilly, that's too soft. And if you're not up on some of that research to be able to come back and justify that to an investor, they're going to write that off as not being capital efficient. But it's the whole package and that's what we mean. If you're changing the standard of care, it's not just looking at what the standard of care could be. It's. It's that getting people out of the knowing, doing gap and taking them m through that so that, that actually does accelerate adoption.

Speaker C: Mhm. Right. Um, okay, so, so, so generally I wrap up with a couple of questions. I'm going to switch one on you though. Um, so, so I like to ask, hey, you know, if there was one thing people needed to know about accessing the US Market, uh, what would it need to be? Right. Like you hear answers all the time about, well, you gotta understand about reimbursement, commercialization, blah, blah, blah. For you. I'm gonna ask you because I think you have an interesting perspective on this. Right. Being an angel investor. But, but, but also, you know, working with companies on, on building courage and getting ready for growth and raising capital. Right. And you talked about how, you know, when you get pitched as an angel, that there are, people are sick of hearing. Well, it fits perfectly into, you know, the clinical workflow. If I'm a company, I'm, um, getting ready to raise a round in general or just, just a round in general. Whether it's a Series A, whether it's, whether it's my first seed round, whether it's from family and friends. What's that one piece of advice that you got to give them before they go out and get started on this fundraising journey.

Speaker B: This is a really bucketized system. I'm going to take that word and throw it right back to I like

Speaker C: it, I like it.

Speaker B: And, and understand when I sold my previous company, we moved to Israel. We lived there for 15 years. We came back to the U.S. this was the most brutal part of coming into the United States as a patient is it is bucketized and people don't think beyond their bucket. So if you're coming to the US and you're saying, you know, this unmet medical need costs the system, pick a number. $300 million. A billion dollars. Well, might cost the system, doesn't cost me. You want me to have the courage to adopt to not a system. And, and so you're not yet talking to the bucket that you want to have courage to take the journey with you. And if you're talking investors, I just had this in a, uh, screening meeting last week, we saw, uh, 10 pitches. 10 people talked about a pathway to revenue. Actually, excuse me, eight people talked about a pathway to revenue. And when we asked the question, well, but how do I make money? Back on this as an investor, it was in Hebrew we would say goat eyes. It was like they got louder and more emphatic, like they're talking to an idiot about the pathway to revenue. And I had to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I don't make any of that revenue. None of that flows to me. Even if you get a license deal, none of that flows to me. Where do I make money?

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And only half of them, even the, the penny dropped and they got it and thank God for them, they went, you know what, that's what we've been missing. We need to figure that out.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And the minute somebody does that and they go, can I schedule a time with you guys to talk about some scenarios and what we could do? Now you're inviting me in to be at level four with you and man, I love that about working with early stage entrepreneurs.

Speaker C: Mhm. Yeah, yeah, that, um, it's super interesting you brought up a good point. Because how many times in pitch decks do you see that someone's technology is like, oh, you know, the US healthcare system spends a billion dollars of money on this problem a year. And it's like, hey, that's awesome. But the US healthcare system, uh, doesn't have a singular owner, you know, um, so, so who are you talking to when you say that statistic? Because you're talking about a systemic problem that, uh, no one's incentivized to fix necessarily. Um, you know, um, medical director of

Speaker B: a famous, um, a famous therapeutics company, Global Therapeutics company that shall go nameless, who presented at a conference in Tel Aviv and said, you've got to understand it's not about health, it's not about care and it's not a system.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And that, that would be if you're skipping to your. And therefore the courage that you need to instill. You've got to be focused on what's my benefit, what's my risk in this, where do I stand to fall off the cliff on this. And then you've got to be able to address that. And it's crazy because it is ridiculously complex. It's like at least a six sided Rubik's Cube M. And like the ev, you got the engineering down. Mhm. It is the best car of ever owned in you know, and, and it was 68 was my first car. So it's amazing. But the upskilling and everything around it is, you know, and in a political environment where that can be politicized, that is just not something you want to leave on the table.

Speaker C: Right. Yeah, yeah. Um, uh, the, yeah, the comments on the US Healthcare system too, I think they're really good to understand. You know we at. I think it was, it was on one of our webinar uh, series that we did on YouTube when Covid had just started and um, a guy, Nick Anderson, did the best analogy I've seen about the U.S. healthcare system, um, or the U.S. uh, not, it's not a system, uh, like you said. But, but you know he, he talked about, hey, you know there's, there's these insurance companies where everyone pays a bunch of money into and you know, you know, their main mission at the end of the day as a for profit entity is to retain as much money as possible. And the idea of the um, the, the, the hospital systems are to extract as much money as possible whether they're nonprofits or not. And he boiled it down pretty simply. And you know there's, that's a very simple statement and it's, it's a simple statement about a complex system. But at its core you do have to understand where the money flows and how it flows and how people are incentivized. And he's not wrong. Right. Uh, when he makes that statement.

Speaker B: Oh he is.

Speaker C: Okay. Yeah.

Speaker B: Let me challenge you on that.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Because man, I'll tell you as a human engineering and incentive, I've never met an incentive system, a bonus system, a commission system that couldn't be beat.

Speaker C: Oh right.

Speaker B: Every single one can be.

Speaker C: Has flaws. That's right. Yep.

Speaker B: And, and there is, and, and look, you run a profit making business, I run a profit making business. There's a Certain point where, I mean, what drew us to you is your values, your. Your mission, that the profit is what allows you to keep people in the game of changing the standard of care.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And in Israel, we have four insurance providers that duke it out. In a competitive environment, there's an overall overarching mission that overrides the profit motive, And it is taking care of. They're here to take care of people.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: And so think about what you would do as a business owner. I know what I would do as a business owner if somebody were eroding that trust in us to take advice and put their care, their franchise, in our hands.

Speaker C: Mhm. Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

Speaker B: Um, and. And then we've got to have the courage to ennoble, meaning lift them up to a higher calling rather than turn a blind eye and enable, like in the family of an addict, family of a gambler, in the definition of enable. That lets them off the hook and doesn't call them to that higher standard.

Speaker C: Yeah, no, it makes total sense. Um, Maram, I got one last question for you. Uh, and I have a feeling you're going to have a few different ones for me, so you can give me more than one. Um, I get most of my books that I read from my podcast guests. So, uh, and generally, you know, sometimes I'm recording here and in our office, other times I'm at my home. If I was at my home. You see my background. I have a bunch of. On the shelf. Right. Um, you've seen it because we've talked a lot. Um, yeah. Give me, uh, one, two, three book recommendations you'd have for the audience. Uh, fiction, nonfiction. It could be either one.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Um, but, yeah, and.

Speaker B: And we didn't rehearse this, so I really appreciate it. So.

Speaker C: Yeah. Yep.

Speaker B: So the first one actually just came out two days ago, I think, or late last week.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: And it's by Jeremy Levin. And, uh, I don't know if you know, he was the CEO of Tampa for a while. He was the, um, he was the head of Bio International and he wrote a book on, uh, Golly, I just went brain dead on the name of it, but it's about how we build trust in an age where all of the information we have is being politicized.

Speaker C: Interesting.

Speaker B: And what do we need to do to depoliticize the conversations? It's. We got to get out of the buckets.

Speaker C: Yeah. I. Biotech in the balance.

Speaker B: Yep.

Speaker C: A Strategic industry in the Age of distrust. Wow. Super timely book.

Speaker B: Uh, so it's. We've all got to be enablers and ennoblers of lifting people. And that cynicism of well what do you expect? It's a uh, profit making system. Well that's what gives people incentive to do what they do, do what they do and improve the standard of care. We've seen non profit making systems where the bureaucracy is what matters, saving face is what matters. Egos matter. It's not about lifting a standard of care and finding something better. That, and we got to do it in a way that builds trust because if we don't have trust, people are going to go, I don't know. This doesn't feel like what I'm used to. Uh, no, you're just trying to trick me. I'll go back to what I know works. So that's one book. Second book is there was a book that was written in 2009 by the um, CEO of Intel Israel and it's called Leadership the Hard Way. Dov Fruman and he talked about um, you know, that everybody would give you a free pass if. And um, this was the uh, last war that didn't last as long as this war, but it was. Everybody would realize that if, if you can't make a delivery deadline, if you slip on the quality of something, if you can't make a phone call, everybody would understand. And he said in the next call would be the meeting after the meeting where they'd say we can't do this in Israel. We got to find another place to put enterprise critical assets. And I think that in what we're seeing here, this has been the market that everybody has come to and said this is the standard for the world.

Speaker C: Mhm.

Speaker B: But if it gets too hard to do it here and too political, people are going to look for other places and they're going to look for us to help them find other places. And so we've got to have. The good news is we've got to have a global mindset to do that. But the other is if we want people adopting and being part of our ecosystem, we gotta bring them in and depoliticize it and make it possible and honor the commitments.

Speaker C: Yeah. Okay, so that's two. Do you have a third or no?

Speaker B: Um, I'd say the third is for anybody fascinated about Israel innovation. I would recommend Startup Nation.

Speaker C: Okay.

Speaker B: And talks about um, talks about the diversity of the country being an asset, the ingenuity of the country being an asset. Um, and, and that military service is, is a way of giving people responsibility and being citizen owners in a way that they're going to have to account for their actions.

Speaker C: Okay. Awesome. I love it. Marom. Uh, hang on for uh, one minute. We'll, we'll chat offline. Um, we'll include a link to your LinkedIn, your website, everything like that in the show notes. So for people listening in up or down an inch, you can find it right there. Um, but, uh, yeah, thanks so much for doing this today with me. Great.

Speaker B: And I, I just close with one thought. One more thought, Dwayne, that, that building courage, recognizing it is one thing, but then what we give you in the book is a five step formula that it's okay now I've recognized it. What do I do to lean in and take people through it and ennoble step by step? Because if I recognize it and surrender to the fear. You know what? Um, I'm not. Then you're not going to buy the second ev. You're going to go back to something easier.

Speaker C: Yeah. How do you conquer it?

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker C: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah, we'll have a link for that in the show notes as well. And that'd be a really good opportunity to go listen to Yohi's, uh, podcast as well. So, um. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Marom.

Speaker B: Sure enough.

Speaker C: Yeah.

Speaker B: Hi, I'm Freddy Coffey, Director of Marketing at Jumpstart.

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